At Discover This Month: 20 Things You Didn't Know about Hair

1. Here’s the bald truth: Fur and hair are essentially the same thing, constructed of identical protein building blocks called keratin. 

2. All mammals have hair at some point in their lives, be it the fuzz on a newborn whale, a shield of hard porcupine quills or your long locks. 

3. Insects can wear it, too. The microscopic belly hairs on the male freshwater Micronecta may help amplify its mating call. Some scientists think that when the bug rubs its penis against the tip of its abdomen, the hairs trap air and sound, making it the world’s loudest animal relative to its size. 

Read all 20 at Discover.

Must Extinction Always Be Forever?

Not if certain biologists have their way.

Synthetic biologists use chemically synthesized DNA to create organisms. It's potentially a transformative technology. In theory, with synthetic biology scientists may one day "raise from the dead" species that have long been extinct. But more proximately, synthetic biology holds the potential to address human needs like toxic waste clean-up and enhanced fuel production. 

At the same time, the prospect of new species for which native species and natural ecosystems are unprepared raises pressing ethical and safety questions. 

In "Synthetic Biology and Conservation of Nature: Wicked Problems and Wicked Solution," a new paper in PLOS Biology, a group of scientists argue that synthetic biology is useful enough to warrant an urgent dialogue about what we mean by "natural," how governments and scientists can weigh private and public benefits with private and public risks, and how the world can best anticipate what will happen when newly created synthetic life forms ... evolve.

If the current controversy about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the food chain is any indicator, it promises to be a conversation fraught with suspicion.

Lead author Kent Redford of the Wildlife Conservation Society, the science-based conservation organization that manages the Bronx Zoo, the New York Aquarium, the Central Park Zoo, the Prospect Park Zoo, and the Queens Zoo, acknowledges that "synthetic biology and conservation communities are largely strangers to one another, even though they both share many of the same concerns and goals. An open discussion between the two communities is needed to help identify areas of collaboration on a topic that will likely change the relationship of humans with the natural world.”

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Redford KH, Adams W, Mace GM (2013) Synthetic Biology and Conservation of Nature: Wicked Problems and Wicked Solutions. PLoS Biol 11(4): e1001530. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001530