This is a guest post by Sarah Hiddleston  Eileen Haring Woods “We are points of order in a disordered universe. This is an expression of how we feel about being ruled by physics in all our emotions and reactions. It’s how we interpret, describe and live our lives within this system.” Artist or scientist? These are the words of curator Caroline Wiseman, whose brainchild “Alive in the Universe” found a home at the world’s longest standing contemporary art fair in Venice yesterday. It is a month-long exhibition that seeks to interpret what life is, and rather than reduce it to an equatio ..read more

Artist’s conception of a hypothetical planet covered in water around the binary star system of Kepler-35A and B. NASA/JPL-Caltech In terms of job satisfaction, discovering worlds must take the Sachertorte. Sibling astronomers William and Caroline Herschel, for instance, rejoiced in a haul that included Uranus, eight comets and several moons gleaned from what William called the “luxuriant garden” of the skies. Their final tally of deep-sky objects, with that of William’s gifted son John, numbered in the thousands. I’m sure their minds would be boggled by today’s exoplaneteering exploits — s ..read more

An investigation of the genome and phenome of a green alga called Chloroidium sp. UTEX 3007 has revealed, for the first time, certain adaptive traits that help algae acclimate to desert environments. But what sets apart this new species, which scientists at the New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) have discovered and sequenced, from other types of green algae? Nature Middle East talks to Kourosh Salehi-Ashtiani, associate professor of biology and managing director at the Center for Genomics and Systems Biology at NYUAD, to find out. Nature Middle East: What does your new study add to the body ..read more

One of the cat skeletons excavated from a site in Egypt. © Hierakonpolis Expedition A new study reveals some fascinating insights into the origin story of the cat, arguably the internet’s most favorite creature and a cherished companion to countless humans. Paleogeneticist Claudio Ottoni and his peers from KU Leuven and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences have been collecting DNA from several archaeological sites in an attempt to track down the origins and trace the ancient journeys of the domestic cat. The scientists unearthed over 200 cat skeletons from si ..read more

This is a guest blogpost by Aya Nader. Chenanisaurus barbaricus comes from the end of the dinosaurs’ reign. N.R. Longrich Scientists have discovered remains of one of the last dinosaurs on Earth, in Morocco. About 66 or 67 million years old, Chenanisaurus barbaricus comes from the very end of the prehistoric animals’ reign. Along with species like Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops, it would have been there to watch the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. Previously, the scientists have found only a few teeth, but now they have fossils that comprise part of the dinosaur ..read more

Extracts from selected news and feature articles published this year. Astrophysics An international team of scientists, including from New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), managed to directly observe structural components of one slowly rotating star, thanks to asteroseismology. This new technique, 10,000 times more precise than its predecessor, reveals a star’s flatter, rounder contours and different rotational speeds. It allows scientists to ‘see’ the nature of the stellar interior with very high precision. Marine science In an unprecedented study on non-model organisms in captivity, scient ..read more

Laura Casas, House of Wisdom guest blogger and King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) marine biologist, talks to us about the orange salt water fish and how it used a marvelous evolutionary mechanism to conquer the seas. Fran Saborido-Rey How did a small, very bright, colorful fish that’s a poor swimmer become extensively distributed in tropical waters from the Indian to the western Pacific Oceans, including the Great Barrier Reef and the Red Sea? Two processes have potentially played a role in the successful evolutionary adaptation of clownfishes: a mutual relat ..read more

3Q: James Rosindell and Yan Wong OneZoom lets people sponsor animals and plants on an online tree of life. OneZoom Putting all living things, from kingdom to species level, onto a single, easy-to-explore ‘tree of life’ is an ambitious project. But a newly formed charity has just gone a long way towards that by releasing the website www.onezoom.org. To crowdfund the new ‘OneZoom’ tree, biodiversity theorist James Rosindell and evolutionary biologist Yan Wong are asking the public to sponsor their favourite animals and plants. Here Rosindell and Wong talk about OneZoom, and why graphics from ..read more

From Doty and Waterston’s A Swarm, A Flock, A Host (aquatint etching, 2013) Courtesy of the artist and DC Moore Gallery, New York Whatever ‘being human’ means, it seems irrevocably tied to the bestial. In real life we tame, avoid or study animals (think pigs, grizzlies, lab mice). In stories, we freight them with characteristics human, mystical or approximately their own (think the White Rabbit, Moby-Dick, Mrs Tiggywinkle). Beasts are burdened indeed — by human needs, questionings, hopes, dreams, morals and fantasies. Reflecting that obsession, a small, beautifully curated exhibition at th ..read more

This is a guest post by Sarah Hiddleston  Eileen Haring Woods “We are points of order in a disordered universe. This is an expression of how we feel about being ruled by physics in all our emotions and reactions. It’s how we interpret, describe and live our lives within this system.” Artist or scientist? These are the words of curator Caroline Wiseman, whose brainchild “Alive in the Universe” found a home at the world’s longest standing contemporary art fair in Venice yesterday. It is a month-long exhibition that seeks to interpret what life is, and rather than reduce it to an equ ..read more