Brent Opell, a professor of biological sciences in the College of Science and a Fralin Life Science Institute affiliate, collects a portion of a spider web. A taut tug on the line signals the arrival of dinner, and the leggy spider dashes across the web to find a tasty squirming insect. The spider, known as an orb weaver, must perfectly execute this moment, from a lightning-fast reaction to an artfully spun web glistening with sticky glue.

The Brazilian lancehead is one of several South American pit vipers that produce venom that has proven to be a powerful blood coagulant. A nanofiber hydrogel infused with snake venom may be the best material to stop bleeding quickly, according to Rice University scientists.

Motor proteins that pause at the ends of microtubules and produce pushing forces can also stimulate their growth, according to researchers at Penn State. The proteins' function could be a critical component in understanding cell division and nerve branching and growth.

This is a right whale calf washed up at Peninsula Valdes, Argentina. New research indicates a likely connection between the deaths of hundreds such calves starting in the mid-2000s and... The baby whales suddenly began dying in 2005. And continued for several years running.

In a novel use of the CRISPR/Cas9 system, which can be deployed to switch genes off, researchers from Germany, the UK and Spain have developed a multiplexed screening approach to study and model cancer development in mice. The scientists mutated genes in the adult mouse liver uncovering their cancer-causing roles and determining which combinations of genes cooperate to cause liver cancer.