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Fresh forays into fly vision

Flies in the lab get a color TV while researchers watch their neurons fire. Researchers at the UMN devise a new set up to get a deeper look at how flies see color. 

Fly eyes play an important role in picking up information about the world around them, finding food and avoiding danger. But before this information can become useful, neural circuits in the brain need to simplify and extract the important components. Within milliseconds these little insects make complex decisions about where to turn, what to eat and what to avoid. 

Life as we know it, and as we don’t

Age-old existential questions such as “how did we get here?” and “are we alone?” bridge the gap between science and philosophy. Scientists who study astrobiology -- the study of the story of life past, present, and future in the Universe -- seek to answer these questions.

The field of astrobiology is as big as the Universe itself; it encompasses many disciplines including physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, geology, and planetary science, to name a few.

Complicated relationships within your salad

Plants inhabit many environments across the globe, and some groups can survive extreme conditions. One of these groups is the amaranth family. Members of this family, including several important crops such as amaranth, quinoa, spinach, and sugar beet, are well known for evolving adaptations to survive extreme environments, such as C4 photosynthesis in hot and often dry places and tolerance to highly elevated levels of salt or heavy metals.

300 days without water - how tropical trees can survive drought

Imagine that you are walking in a tropical forest in Costa Rica where most trees look like the ones in Minnesota during the winter -- leafless. You might be wondering how this can be possible. What can be causing these trees to lose their leaves?

The answer is water. Water in these systems control when trees have leaves or when they lose them. This change in tree foliage is completely normal in tropical dry forests where trees lose their leaves in late October or early November when the rains stop.