|
| COMMON AQUATIC ANIMALS SHOW EXTREME RESISTANCE TO RADIATION. FINDING COULD STIMULATE NEW STUDY OF FREE RADICALS’ ROLE IN INFLAMMATION, CANCER, AGING. |
| Scientists at Harvard University have found that a common class of freshwater invertebrate animals called bdelloid rotifers are extraordinarily resistant to ionizing radiation, surviving and continuing to reproduce after doses of gamma radiation much greater than that tolerated by any other animal species studied to date. |
|
| A HELPING HAND FROM THE ‘GRANDPARENTS’ |
| A team of scientists led by the University of East Anglia has discovered the existence of ‘grandparent’ helpers in the Seychelles warbler – the first time this behaviour, which rarely occurs except in humans, has been observed in birds. |
|
| WHY DIVING MARINE MAMMALS RESIST BRAIN DAMAGE FROM LOW OXYGEN |
| No human can survive longer than a few minutes underwater, and even a well-trained Olympic swimmer needs frequent gulps of air. Our brains need a constant supply of oxygen, particularly during exercise. Contrast that with Weddell seals, animals that dive and hunt under the Antarctic sea ice. They hold their breath for as long as 90 minutes, and remain active and mentally alert the whole time. The seals aren't fazed at all by low levels of oxygen that would cause humans to black out. What's their secret? |
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| CAT FLEAS' JOURNEY INTO THE VACUUM IS A 'ONE-WAY TRIP' |
| Homeowners dogged by household fleas need look no farther than the broom closet to solve their problem. Scientists have determined that vacuuming kills fleas in all stages of their lives, with an average of 96 percent success in adult fleas and 100 percent destruction of younger fleas. |
|
| GM CAN HURT THE BIRDS AND BEES: STUDY |
| The world's biggest study on genetically-modified (GM) crops has found they can have a harmful effect on insects, birds and other plants, fuelling debate over whether farmers should be allowed to cultivate such crops. |
|
| THAT MONKEY CAN READ YOUR MIND |
| Monkeys can deduce what other monkeys and humans think, want and see based on visual cues, according to a new paper.
The study, in this week's issue of the journal Current Biology, is the first to show that monkeys, like humans, not only react to visual information, they can also use it to reason about the behaviour of others. |
|
| LIVE FAST, DIE OLD |
| Mice with sky-high metabolic rates live far longer than their sluggish cousins, UK researchers have found, raising the prospect that human lifespan might be lengthened with metabolism-boosting drugs. |
|
| SCIENTISTS DISCOVER SECRET OF DOLPHIN SPEED |
| Physicists in Japan have discovered how the surface of a dolphin's skin reduces drag and helps them glide smoothly and quickly through water. These findings could help scientists design faster, energy-efficient boats, ocean liners, and submarines. This research is published in the Institute of Physics journal, Journal of Turbulence. |
|
| AN ARMY IN ITS PRIME |
| If you live in the eastern United States, you may already have heard the buzz: a troop of cicadas known as Brood X is back for another breeding season after almost two decades out of sight. |
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| 'JUNK' DNA NOT JUNK BUT KEY TO COMPLEXITY |
| Humans, rats and mice have a set of ancient DNA sequences, separate to conventional protein-coding genes, which researchers say could be the secret of human complexity. |
|
| VIRILE CRICKET IS WORLD'S TOP SEX MACHINE |
| A type of Australian cricket has broken the world record for the most frequent sex, a new study shows. |
|
| BUGS GO SPELUNKING |
| Some of the world's largest and most spectacular caves were created by the tiniest builders imaginable, according to a team of US geologists. |
|
| HUMMINGBIRD FOSSIL SETS EXPERTS BUZZING |
| Fossils of the world's oldest known modern hummingbird have been unearthed in Germany, the first discovery of ancient skeletons of the tiny nectar-sucking bird outside the American continent, scientists said. |
|
| BIRDS CATCH FLIES WITH BENDY BEAKS |
| Hummingbirds have bendy lower beaks to help them catch insects, research reveals. The flexibility allows long-beaked birds to open their mouths wide enough to hunt on the wing. |
|
| WOMEN LOOK BEST ONCE A MONTH |
| Women who make the room light up with their good looks may have a secret up their sleeve - it may be down to their menstrual cycle. Both men and women consider a woman's face to be at its most attractive when she is at the peak of her fertility, according to new research. |
|
| EVOLVED DNA STITCHES ITSELF UP |
| Researchers have managed to create bits of DNA that can stitch themselves together without a helping hand from other molecules. By contrast, natural DNA needs enzymes to stitch itself up, correct mutations, or make copies of itself. |
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| A BIRD ‘LANGUAGE’ GENE PINPOINTED |
| The researchers, who published their findings in the March 31, 2004, issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, said that their finding will aid research on how genes contribute to the architecture and function of brain circuitry for singing in birds. |
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| ANTS, LIKE HUMANS, AVOID TRAFFIC JAMS |
| Ants, just like motorists, hate congestion and use alternative routes to avoid it, European scientists have found. |
|
| STANFORD STUDY QUESTIONS IDENTITY OF ALLEGED ROMANOV BONES |
| One of the most riveting detective stories of the last century supposedly ended in 1998, when the Russian government declared that bones excavated from a Siberian mass grave seven years earlier indeed belonged to the Romanovs, Russia's last royal family, who were executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918. |
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| CORAL USES SLIMY MUCUS TO DONATE FOOD |
| Coral has snot-like mucus that transports food to its neighbours, researchers have found.
