Like many mammals, carnivorous plants rely on animal prey for sustenance. Found in nature they are not dependent on a diet of human blood but rather are satisfied with the occasional fly or other insect.
Earth
Research conducted at Texas A&M University casts doubts on the notion that El Niño has been getting stronger because of global warming and raises interesting questions about the relationship between El Niño and a severe flu pandemic 91 years ago. The findings are based on analysis of the 1918 El Niño, which the new research shows to be one of the strongest of the 20th century.
If the climate is not quite right, birds will up and move rather than stick around and sweat it out, according to a new study led by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley.
The findings, to be published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that 48 out of 53 bird species studied in California's Sierra Nevada mountains have adjusted to climate change over the last century by moving to sites with the temperature and precipitation conditions they favored.
A highly reactive plant hormone called Cis-OPDA (12-oxophytodienoic acid) has been shown to simultaneously serve as a precursor molecule of the metabolic "master switch" jasmonic acid. Both signal herbivory in leaves and shoots of plants and activate the plants' defense reaction against caterpillars. Cis-OPDA, when reaching the hemolymph of the caterpillar, has a negative effect on the animal, leading to premature pupation and, apparently, an impaired immune system.
Microwave imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite revealed extremely high thunderstorms in Typhoon Choi-Wan as it began passing the island of Sai-Pan in the Western Pacific Ocean. The U.S. National Weather Service has already issued a tropical storm warning and a typhoon watch for Tinian, Saipan and Agrihan in the Northern Mariana Islands.
The latest tropical storm in the western Pacific formed on Sunday (9/14/09), and is poised to make landfall in mainland China on Tuesday, near typhoon strength (74 mph winds). Two NASA satellites captured different views of its clouds.
CLIMATE CENTRAL, Princeton, NJ -- Many people worry about the link between rising bark-beetle infestations and an increase in western wildfires. But Dr. Susan Prichard, a Research Scientist at the University of Washington, adds another concern: what happens after the fires go out?
NASA's Aqua satellite flew over the remnants of Fred, September 13 and captured an infrared and visible image of the storm's clouds from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument. Both AIRS images showed Fred's clouds stretched from northeast to southwest and resembled a tilted exclamation mark.
Molecules of hydrogen are difficult to steer with electric fields because of the symmetrical way that charges are distributed within them. But now researchers at ETH Zurich have found a clever technique to get a grip on the molecules. Their findings are reported in Physical Review Letters and highlighted in the September 14 issue of Physics (http://physics.aps.org).
Approximately 120-130 million years ago, one of the most significant events in the history of the Earth occurred: the first flowering plants, or angiosperms, arose. In the late 1800s, Darwin referred to their development as an "abominable mystery." To this day, scientists are still challenged by this "mystery" of how angiosperms originated, rapidly diversified, and rose to dominance.
The link between declining CO2 levels in the earth's atmosphere and the formation of the Antarctic ice caps some 34 million years ago has been confirmed for the first time in a major research study.
A team of scientists from Cardiff, Bristol and Texas A&M universities braved the lions and hyenas of a small East African village to extract microfossils in samples of rocks which show the level of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere at the time of the formation of the ice-cap.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – An international team of researchers has created the most complete seismic image of the Earth's crust and upper mantle beneath the rugged Himalaya Mountains, in the process discovering some unusual geologic features that may explain how the region has evolved.
Their findings, published this week in the journal Science, help explain the formation of the world's largest mountain range, which is still growing.
In a perfect world, for every boy there would of course be a girl, but a new study shows that actual sex ratios can sometimes sway very far from that ideal. In fact, the male-to-female ratio of one tropical butterfly has shifted rapidly over time and space, driven by a parasite that specifically kills males of the species, reveals a report published online on September 10th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.
Unlike steel, which has a well-documented crystalline structure at the atomic scale, the three-dimensional crystalline structure of cement hydrate - the paste that forms and quickly hardens when cement powder is mixed with water - has eluded scientific attempts at decoding. This is despite the fact that concrete is the most prevalent man-made material on earth and the focus of a multibillion-dollar industry that is under pressure to clean up its act.
A large international research team has decoded the genome of the notorious organism that triggered the Irish potato famine in the mid-19th century and now threatens this season's tomato and potato crops across much of the US.