A coral walks into a (sand) bar. This may sound like a joke. But new time-lapse photography shows new details of how a squishy, loner coral polyp without legs manages to “walk.” Instead of banding together to build coral reefs, mushroom corals typically live alone. From the outside, these corals (within the family Fungiidae) look…
Even though immense rains repeatedly pummeled California in 2023, they barely helped recharge aquifers drawn down by decades of drought and human pumping, a new study reveals. About one-third of the water supply in Los Angeles, which is susceptible to long dry spells, comes from groundwater. But in the first three months of 2023, more…
In the opening scene of The Lion King, animals of every stripe, spot and tusk march in unison across the African plains, bound by an unseen thread of connection. This iconic moment mirrors a natural phenomenon in the wild: zebras forging unlikely alliances with giraffes and traveling as a unified herd. This real-life stripes-meets-spots pairing…
Citations B.V. Venkataram Prasad et al. Norovirus replication, host interactions and vaccine advances. Nature Reviews Microbiology. Published online January 17, 2025. doi: 10.1038/s41579-024-01144-9. E.N. Atochina-Vasserman et al. Bivalent norovirus mRNA vaccine elicits cellular and humoral responses protecting human enteroids from GII.4 infection. npj Vaccines. Published online October 1, 2024. doi: 10.1038/s41541-024-00976-z. K.B. Carlson et al. A…
Got a plant with a boo-boo? Try a plant Band-Aid. A pure form of cellulose produced by bacteria can act as a plant bandage, researchers report, significantly boosting healing and regeneration in plants. The finding, described February 12 in Science Advances, has potential implications for agriculture and plant research. Unlike animals, plants cannot escape danger…
A neutrino from space recently plunged into the Mediterranean Sea with an energy that blows all other known neutrinos out of the water. Packing a punch of some 220 million billion electron volts, this particle was around 20 times as energetic as the highest energy cosmic neutrinos seen before, researchers report in the Feb. 13…