ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News

A team of geologists and palaeontologists has discovered that, some 50 million years ago, there was a low-lying continent separating Europe from Asia that they have named Balkanatolia. At the time, it was inhabited by an endemic fauna that was very different from those of Europe and Asia. Geographical changes 40 to 34 million years ago connected this continent to its two neighbors, paving the way for the replacement of European mammals by Asian mammals.

The ability of cells to self-organize into specific patterns in tissues that serve a function is a universal feature of life. A well-known and much studied pattern is the compound eye of the fruit fly. Researchers now have discovered that the formation of the pattern involves mechanical forces, not just chemical signals transmitted between cells. Using first-of-its-kind live imaging, the researchers saw cells moving into position as the eye develops; the cells are not static as previously believed.

For the first time, researchers demonstrate an artificial organic neuron, a nerve cell, that can be integrated with a living plant and an artificial organic synapse. Both the neuron and the synapse are made from printed organic electrochemical transistors.

Researchers fabricated a 3D artificial cancer tissue that overcomes one of the biggest challenges in tissue engineering: replicating the body's smallest blood vessels. The breakthrough offers a possible alternative to animal drug testing.

No matter which of the widely accepted global circulation models ultimately comes closest to predicting the amount of warming caused by climate change, corn production will be reduced, according to a new study.

It cakes our cars in yellow powder every spring and taunts allergy sufferers for months on end, but pollen is more than just plant sperm. New research has determined when pollen comes of age and begins expressing its own genome, a major life cycle transition in plants.

Researchers have used sound waves to turn stem cells into bone cells, in a tissue engineering advance that could one day help patients regrow bone lost to cancer or degenerative disease.

Researchers engineered a strain of bacteria to break down carbon dioxide (CO2), converting it into commonly used, expensive industrial chemicals. The carbon-negative approach removes CO2 from the atmosphere and bypasses using fossil fuels to generate these chemicals.

An antibiotic sprayed on orchard crops to combat bacterial diseases slows the cognition of bumblebees and reduces their foraging efficiency, a laboratory study finds. The research focused on streptomycin, an antibiotic used increasingly in U.S. agriculture during the past decade.