Our World's Trees Are Getting Younger

Did you know that the oldest tree is a 5000-year old bristlecone pine located in the forests of Nevada? Unfortunately, many of these precious old-growth trees are starting to disappear from our planet. According to a recent study published in the journal Science, climate change, deforestation, and rising temperatures have caused more than 30% of old-growth trees to die. The term old-growth refers to trees that are 150 years or older. This means that much of the trees on Earth today are younger, smaller, and have shorter lifespans. Let's find out why old-growth forests are disappearing and...

A Mammoth Discovery!

Imagine discovering an immense graveyard of more than 60 mammoths! The discovery was made at a construction site in Mexico City, Mexico, where the General Felipe Ángeles International Airport is being built. The bones were found six miles away from another site in Tultepec, where mammoth bones from about 15,000 years ago were found in 2019. When mammoths used to live during the last ice age, this place was once part of the muddy shoreline of an ancient lake called Lake Xaltocan. The lake was said to be shallow, with an abundance of lush grasses and reeds, which may have attracted these...

Copy-Pasting The Genome: Part 1

Genetic engineering has now become incredibly advanced. It has the potential of changing the entire structure of humanity. An important form of genetic engineering is called genetic cloning. Genetic cloning, specifically, is the process by which genes are replicated and extracted from an original strand of DNA. SCNT, or somatic cell nuclear transfer, is a technique for creating a viable embryo using a donor nucleus from a somatic cell (all cells in the body, excluding gametes) and an enucleated oocyte (egg cell). The Success Of Dolly Cloning can be useful for creating organs and tissues that...

These Clever Bumblebees...

Bumblebees work hard. They are a great pollinator as they travel from flower to flower, 400 times faster than the average honey bee. Perhaps because of climate change, bumblebees are waking up from their hibernation slumber earlier and earlier -- before flowers have bloomed. In search of pollen, bumblebees will actually make little moon-shaped cuts in plant leaves to make the plant flower up to 30 days earlier than normal. Pollination: A Mutual Relationship For both plants and bees, the process of pollination is important for creating offspring. As a bee collects nectar from a flower, pollen...

Have You Heard Of Glacier Mice?

When contemplating the common inhabitants of places like Antarctica or the North Pole, you probably think of penguins, polar bears, and walruses. However, there are more peculiar inhabitants of such icy ecosystems than you may realize. One such inhabitant is a glacier mouse. Glacier mice aren’t the cheese-eating kind—rather, they are fuzzy balls of moss that commonly appear on glaciers. First described in the 1950s by an Icelandic researcher, who gave them their signature name (jökla-mýs, or glacier mice), these moss balls have been seen in South America, Svalbard, Iceland, and Alaska. So how...

Rainbow Chocolate: Pretty Cool!

Earlier this month, Samy Kamkar shared his latest creation - rainbow chocolate! The chocolate is actually iridescent, which causes a rainbow effect in certain light. However, Kamkar is not a chef or baker like most would expect. Instead, he is the founder and CEO of an internet security company and loves experimenting with food in his free time. Kamkar got his inspiration from a maker meetup in Los Angeles where he saw an iridescent effect on black plastic and had the idea to do the same thing on chocolate. Consumers find this hard to believe, but there is no coating or added ingredients. It’...

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