You Won’t Believe How This Beetle Walks on Water
The New York Times
Scientists observed a beetle walking upside-down on the undersurface of a pool of water.
After dark, the Watagan Mountains in New South Wales, Australia, can appear otherworldly to anyone with a headlamp. But things turned stranger than usual in 2015 when John Gould, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Newcastle in Australia, was surveying sandpaper frogs in the forests’ ephemeral pools for his dissertation. Dr. Gould was crouching upon a pool, seeking frogs, when he saw a pea-sized bug that he thought had fallen into the water. As he peered closer, Dr. Gould realized he was not watching a right-side-up bug struggling to escape the water, but an upside-down beetle in full control of its life and current situation. It skittered along the undersurface of the water as if in a parallel world, the kneeling Dr. Gould beneath him. The surface of the pool was immaculately still, nary a wind ripple in sight, and Dr. Gould pulled out his phone to record the water scavenger beetle’s nonchalant ceiling crawl. Because the footage was unrelated to his research, Dr. Gould stored the beetle video in his files and did not return to it for several years as he finished his doctorate. In June at last, Dr. Gould and Jose Valdez, a wildlife ecologist at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research in Leipzig, published the first detailed documentation of this behavior in beetles in the journal Ethology.
In a recent interview, the health secretary also suggested that the measles vaccine had harmed children in West Texas, center of an outbreak.
An ambitious start-up embodies new optimism that artificial intelligence can turbocharge scientific discovery.
There’s a reason this easy 1930s recipe, topped with caramel and coconut, has been around for so long.
Some scientists are confident that organs from genetically modified pigs will one day be routinely transplanted into humans. But substantial ethical questions remain.
People interpret a dog’s emotions based on its situation and have “a big blind spot” for the actual animal, a new study found.
January and February are usually the doldrums for dining, but Americans have been eating out, and spending, with gusto.
The president’s halt of foreign aid upended two U.S. programs that help the International Atomic Energy Agency find clues about Iran’s drive to build atomic bombs.
Organizations funded by the United States helped keep dangerous pathogens in check around the world. Now many safeguards are gone, and Americans may pay the price.
The Athena lander from Intuitive Machines could not charge its batteries after ending up on its side. It largely failed to accomplish science and technology tasks for NASA and other customers.
The first-of-its-kind event at the White House with top crypto executives showcased the president’s embrace of the once-renegade industry.
In her new memoir, “Care and Feeding,” Laurie Woolever looks back on 20 tumultuous, exhilarating years with two of America’s biggest celebrity chefs.
Two more people are reported dead from the disease, and dozens are in isolation, as the outbreak grows.
And it’s not chocolate chips.