Over hundreds of millions of years of evolution,water-repellant skin has enabledtiny insects, called springtails,to breathe through their skinwithout suffocating in damp soil flooded by rainwater. More recently, such natural engineering has inspired a new approach to cooling new generations of miniaturized electronic devices.
Source: ieee.org
In recent years sensors stationed across the North Atlantic have picked up a potentially concerning signal: The grand northward progression of water along North America that moves heat from the tropics toward the Arctic has been sluggish. If that languidness continues and deepens, it could usher in drastic changes in sea level and weather around the ocean basin.
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The mystery behind how birds navigate might finally be solved: it’s not the iron in their beaks providing a magnetic compass, but a newly discovered protein in their eyes that lets them ‘see’ Earth’s magnetic fields. These findings come courtesy of two new papers – one studying robins, the other zebra finches. The fancy eye protein is called Cry4, and it’s part of a class of proteins called cryptochromes – photoreceptors sensitive to blue light, found in both plants and animals.
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Despite numerous studies and 30-plus genomes under their belts, scientists are still struggling to nail down the defining traits of these tall, long-lived, woody plants.
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