Mosquito eye inspires artificial compound lens

Anyone who's tried to swat a pesky mosquito knows how quickly the insects can evade a hand or fly swatter. The pests' compound eyes, which provide a wide field of view, are largely responsible for these lightning-fast actions. ...

Hubble paints picture of the evolving universe

Astronomers using the ultraviolet vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have captured one of the largest panoramic views of the fire and fury of star birth in the distant universe. The field features approximately 15,000 ...

Making window glass visible – but only to birds

Ultraviolet patterns can make window glass visible to birds, thus preventing fatal collisions. However, it has now been shown that such windows are not likely to work for all species, but only for birds like small passerines, ...

NASA decommissions its galaxy hunter spacecraft

(Phys.org) —NASA has turned off its Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) after a decade of operations in which the venerable space telescope used its ultraviolet vision to study hundreds of millions of galaxies across 10 billion ...

Evolutionary biologists urged to adapt their research methods

To truly understand the mechanisms of natural selection, evolutionary biologists need to shift their focus from present-day molecules to synthesized, ancestral ones, says Shozo Yokoyama, a biologist at Emory University.

Birds evolved ultraviolet vision several times, research finds

Ultraviolet vision evolved at least eight times in birds from a common violet sensitive ancestor finds a study published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. All of these are due to single nucleotide ...

Deep-sea crabs grab grub using UV vision

(Phys.org)—Crabs living half-a-mile down in the ocean, beyond the reach of sunlight, have a sort of color vision combining sensitivity to blue and ultraviolet light. Their detection of shorter wavelengths may give the crabs ...

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