BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM For decades, researchers looked for the seat of magnetoreception in all the obvious places: the eyes, the inner ear, the beak. A study just published in Science points somewhere none of them expected. The organ doing the magnetic navigation work in homing pigeons appears to be the liver. Iron […]
The post How pigeons find their way home: the answer is a…
For a hundred years, we told the wrong story about moths and light.
The textbook version: a moth navigates by keeping a fixed angle to the moon. Because the moon is far away, this produces a straight line. When the moth tries the same trick with a streetlight — a near point instead of a far one — the geometry collapses into a logarithmic spiral. The moth corkscrews inward, drawn to the flame by…
Stanford researchers are making strides across medicine and science this spring.
The post Research Roundup: Combating muscle loss from GLP-1s, monitoring high-risk pregnancies and reversing aging in sea squirts appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
A study in the journal Science argues that homing pigeons may read Earth's magnetic field using iron-rich cells in their livers, rather than their beaks or eyes. Researchers wiped out those cells in 34 trained birds; under heavy overcast, none could find their way home, while untreated birds all made it back within 70 minutes. — Read the rest
The post Pigeons may navigate using magnetic cells…
Quanta's "The Dirt That Refused To Die" follows a French lab that sterilized soil with gamma radiation, sealed it in jars, and watched it keep breathing — taking in oxygen and giving off carbon dioxide for six years, with no living cell left inside. — Read the rest
The post Scientists sterilized soil. It kept breathing for six years. appeared first on Boing Boing.
In December 1972, Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent 75 hours on the lunar surface during Apollo 17. They drove a rover, conducted three spacewalks and collected samples across the […]
The post Setting up a permanent lunar presence needs investment in biology appeared first on SpaceNews.
Google is investing $10 million into REPLIQA, a new effort combining quantum computing, AI, and biology research to better understand human health and disease.
In his latest column installment, Zhang argues that the humanities are essential for workers in medicine to establish empathy and compassion between caregivers and receivers.
The post Zhang | Where are the humanities majors in medicine? appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
In August 1926, Jagadish Chandra Bose walked into an Oxford lecture hall carrying a snapdragon stem. He hooked it to one of his handmade instruments, told the audience they were watching the plant's heartbeat, and pointed to a tracing that rose and fell in rhythm. — Read the rest
The post The man who discovered microwaves measured a flower's heartbeat in 1926 appeared first on Boing Boing.
On the slow erasure of a sense, the pills we take for it, and what the whole arrangement might be doing to our politics.
Mike Manson has spent 50 years at Texas A&M studying the bacterial flagellar motor — a molecular machine that spins hundreds of times per second, outpacing a race car's spinning crankshaft, to drive bacteria through water. He finally understands it. "My lifelong quest is now fulfilled," he told Quanta Magazine. — Read the rest
The post Scientists finally cracked how bacteria's spinning motor…
Take a dip into this extreme sport and see what drives divers deeper into the underwater world
The post What is freediving?: Taking the plunge on a single breath appeared first on How It Works.
The boy's sister couldn't believe her ears and began sobbing uncontrollably.
The post “He’s a baby genius”: 3-month-old stuns mom by perfectly repeating full sentences appeared first on Upworthy.
Swap one letter in a girl mouse's DNA and she grows testes. Researchers at Bar-Ilan University in Israel edited a small stretch of what scientists used to call "junk DNA," the vast majority of the genome that doesn't build proteins but tells other genes when to turn on or off. — Read the rest
The post Girl mice grew balls after a one-letter DNA change appeared first on Boing Boing.
When fertility clinics make irreparable errors, what should happen to children born in the wrong family?
Dogs and humans are more alike than we think.
The post Woman shares the magical, human-like thing her dog does when she speaks appeared first on Upworthy.
Sometimes, when a fingernail gets damaged or injured, it can grow back looking like there are two nails layered on top of each other. These double-tipped nails are rare, and honestly, some of them look really cool — like the nail decided to fork at the end instead of growing straight. — Read the rest
The post Double-tipped fingernails: rare nail growth that looks almost unreal appeared first on…
In 2005, a husband-and-wife team at Japan's RIKEN institute ran an experiment with a mouse: clone it, then clone the clone, then clone that clone, and keep going. Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama and Dr. Sayaka Wakayama kept it up for 20 years — through lab moves, a 2011 earthquake, and the pandemic — requiring 30,947 individual cloning attempts to produce 58 successive generations, as summarized by…
We are born with a musical blueprint that might actually be older than language itself
The post You were born with a playlist already in your soul: Why science says musicality is hardwired appeared first on Upworthy.
ダンゴムシは、飼育する時に虫かごに石を入れるとよいことが知られています。異なる種類の鉱物を与えて飼育した結果、ダンゴムシは食べた鉱物をそのまま殻にするのではなく、体内で鉱物の構造を作り替えていることを発見しました。生物が鉱物の構造を制御して利用する仕組みの理解につながる成果です。 甲殻類や貝類など...
The projects highlighted overlaps between the sciences and humanities.
The post Green Library exhibit showcases senior capstone projects appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Some caterpillars have cracked the password to an ant colony — what Rachelle Adams, an evolutionary biologist at Ohio State University, calls "well-defended fortresses." Species in the butterfly family Lycaenidae drum out vibrations that match the beat patterns of their host colonies, fooling the ants into carrying them inside and raising them as their own, according to a study published…
The Abu-Remaileh Lab published an atlas of proteins found in lysosomes across different brain cell types, setting the foundation for future work on neurodegenerative diseases.
The post First lysosomal protein atlas aims to advance neurodegenerative research appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
A cross-institution collaboration used over 90 stem cell lines to track early brain development.
The post Stem cell based organoids reveal shared genetic pathways in autism appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
The University confirmed that Wolfe’s appointment will not be renewed amid reporting by The Daily on the former professor’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
The post Virologist Nathan Wolfe ’92 to end visiting appointment at Stanford amid Epstein report appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
I just published a NLJ article in which I made a reference to the murderous camera in Sonic Adventure for Sega Dreamcast. I described the camera as homicidal in my draft. But that did not seem right. While Sonic Adventure features Dr. Robotnik as a villan and human beings in its peculiar overworld, the camera issues are most jarring in levels featuring Sonic. Sonic is a hedgehog. In order to…