By Stefania Papa Alpheid (pistol) shrimp form a fascinating relationship with certain gobies (fish of the genera Cryptocentrus or Vanderhorstia) in environments with abundant food but little protective cover. Several pistol or ‘snapping’ shrimp of the genus Alpheus associate with gobies, primarily in the Indo-Pacific in areas of sand and rubble in the relatively shallow water of…

By Francesco Geremia Walking through our landscape, we can see everywhere that the occurrence of a large variety of earth surface processes and the action of morphological and climate factors have strongly contributed to the development of different natural features or landforms. These are recognized in mountains and valley plains, active volcanoes and ancient volcanic deposits,…

By Jozef Klembara The interrelationships among individual elements of nature have attracted the attention of scientists for a very long time. From this point of view, the study of the periods of the Earth which had caused an extinction or at least created very difficult conditions for life is very important.  The fossil record shows that…

By Wieslaw M. Macek The origin of living matter is still a big mystery. According to the second law of thermodynamics, in any isolated system composed of many particles approaching equilibrium, total entropy always increases; consequently disorder must grow and natural processes on macroscopic scales are irreversible in time. For example, some time after lighting a…

By Stefania Papa The ants in the tribe Attini started cultivating fungi for food at least 50 million years before the first human farmers. Like human farmers, the ant farmers nourish, protect, and feed on the species they grow, forming a relationship that benefits both the farmer and the crop. The attines cannot survive without…

By Francesca Ceroni Just like computers need a program to perform a specific task, so do cells that need DNA to perform specific functions.  DNA is a molecule stored within all cells, from simpler bacteria to more complex mammalian cells that make up our body. DNA carries the instructions (genes) the cells need to produce…

By Alessio Valente High up in the mountains we can look beyond what the eye can physically see. In doing so, we’ll be surprised by clouds with gray edges in the sky, ready to discharge their content of raindrops that have become too large to be held there. The eyes then dart to the lands…

By Maria Florencia Decarlini In the fascinating world of chemistry, there are substances called catalysts, which have a mediating function: they combine with some substances to make a chemical reaction possible, but they are not altered permanently and can be recovered unaltered at the end of it. Their function is to decrease the energy necessary…

By Claire R. G. Our bodies, and more generally animals and plants, are constituted of millions and millions of cells, and the growth and maintenance of an organism are achieved through the division (and then the specialization) of these cells.  One of the strongest challenges of cell division is to maintain the integrity of the…

By Antonino Puglisi Chemistry is all around us! The Earth, the whole universe including our own bodies are fundamentally composed of just the 92 chemical elements in the periodic table. Our very experience of the natural world with its beautiful display of colors, smells and tastes is enabled and mediated by atoms and molecules. Often our…