SciTech

Comets helped bring about life on Earth

Credit: Don Davis, NASA Comets colliding with the Earth billions of years ago may have helped bring about life on Earth. Amino acids, energy and water could all have been...

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Butterfly wings idea boosts hydrogen production

Golden Birdwing butterfly (Troides aeacus) via Shutterstock A butterfly flaps its wings - and production of hydrogen could double. Scientists have developed pioneering technology that doubles hydrogen gas production after...

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Madagascar about the girls

A typical village; Credit: © Francois Ricaut The explanation of why Africans never got to Madagascar has been the cruel Agulhas Current and the huge distance across the Mozambique Channel....

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Sexual selection by Chemoattractants

Mytilus galloprovincialis with limpets and barnacles in their typical rock-pool habitat (in Galicia); Credit: Shutterstock When a sperm can find an unfertilised egg more easily, sexual selection and a host...

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3D orientation does it for us and chicks

Which way to turn? via Shutterstock In extreme conditions or even in normal situations, an animal has to get itself back into the groove quickly after any disorientation. Survival normally...

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Life not so sweet for meat-eating mammals

Sea lions (who swallow their food whole); Credit: Richard G. Fisher Scientists have discovered that some meat-eating mammals often lose their taste for sweet things. The team from the non-profit...

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Gorilla genomes and hopes for hominids

Silverback western gorilla would like to have a word with you! Credit: Shutterstock With the genome of the western gorilla, authors Aylwyn Scally et al have contrived very successfully to...

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Health Check for Oetzi the Iceman

You can just make out his brown eyes in this artist's reproduction of Oetzi's facial features; Image Credit: © South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology/EURAC/Marco Samadelli-Gregor Staschitz When we wrote on...

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Global warming and mammal body size

The modern Morgan horse weighs half a ton, contrasting with the 5.5 pounds (12kg) of the smallest horse species (Sifrhippus sandrae); Credit: Danielle Byerley, UFL Fifty six million years ago,...

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Footprints Bring Fossil Elephants to Life

Fossil elephant tracks; Credit: © Faisal Bibi How similar were ancestral elephant species to our two remaining species? That may be a question you don't ask very often. Dr Faysal...

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