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Plastics can enter the food web at an unexpected point: larval fish as small as the tip of a pencil. Larval fish congregate in ocean slicks — ribbons of calm water that form naturally on the ocean’s surface — to feast on an abundance of prey. Prey-sized plastics also accumulate in these fish nurseries, outnumbering […] More
Power lines could be messing with honeybees by emitting electromagnetic fields that can alter the insects’ behavior and ability to learn. In the lab, honeybees (Apis mellifera) were more aggressive toward other bees after being exposed to electromagnetic fields, or EMFs, at strengths similar to what they might experience at ground level under electricity transmission […] More
Jian Zhong Wang’s home in the southern Chinese city of Nanning is an inviting place. Light spills in through large bay windows, which offer a stunning view of the garden of thick-stemmed banana plants and chest-high cacti. The room is packed with intricately carved furniture: a dining table flanked by eight straight-backed chairs, a coffee […] More
Humpback whales need to eat a lot every day, and some even use their flippers to help snag a big mouthful of fish. Researchers filmed humpbacks (Megaptera novaeangliae) hunting with this tactic, called pectoral herding, off the Alaskan coast. It’s the first time that this behavior has been documented in such detail, the team reports […] More
After nearly four years of painstaking work, in 1902 Marie Curie produced one-tenth of a gram of radium chloride from several tons of uranium ore. It took her another eight years to isolate pure radium. The effort won her a second Nobel Prize and cemented her legacy as one of science’s most tenacious minds. “One […] More
Polar caps quickly losing ice. Chalky coral reefs. Stronger storms that devastate islands and cities, claiming lives and destroying homes. Those aren’t speculations about what our world faces in a warmer future. Those are climate change impacts happening now — and set to worsen, according to a new report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on […] More
