The bamboo coral Isidella displaying bioluminescence in the Caribbean in 2009.
Sönke Johnsen
Dozens of animals, some on land but many in the ocean, can produce light within their bodies through chemical reactions. Scientists are still trying to understand when and why this trait developed.
A female giraffe browsing.
Giraffe necks are a hot topic among biologists. A new study contradicts an older theory that says male giraffes need long necks to fight over mates.
Christoph Burgstedt / Shutterstock
Science has a need to verify results, but DeepMind’s protein prediction tool doesn’t work this way.
Protein wave oscillations open a window into living cells.
Scott Coyle and Rohith Rajasekaran
Researchers can create ‘single-cell radios’ using bacterial proteins to transmit the invisible activities within cells.
Christoph Burgstedt / Shutterstock
The AI model can predict structures for a vast array of the proteins used by living organisms.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Perseverance rover has arrived at what’s thought to be an ancient shoreline on Mars.
A dinosaur eggshell cross section, as imaged under fluorescence microscopy.
Evan Saitta
Calcite, the material making up fossilized eggshells, may preserve amino acids better than bone.
Protesters support transgender rights during an event outside Parliament House in Canberra.
Lukas Coch/AAP
In her new book, Who’s Afraid of Gender?, feminist philosopher Judith Butler explains how gender and sex are socially constructed, while fighting critics who see gender as a threat to the social order.
NASA
An instrument on the Europa Clipper mission might be able to detect biological cells from space.
Elite athletes show researchers the upper limits of a healthy metabolism.
Solskin/DigitalVision via Getty Images
An elite athlete’s metabolism mostly looks different from a patient with COVID-19 − but their occasional similarities can reveal important insights into health and disease.
The habitats used throughout the halibut’s life and the movements between them are difficult to characterize.
(Charlotte Gauthier)
Atlantic halibut are making a strong comeback in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. But how do we know where the fish move throughout their lives?
European colonizers brought mice to the Americas, where they squeaked out a comfortable life.
Dejan Kolar/iStock Collection via Getty Images Plus
An evolutionary biologist is studying what these resilient urban pests can teach us about adaptation and evolution.
Eve – Lucas Cranach the Elder (c.1510)
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The story of human evolution is inextricable from the story of gynaecology.
Shutterstock
Our bodies have a dedicated channel for sensing only the very lightest of touches.
Fields of genetically modified potato plants could detect radiation.
AP Photo/John Miller
What if plants in the area surrounding a nuclear reactor could act as radiation detectors, with the help of a drone?
Limbless robots may not need lots of complex algorithms when they have mechanical intelligence.
Tianyu Wang
Robots often have a hard time navigating through debris, but robots designed based on worms and snakes could move around obstacles faster, thanks to an idea called mechanical intelligence.
Handshakes between glycans are one way cells recognize each other.
Kelvin Anggara
Sugar molecules called glycans cover the surface of all cells, acting as ID cards that broadcast what they are to the rest of the body.
The greater horseshoe bat is one of the UK’s 18 bat species.
Rudmer Zwerver/Shutterstock
Maths plays a crucial role in new research which finds that bats “leapfrog” their way home at night.
Scientists have been studying the Clarkia site for nearly five decades.
Robert Patalano
While NASA rovers on the surface of Mars look for hints of life, researchers back on Earth are studying ‘echoes of life’ from ancient basins – hoping that the two sites might be similar.
A multiple-exposure photograph of insects circling a light at night.
Samuel Fabian
A new study shows how artificial light at night scrambles insects’ normal flight patterns, pulling them off course into orbit around the light.