Tomato plants produce repellent chemicals called volatile organic compounds in response to herbivore attacks. (Stock image) Credit: © slavomir pancevac / Fotolia In sports, sometimes a player has to take one for the team. The same appears to be true in...
Ginkgo fossil. Credit: Stephen McLoughlin For the first time, researchers have succeeded in establishing the relationships between 200-million-year-old plants based on chemical fingerprints. Using infrared spectroscopy and statistical analysis of organic molecules in fossil leaves, they are opening up new perspectives...
Methane hydrate recovered from ocean sediments off Svalbard dissociates into water and methane gas under surface pressure and temperature conditions, allowing the methane released to be lit on fire. Credit: Image courtesy of National Oceanography Centre Methane seeps from seafloor deposits...
This image shows a false-colored electron microscope image of the University of Minnesota device. The blue area marks the topological insulator on top of the optical waveguide in red. Credit: University of Minnesota Light can generate an electrical current in semiconductor...
Nelson Sepulveda is a nanotechnology researcher and associate professor of engineering at Michigan State University. Credit: Michigan State University A paper-thin, flexible device created at Michigan State University not only can generate energy from human motion, it can act as a...
The white calcite 'veins' of the Loma Blanca fault are evident in this slab of rock on the fault. These veins of calcite reveal a record of fluid-driven earthquakes clustered together on a fault typically characterized by less frequent,...
The metal-organic framework is set up like a sandwich (a). The molecular textile layer is woven in an active layer that is embedded between so-called sacrificial layers (b). Credit: KIT Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have made major progress...
DNA (stock illustration). Credit: © frenta / Fotolia A neutral genetic mutation -- a fluke in the evolutionary process that had no apparent biological purpose -- that appeared over 700 million years ago in biological evolution could help explain the origin...
MIT scientists have determined the structure of an enzyme that is found in ocean microbes and can produce a precursor to methane. Credit: David Born Industrial and agricultural activities produce large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global...
Antarctica. Credit: Dave Pape, Public Domain It's official: East Antarctica is pushing West Antarctica around. Now that West Antarctica is losing weight--that is, billions of tons of ice per year--its softer mantle rock is being nudged westward by the harder mantle...
Street flooding in Miami (stock image). Credit: © light_magic / Fotolia The East Coast of the United States is threatened by more frequent flooding in the future. This is shown by a recent study by the Universities of Bonn, South Florida,...