See also stories tagged with Biomineralization
(Â鶹ÒùÔºOrg.com) -- It has a beautiful, but also an unpleasant side: crystallization determines the shape of precious stones, but also causes the lime scale in washing machines. How this comes about, has been known for a long ...
(Â鶹ÒùÔºOrg.com) -- As a graduate student, Harvard physical chemist Joanna Aizenberg acquired a passionate curiosity about — of all things — sponges. She particularly liked the ones made of glass, whose apparent fragility ...
(Â鶹ÒùÔºOrg.com) -- In addition to its iridescent beauty, mother of pearl, or nacre, the inner lining of the shells of abalone, mussels and certain other mollusks, is also renowned for an amazing strength and toughness that ...
From shells to bones, the skeletons of organisms contain small amounts of impurity elements such as magnesium. Because the levels of these elements provide important clues to past environments, a considerable effort has focused ...
(Â鶹ÒùÔºOrg.com) -- The teeth and bones of mammals, the protective shells of mollusks, and the needle-sharp spines of sea urchins and other marine creatures are made-from-scratch wonders of nature.
A new version of the computerized tomography (CT) scan, which revolutionized medical imaging during the last 25 years, is giving scientists precious new information about how Mother Nature forms shells, bones, and other hard ...
Scientists at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Germany) advise buyers of cultured pearls to be more vigilant. "In Germany too, we are increasingly seeing Chinese sweet-water cultured pearls being marketed as Japanese, ...
Most people who find a seashell during their summer holiday on the coast will probably not be aware that they have found a unique record of the climate. For Professor Bernd Schöne, however, these hard calcium shells provide ...
Scientists at the California Institute of Technology have produced the first complete description of the complex network of genes that create a particular type of cell in an organism.
The ubiquity of mineral nanoparticles in natural waters, the atmosphere, and in soils and their intriguing properties provide Earth scientists with another dimension in which to understand our planet.
