Scientists Discover Coral That Eats Jellyfish
Up until now, scientists believed that coral only ate plankton and other micro-organisms, but a new discovery shows the mushroom coral can actually eat jellyfish almost its same size. Scientists were diving near the Israeli city of Eilat in the Red Sea, when they photographed the phenomenon for the first time.
“We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw it,” Ms Alamaru, a member of the research team, says. “This is definitely unusual. As far as I know no other coral are reported to feed on jellyfish. However, some sea anemones, which are close relatives of corals, are documented feeding on other jelly species.”
Scientists have suspected that coral must eat microscopic baby jellyfishes, but this is the first time they were presented with evidence of the animal eating adult jellies.
Link Image by Omri Bronstein from the Tel Aviv University
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Periodic Table Sweater
All you science-lovers on Neatorama should appreciate this great sweater featuring the Periodic Table of Elements. The sleeves feature fungi and bacteria names. The creator made it for her husband, a microbiologist working in the pharmaceutical industry.
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Gingerbread Man Dissection
Ever wonder what the internal workings of a gingerbread man would look like? Artist Jason Freeny has you covered, detailing the full anatomy of one of our gingerbread man friends.
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15 Most Alien Looking Caterpillars on Earth
Caterpillars are more vulnerable to predators than their later butterfly stage, so many have developed scary appearances for protection. These can scare anyone!
This green alien is a native of the Philippines and seems to have taken the fake eye spots to an extreme, making its “face” quite large and scary. Normally, a caterpillar’s face is much smaller and not on the second abdominal segment.
(image credit: Flickr user Thrillseekr)
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Top Ten New Species
Scientists have announced the top ten new species first described in 2008.
On the list are a pea-sized seahorse, caffeine-free coffee and bacteria that live in hairspray. The top 10 new species also include the very tiny (a snake just a slither longer than 4 inches or 104 millimeters), the very long (an insect from Malaysia with an overall length of 22.3 inches or 56.7 centimeters) the very old (a fossilized specimen of the oldest known live-bearing vertebrate) and the very twisted (a snail whose shell twists around four axes). Rounding out this year’s list are a palm that flowers itself to death, a ghost slug from Wales and a deep blue damselfish.
Shown is Opisthostoma vermiculum, a tiny land snail that curls on four different axes. Link -via the Presurfer
(image credit: Reuben Clements)
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The Biology, Chemistry and Physics of Coffee
After many years in grad school, Pauline Fujita of Litmus has had at least as much coffee as science, yet like most of us, she knew very little of the brewed beverage. So, Pauline decided to delve a little into the science of coffee.
Take, for instance, the science behind the aroma of coffee:
Most of the aroma we associate with coffee is created during the roasting process. Longer roasting times mean coffee that is more bitter and less acidic and darker in color (Fortin 1999). Green, or un-roasted coffee contains about 300 volatile organic compounds (Bonnländer et al. 2005 pp. 198) whereas over 1000 such compounds have been found in roasted coffee. The green bell pepper-like “aroma” of green coffee can be attributed primarily to the compound isobutylmethoxypyrazine. In contrast, the aroma of roasted coffee is thought to result from a combination of about 25 volatile organic compounds, the “aroma compounds”, found at a total concentration of only 1g/kg of coffee and ranging in individual concentration from the lower part per million range down to as little as parts per trillion.
So where do all these extra compounds come from? During the roasting process many different chemical reactions occur, the most important of which can be classified as one of two types of reactions. The first, Maillard or “browning” reactions, produce aroma compounds as well as colored compounds (melanoidins), and the second, caramelization reactions, involve the chemical reduction of sugar compounds, the same tasty process that, you guessed it, makes caramel.
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Cotton Candy in the Lab
Scientists have found an alternative use for cotton candy. It can be used to grow replacement human tissue!
First, you pour a thick liquid chemical over a wad of cotton candy. Let the liquid solidify into a chunk, and put that in warm water to dissolve the candy. That leaves tiny channels where the strands of candy used to be. So you have a chunk of material with a network of fine channels within.
Next, line these channels with cells to create artificial blood vessels. And seed the solid chunk with immature cells of whatever tissue you’re trying to make. The block is biodegradable, and as it disappears, it will gradually be replaced by growing tissue. In the end, you get a piece of tissue permeated with tiny blood vessels.
The research was done by Dr. Jason Spector of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Leon Bellan of Cornell University. Spector enjoys cotton candy, but Bellan finds it disgusting. Link -via Geek Like Me
(image credit: Flickr user Indrani Soemardjan)
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The Biology of Romance
A group of researchers are studying the biological basis of romantic love. No matter how much we talk about love from the heart (or other organs), they’ve found it really is all in your head.
In humans, there are four tiny areas of the brain that some researchers say form a circuit of love. [Dr. Bianca] Acevedo, who works at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, is part of a team that has isolated those regions with the unromantic names of ventral tegmental area (VTA), the nucleus accumbens, the ventral pallidum and raphe nucleus.
The hot spot is the teardrop-shaped VTA. When people newly in love were put in a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine and shown pictures of their beloved, the VTA lit up. Same for people still madly in love after 20 years.
The VTA is part of a key reward system in the brain.
“These are cells that make dopamine and send it to different brain regions,” said Helen Fisher, a researcher and professor at Rutgers University. “This part of the system becomes activated because you’re trying to win life’s greatest prize – a mating partner.”
Link -via Geek Like Me
(image credit: Larry Young, PhD.)
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I Love Science Shirts in Onesies and Kids Sizes
We’ve had our popular "I Love Science T-Shirt" designs in onesies and kids T-shirt sizes for a while now on Neatorama’s Online Shop, but I thought I’d post a heads up here to show just how cute my son Zachary is. He has just turned 1 year old not long ago. 
Link: I Love Science in Onesies/Kids sizes – the perfect gift for your aspiring scientists!
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Why Men Are Superior to Fish
Got to love those Russian biologists! Dr. M.A. Menzbier (yes, a real person – an ornithologist and zoogeographer, actually) has found the reason why men are superior than fish, as published in the Nov 1931 issue of Modern Mechanix: Link
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