Scientists turn 'mess' into breakthrough: Chaotic design unlocks next-generation optical devices

Observations conducted with the Subaru Telescope and its first-generation wide-field camera, Suprime-Cam, have revealed new insights into the relationship between the color and size of Jupiter Trojan asteroids.

We thought it was evolution, but an experiment with pencils shows that tips like teeth and thorns may owe their rounded shape to mechanical wear. Most of us have been stung by a bee, bitten by an animal, or scratched by a thorny bush. But very few of us have probably taken a close look at nature's painful, pointed tips.

What if the Trojan horse had been pulled to pieces, revealing the ruse and fending off the invasion, just as it entered the gates of Troy? That's an apt description of a newly characterized bacterial defense system that chops up foreign DNA. Bacteria and the viruses that infect them, bacteriophages—phages for short—are ceaselessly at odds, with bacteria developing methods to protect themselves against phages that are constantly striving to overcome those safeguards.

Along the southern coastline, researchers dive deep to collect seaweed from kelp forests and rocky platforms, taking small samples and the location of each sample. Back in the lab, the specimens are preserved—some dried, others kept alive—so they can be studied, cultured and sequenced.