Cicada and dragonfly wings are known to have a surface layer that kills bacteria by tearing them apart and then removing the dead bacteria. Getting rid of dead bacteria is an important property as it prevents other bacteria from colonising the surface and feeding on the debris of the shredded bacteria. It was thought that […]
Almost all bees get their nutrients from flowers. Pollen provides protein and nectar provides carbohydrates. A group of scientists have found three closely related bees of the genus Trigona that feed off dead flesh, rather than flowers. These “vulture bees” get their protein by chewing pieces of flesh from dead animals and gain additional carbohydrates […]
Seagrasses are not seaweed. They are flowering plants, just like grasses that grow on land, but they grow on the sea beds in shallow coastal waters, and form an important food source and habitat for many sea creatures. Like land plants they need a good supply of nitrogen to grow well, and plants can usually […]
Pandemic? Taliban? It Must Be Global Warming. For the last couple of decades global warming has been blamed for every natural disaster, but currently the dominant doom and gloom stories are the coronavirus pandemic and the Taliban taking over Afghanistan. And, yes, there are some people who claim there is a link between global warming […]
‘Shocking!’ They are not evolving! according to reports in Bigelow News and ScienceDaily 8 April 2021, Science Alert 9 April 2021, and The ISME Journal, 6 April 2021; doi: 10.1038/s41396-021-00965-3. Originally found deep in a South African mine, a bacterium named Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator was found to survive on a diet of chemicals produced from radioactivity […]
Hitchhiking microbes protect plants and people, according to articles in Science (AAAS) News 22 March 2021, and The ISME Journal, 15 March 2021. Doi 10.1038/s41396-021-00952-8. Soil dwelling bacteria known Streptomyces are known to colonise plant roots and protect plants from damage by other microbes by producing antibiotics. Many of these antibiotics are also used in […]
140 thousand viruses found in human guts, according to reports in ScienceDaily 18 February 2021, Science Alert 28 February 2021, and Cell 19 February 2021 doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.01.029. Scientists at Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute have analysed 28,060 samples of gut microbiomes from around the world and found 142,809 bacteriophage viruses. Bacteriophages are a type of virus […]
Blood parasites in dino bones found, according Smithsonian Magazine 18 November 2020 and Cretaceous Research 15 October 2020, doi: 10.1016/j.cretres.2020.104672. A group of scientists in Brazil were studying a deformity in a leg bone of a titanosaur, which they thought could be a bone tumour. When they examined it under a microscope they found microscopic […]
Containing the coronavirus is proving to be difficult in spite of efforts by some governments and health authorities. This newly found virus, officially designated “2019-nCoV” is similar to two previously known deadly coronaviruses – SARS and MERS. Here is the testimony of one of our colleagues from a SARS outbreak. “All passengers from the affected […]
Re-run evolution proves flagellum evolved, claim scientists in an article in ABC Science 7 November 2019. Matt Baker, a biophysicist at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and Nick Matzke a phylogeneticist at University of Auckland, New Zealand, have written an article entitled “Evolution or intelligent design? The story of the bacterial flagellar motor”. […]