It may not be a Bigfoot or a Loch Ness Monster, but a somewhat creepy new animal species HAS recently been discovered. Named Macrobdella mimicus, it's the first medicinal (human-blood-sucking) leech to be described in North America in over 40 years.
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Spraying crops with weed-killer is not only harmful to the environment, but it's also costly for farmers. With those problems in mind, scientists have conducted a study which suggests that less herbicide could be used for the same results, if applied at the right time of day.
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You may think that we’ve got a good handle on the organs in the body by now, but it turns out that the final count is surprisingly contentious. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden claim to have discovered a new sensory organ in the skin that’s involved in pain detection and response.
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A significant breakthrough in genetics research out of Japan has raised the prospect of gender preselection, with scientists establishing a new kind of chemical treatment that can produce mice litters made up mostly of a desired sex.
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Organ development has traditionally been tricky to study, thanks largely to the difficulty in getting sensors in there without damaging the organs. Now, researchers from Harvard have developed a way to create “cyborg organoids” by integrating nanoelectronics into cell cultures.
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By turning advanced cameras to capture legless larvae in action, scientists have gained a new understanding of their ability to leap through the air, including an ability to form what they call a "transient leg."
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A remarkable new study revealed thousands of previously undiscovered small proteins produced by bacteria in the human microbiome. Almost all of these proteins serve unknown functions in the human body and the researchers suggest the discovery opens up a new frontier for future drug development.
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Our bodies aren't great at regeneration. Other creatures have mastered this skill though, and now scientists at the University of California Davis (UC Davis) and Harvard have sequenced the RNA transcripts for the immortal hydra and figured out how it manages to do just that.
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Exactly how life sprung out of non-living matter is one of biology’s biggest mysteries. In new research, scientists cooked up a “primordial soup” and found that some of the crucial building blocks of life spontaneously stacked themselves in a surprisingly efficient way.
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Half a billion years ago, in the Cambrian Period, most animals were smaller than a person's little finger. That makes the recent discovery of a marine predator from that time all the more exciting, as the sucker grew up to one foot (30 cm) long.
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