by Jamie — Readers, sharpen your pencils and put on your secret decoder rings. We need you to crack these cryptograms! Read more →
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by Jamie — Readers, sharpen your pencils and put on your secret decoder rings. We need you to crack these cryptograms! Read more →
Posted on March 29, 2018 at 05:00 AM in Odds & Ends | Permalink | Comments (0)
by Elio — I admit to not having paid much attention to the mechanisms that plants and animals use to stand up straight, or, in the case of plants, also to descend into the soil. Yet, on reflection, the skill in detecting the effect of gravity, now called gravitropism, the older term being geotropism, is essential for life. Read more →
Posted on March 26, 2018 at 05:00 AM in Behavior, Physiology & Genetics | Permalink | Comments (0)
by Ananya Sen — Bacterial biofilms are microbial communities within which individual cells communicate with each other. Establishing a biofilm, coordinating biofilm growth in response to nutrient availability, and interspecies interactions, all depend on communication. Read more →
Posted on March 22, 2018 at 05:00 AM in Physiology & Genetics | Permalink | Comments (0)
by Elio — We finish our Fungomania series of this year with a question: Why when you feel the cap of a mushroom in the woods, does it feel cool and somewhat moist? Read more →
Posted on March 19, 2018 at 05:00 AM in Fungi | Permalink | Comments (0)
by Elio — We dealt with a monster fossil fungus before. In the interest of expediency, let me reprint part of what I said: "Several museums possess specimens of a cylindrical organism named Prototaxites whose tree-like trunks measure up to 8 meters long by 1 meter wide. Prototaxites dated from approximately 420 to 350 million... Read more →
Posted on March 15, 2018 at 09:04 AM in Fungi, Symbioses | Permalink | Comments (0)
by Elio — Fungomania returns… In keeping with what we did a year ago, we offer three consecutive fungal posts. I have earlier professed sharing with many a fascination for symbioses. I still don’t know why this is, perhaps it’s simply because multiple genomes interacting are more exciting than one. Read more →
Posted on March 12, 2018 at 05:00 AM in Fungi, Symbioses | Permalink | Comments (0)
by Christoph — What resembles a snippet of a gauze bandage, a fabric made by the 'warp and weft' technique of weaving on a loom, is actually an electron-microscopic picture of a fragment of the sheath of the archaeon Methanotrix concilii that grows in filaments similar to many cyanobacteria. The picture – I see it as a piece... Read more →
Posted on March 08, 2018 at 12:16 AM in Methodology, Pictures Considered, Teachers Corner | Permalink | Comments (0)
by Mike Delmont — Many things in our lives are so common that we take them for granted, forgetting their remarkable complexity. These can range from the social microbiology involved in cheese making, to the physics behind the internal combustion engine, or the anatomy/physiology behind taking a couple of steps... Read more →
Posted on March 05, 2018 at 05:00 AM in Behavior, Physiology & Genetics | Permalink | Comments (0)
With the widespread use of alcohol-based disinfectants (hand dispensers seem to be all over), can you conceive of a bacterium becoming resistant other than by making spores? Read more →
Posted on March 01, 2018 at 01:03 AM in Talmudic Questions | Permalink | Comments (0)