Rice leaves behind more than a meal. After the grain has been processed, the tough outer husk is usually treated as an unwanted agricultural residue, with enormous quantities accumulating every year. Much of it has little obvious use and can become an environmental burden when it is burned or dumped. At Florida International University, chemistry…
Representative Image of jellyfish floating gracefully in a microgravity environment (AI-generated image) In 1991, NASA sent jellyfish into orbit as part of an experiment to understand how microgravity affects an organism’s sense of balance. The mission carried Aurelia jellyfish polyps aboard the space shuttle, where scientists induced them to develop into their next life stage…
Honeybees can be trained with nothing more than the promise of a sugary reward; they learn to pick out a specific face and keep picking it out later, even when it appears from a slightly different angle or sits among faces they have never encountered before. It is a strange and slightly humbling discovery, not…
Mercury is the smallest planet in the Solar System, only slightly larger than Earth’s Moon, but what lies beneath its battered surface is anything but small. Its metallic core stretches out to nearly 85 per cent of the planet’s total radius, leaving behind a rocky shell so thin it barely qualifies as a shell at…
Croatia was still dealing with the hidden legacy of the Balkan wars when scientists began looking to an unlikely ally: honeybees. Years after mines had been buried across fields, forests and rural land, uncertainty over their locations continued to complicate farming, development and everyday life. Traditional mine-clearance teams faced the difficult task of finding explosives…
A large coprolite of a carnivorous dinosaur found in Harding County, South Dakota, US. Image Credit: Poozeum/Wikipedia Around 540 million years ago, the biological landscape of Earth went through a huge transformation called the Cambrian explosion. During this era, the ancestors of most modern animal groups began to appear, depicting a massive surge in biodiversity….
A 14-year-old Georgia student has turned a common kitchen concern into an award-winning science project. Sirish Subash, a ninth grader from Snellville, built PestiSCAND, a handheld device designed to detect pesticide residues on fruits and vegetables. As reported by USA Today, his invention earned him the title of America’s Top Young Scientist in October 2024,…
Redonda had become a thriving haven for wildlife within a few years, and now it has received a major new layer of protection. For years, Redonda resembled more a barren moonscape than a tropical Caribbean island. Its vegetation was destroyed, its native wildlife was wiped out, and the marine ecosystem around it was harmed by…
Many species of bagworms choose to use twigs and small sticks to make their casings Imagine building a house around yourself and then carrying it wherever you go. That is what a bagworm caterpillar does. The small insect uses silk from its own body along with leaves, twigs and other material from its surroundings to…
Artist’s concept of a close-up naked-eye view of a GRB. Credit: NASA For more than half a century, gamma-ray bursts have remained one of the most puzzling events observed in space. These bursts are sudden flashes of gamma rays, a very high-energy form of light. They can appear from almost any direction in the sky…