environs | Common News Update

May 8 (UPI) -- The warty comb jelly, or sea walnut, is native to the coastal waters of the western Atlantic, but in recent decades, the gelatinous invertebrate has invaded the waters of Eurasia. New research -- published this week in the journal Communications Biology -- suggests cannibalism is key to the species' ability to move into new environs. "We had this species arrive in the Black Sea in the 80s, and it arrived in the Caspian Sea in the 90s," Jamileh Javidpour, lead author of the new study and a professor of marine biology at the University of Southern Denmark, told UPI. "So it showed the ability to spread very fast over a diversity of ecosystems." Most recently, the warty comb jelly, Mnemiopsis leidyi, has made its way to the Baltic Sea. Previous studies have identified a corre...

July 23 (UPI) -- Engineers at MIT have designed tiny, new robots capable of sensing their surroundings. The microbots, roughly the size of a human egg cell, could be used to explore hard-to-reach passageways, like the human intestines or a gas pipeline. Scientists designed the tiny robots by coupling electric circuitry to colloids, a mixture feating insoluble particles so small they never settle in water or air. Colloid particles always remains dispersed. "We wanted to figure out methods to graft complete, intact electronic circuits onto colloidal particles," Michael Strano, a professor of chemical engineering, told MIT News. Researchers have previously tried to turn small particles or molecules into robots, but scientists have mostly focused their efforts on improving the mobility of mi...

Tag: environs

Cannibalism helps comb jellies survive harsh conditions, invade new environs

Microbots capable of sensing environs could explore intestines, pipelines