Biology

Low-temperature electron micrograph of a cluster of E. coli bacteria, magnified 10,000 times. Each individual bacterium is oblong shaped.

E. coli Bonding Before the Burger

Code Blue! Stat!

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Hormonal Hibernating Rodents

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Peter Piper Picked a Pack of Pickled Products

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Who's Your Daddy?

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Planet -- well, Forest -- of the Apes

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Scannable Birds? New DNA Barcodes Classify Nature

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They Came For The Martians, And I Was Silent Because I Was Not A Martian

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Seeds Kept Safe in Arctic Circle Vault

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Science's 300-Year-Old Grand Unification Theory

What do dancing and scientific research have in common? "Creativity," says Jarvis (performing in high school in the early 1980s), and "hard work."

Song and Dance Man

Erich Jarvis dreamed of becoming a ballet star. Now the scientist's studies of how birds learn to sing are forging a new understanding of the human brain

35 Who Made a Difference: Edward O. Wilson

Vindicated for his controversial sociobiology? Yes. Satisfied? Not yet

35 Who Made a Difference: Robert Langridge

His quest to peer into the essence of life no longer seems so strange

Biologist Sara Lewis (near Boston) says "they're very single-minded."

Your Branch or Mine?

Fireflies' come-hither signals are being decoded by penlight-wielding biologists who've found treachery, also, in the summer-night flashes

A Matter of Taste

Are you a superstar? Just stick out your tongue and say "yuck"

Gimzewski uses an atomic force microscope (above, atop a bone cell) to "listen" to living cells.

Signal Discovery?

A Los Angeles scientist says living cells may make distinct sounds, which might someday help doctors "hear" diseases

"Among dung beetles, for instance, the smallest sneaker males relentlessly attempt to slip into tunnels where females are sequestered while Mr. Big, the guarding male, is looking the other way."

Close Encounters of the Sneaky Kind

When it comes to mating, the brawny guy is supposed to get the girl, but biologists are finding that small, stealthy suitors do just fine

Scientists believe the bacteria may hold clues to the origins of life itself.

Subterranean Surprises

Scientists are discovering that caves more complex than we ever imagined may yield vast riches about the origins of life

Birdbrain Breakthrough

Startling evidence that the human brain can grow new nerves began with unlikely studies of birdsong

When scouts discover a suitable plant near their nest, they leave a pheromone, or chemical, trail, to efficiently guide legions of worker ants to it. The workers soon stream back to the nest in six-inch-wide columns bearing loads up to ten times their own weight.

Small Matters

Millions of years ago, leafcutter ants learned to grow fungi. But how? And why? And what do they have to teach us?

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