Aquatic algae can sense and adapt to changing light conditions in lakes and oceans, making them able to use a wide range of color, according to a new paper.

Phytochromes are the eyes of a plant, allowing it to detect changes in the color, intensity, and quality of light so that the plant can react and adapt. Typically about 20 percent of a plant's genes are regulated by phytochromes and the phytochromes use bilin pigments that are structurally related to chlorophyll, the molecule that plants use to harvest light and use it to turn carbon dioxide and water into food.

In a Twitter age, one where mainstream media desperately needs to keep people watching and reading, every event is magnified. A tropical storm that hit New York City was transformed into a Superstorm and a drought in the West is a harbinger of global warming that will crack the planet.

Star Wars Day is May 4th so you are probably wondering how you would build deflector shields in case the US government is worried about turtles on its former nuclear testing grounds and thinks your cows will harm the ecosystem and sends a Death Star after you.

You're in luck; not only are they scientifically feasible, the principle behind them is already used here on Earth.

If you're too young to have seen the original, and missed the flawed prequels, you needn't feel left out - in almost every science-fiction scenario, spaceships are protected by a shield defense system that deflects enemy laser fire. 

One of the most powerful events in our universe – Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRB) – behave differently than previously thought, and this evidence from observation of a GRB rules out most of the existing hypothetical predictions concerning the afterglow of the explosions.

Parents are always worried about their special snowflakes - unless a phone call needs to be  made. Then, parents are no less likely to engage in cell phone and other distracting behavior than the general public, according to a new paper in Academic Pediatrics.

The use of lamps that emit UV radiation in nail salons has raised some concern about the risk of cancer, but previous studies have lacked a large enough sampling of lights from a variety of salons.

To create a more authoritative sample, the authors of a new study tested 17 light units from 16 salons with a wide range of bulbs, wattage and irradiance emitted by each device for their research letter.

Higher-wattage light sources were correlated with higher UV-A irradiance emitted.