Tag: Organisms

  • Nation & World

    Constant temps key to biodiversity

    New paper answers the long-standing scientific question about cause of tropics’ stunning biodiversity.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Scientists explore nature’s designs

    As a graduate student, Harvard physical chemist Joanna Aizenberg acquired a passionate curiosity about — of all things — sponges. She particularly liked the ones made of glass, whose apparent fragility belied the fact that they could withstand terrific pressure in the deep sea.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A single gene leads yeast cells to cooperate against threats

    An ingenious social behavior that mobilizes yeast cells to cooperate in protecting each other from stress, antibiotics, and other dangers is driven by the activity of a single gene, scientists report this week in the journal Cell. The cooperating cells use the same gene, dubbed FLO1, as a marker for detecting “cheaters,” cells that try…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The pine beetle’s tale: Destructive insect has pharmaceutical potential

    Researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have discovered how beetles and bacteria form a symbiotic and mutualistic relationship — one that ultimately results in the destruction of pine forests. In addition, they’ve identified the specific molecule that drives this whole phenomenon.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Translating the color code

    From snail shells to bird feathers to the changing skin of a chameleon, nature uses colors in ways that range from the electric blue of a poison dart frog’s warning to the invisible ultraviolet patterns of flowers that call bees to pollinate. The development, use, and perception of color is the subject of a new…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Potent new strategy for mapping animal species shakes up tree of life

    Since the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” efforts to trace evolutionary relationships among different classes of organisms have largely relied on external morphological observations.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Taxonomist Carl Linnaeus on show at HMNH

    Carl Linnaeus believed that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was not an apple but a banana. He came to this conclusion in 1737, while studying plant specimens at Hartecamp, the estate of George Clifford, a wealthy Dutch banker and director of the Dutch East India Company. Clifford collected exotic plants from around the…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Taxonomist Carl Linnaeus on show at HMNH

    Carl Linnaeus believed that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was not an apple but a banana. He came to this conclusion in 1737, while studying plant specimens at Hartecamp, the estate of George Clifford, a wealthy Dutch banker and director of the Dutch East India Company. Clifford collected exotic plants from around the…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Speed limit’ found on rate of evolution

    Harvard University scientists have identified a virtual “speed limit” on the rate of molecular evolution in organisms, and the magic number appears to be six mutations per genome per generation — a rate of change beyond which species run the strong risk of extinction as their genomes lose stability.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Aizenberg named McKay Professor of Materials Science

    Joanna Aizenberg, a leader in the analysis of unique biomaterials that have evolved to carry out multiple functions in some organisms, has been appointed Gordon McKay Professor of Materials Science in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and its School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), effective July 1, 2007.

    3 minutes