Sreys Blog Posts

A young killer whale swims between two older ones. Granny killer whales pass along wisdom—and extra fish—to their grandchildren By Eva Frederick Dec. 9, 2019 , 4:30 PM Many human grandmothers love to spoil their grandchildren with attention and treats, and for good reason: Studies have shown that having a living grandmother increases a child’s chance of survival. Now, new research shows the same may be true for killer whales. By providing young animals with some freshly caught salmon now and then—or perhaps with knowledge on where to find it—grannies increase their grand-offspring’s chance of survival. The new study is the first direct evidence in nonhuman animals of the “grandmother hypothesis.” The idea posits that females of some species live long after they stop reproducing to provide extra care for their grandchildren . “It’s very cool that these long-lived cetaceans have what looks like a postfertile life stage,” says Kristen Hawkes, an anthropologist at the University of Ut

In times of intense stress, people sometimes let out their angst with a squeal ⁠— and a new study suggests that plants might do the same.   Unlike human screams, however, plant sounds are too high-frequency for us to hear them, according to the research, which was posted Dec. 2 on the bioRxiv database. But when researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel placed microphones near stressed tomato and tobacco plants, the instruments picked up the crops’ ultrasonic squeals from about 4 inches (10 centimeters) away. The noises fell within a range of 20 to 100 kilohertz, a volume that could feasibly “be detected by some organisms from up to several meters away,” the authors noted. (The paper has not been peer reviewed yet.) Animals and plants might listen and react to the silent screams of plants, and perhaps humans could too, with the right tools in hand, the authors added. The idea that “sounds that drought -stressed plants make could be used in precision agriculture seems feasible i

The spaceship Rocinante arrives at the exoplanet Ilus in The Expanse . How real-world science sets The Expanse apart from other sci-fi shows By Stephen Humphrey Dec. 6, 2019 , 8:00 AM On 13 December, Amazon Prime will air the fourth season of The Expanse , a hardboiled space drama renowned for its working-class characters and real-world space physics. Showrunner Naren Shankar is part of the reason the science checks out. The veteran writer and producer for programs such as Star Trek: The Next Generation , Farscape , and the police procedural CSI: Crime Scene Investigation , has a doctorate in applied physics and electrical engineering. Shankar chatted with Science about why he feels it’s important to have a realistic sci-fi show, and how television work is like the scientific peer-review process. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Q: How did you end up making sci-fi shows? A: I actually started at Cornell [University] as an arts student. But I always loved

A biological clock governs aging in dogs just as in humans. Here’s a better way to convert dog years to human years, scientists say By Virginia Morell Nov. 15, 2019 , 3:42 PM Our Scotch collie, Buckaroo, is just shy of 14 years old. Following the long-debunked but still popular idea that one dog year equals seven human years, he’s almost a centenarian. (This “formula” may be based on average life spans of 10 and 70 years for dogs and people, respectively.) Now, researchers say they have a new formula (see calculator below)  to convert dog years to human years—one with some actual science behind it. The work is based on a relatively new concept in aging research: that chemical modifications to a person’s DNA over a lifetime create what is known as an epigenetic clock. Scientists have built a case that one such modification, the addition of methyl groups to specific DNA sequences, tracks human biological age—that is, the toll that disease, poor lifestyle, and genetics take on our bod