The mucus transports any spare food, synthesised when the coral's photosynthetic algae use energy from sunlight, for nearby fish and other organisms to eat. |
|
| PLANT PATHOLOGISTS: RUST DISEASE IMPACTING ORNAMENTAL PLANT PRODUCTION |
| An increase in the spread of rust diseases could have devastating results on the fast-growing ornamental crop industry, say pathologists with The American Phytopathological Society (APS). |
|
| MOLECULAR MECHANISMS THAT TRIGGER FLOWERING IN SPRING |
| Max Planck scientists have discovered how plants initiate the formation of flowers depending on the length of day and time of year. |
|
| NEW 'BUMPY' JELLY FOUND IN DEEP SEA |
| Wart-like bumps of stinging cells cover the feeding arms and bell of a newly described deep-sea jelly, published by MBARI biologists in this month's issue of the Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom. This softball-sized, translucent jelly moves through the water like a shooting star, trailing four fleshy oral arms--but no tentacles--behind it. This and other unique features resulted in the jelly's categorization as a new genus and species. |
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| ARMIES OF FIGHTING FUNGI PROTECT CHOCOLATE TREES |
| Biologists have discovered a new and intricate ecological relationship between cacao trees and the ubiquitous fungi that inhabit them, in which the trees are protected by armies of "good" fungi against their "evil" counterparts. |
|
| SMELLS TRIGGER MEMORY FOR HUNGRY BEES |
| Smells remind bees of where they once had a great meal, according to Australian research. |
|
| DESERT DUST ENABLES ALGAE TO GROW |
| Biologists from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research have demonstrated that desert dust promotes the growth of algae. Scientists had already assumed that the iron in desert dust stimulated algal growth, but this has now been demonstrated for the first time. The researchers have published their findings in the December issue of the Journal of Phycology. |
|
| NON-LETHAL METHODS CAN RESOLVE CONFLICTS BETWEEN BEARS AND HUMANS |
| How do you keep a black bear from taking out the backyard bird feeder or going through your garbage? Play the sound of a helicopter, or flash a strobe light, say scientists from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and other organizations, who tested several non-lethal techniques to minimize conflicts between humans and large carnivores. |
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| SPERM RELY ON CELL-DEATH TRIGGER |
| Molecules that tell cells to suicide also play a key role in the creation of sperm according to U.S. research on fruit flies. |
|
| IT’S OFFICIAL: DOGS DO HAVE PERSONALITIES |
| Confirming dog owner suspicions, a new U.S. study reveals that dogs have personalities, and that these character traits can be identified as accurately as similar personality attributes in humans. |
|
| BUSY BEES: COMPUTER VISION SYSTEM AUTOMATES ANALYSIS OF BEE ACTIVITY FOR INSIGHT INTO BIOLOGICALLY INSPIRED ROBOT DESIGN |
| A new computer vision system for automated analysis of animal movement -- honey bee activities, in particular -- is expected to accelerate animal behavior research, which also has implications for biologically inspired design of robots and computers. |
|
| ANEMONE SPERM CAUGHT ON FILM |
| Anemone that host tropical fish have been photographed spawning for the first time in the world by an Australian researcher. |
|
| COOKED UP FOSSILS REHEAT FIRST-LIFE DEBATE |
| Researchers have been cooking up inorganic, worm-like structures that look like some of the earliest fossils believed to exist. |
|
| MANTIS SHRIMP FLUORESCE TO ENHANCE SIGNALING IN THE DIM OCEAN DEPTHS |
| The tropical mantis shrimp has the most sophisticated eyes of any creature on the planet, yet it often lives at murky depths where the only light is a filtered, dim blue. Why does it need such complex vision? |
|
| SLEAZY FLORAL NIGHTCLUB LURES BEETLES |
| When South American scarab beetles want a hot date they head for a bizarre flower that offers a steamy nightclub atmosphere, according to a new study. |
|
| DEAD AS A DODO? NOT NECESSARILY |
| Just because an animal hasn't been seen for a long time, doesn't mean it's extinct, according to statistical research that sheds new light on the plight of the dodo. |
|
| CALORIC SWEETENER USE GROWS WORLDWIDE; SOFT DRINKS ARE CHIEF CULPRIT, STUDY SHOWS. |
| Use of caloric sweeteners, including sugar, has grown markedly around the world over the past 40 years, according to a new University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study. |
|
| RED SEA URCHINS DISCOVERED TO BE ONE OF EARTH'S OLDEST ANIMALS |
| A new study has concluded that the red sea urchin, a small spiny invertebrate that lives in shallow coastal waters, is among the longest living animals on Earth - they can live to be 100 years old, and some may reach 200 years or more in good health with few signs of age. |
|
| NIGHT-FARTING FISH PUZZLE RESEARCHERS |
| Herring fish have a secret nocturnal habit of squeezing gas bubbles out of their anal pores, producing distinctive noises like someone blowing raspberries, a quirky new study by Canadian and U.K. researchers has revealed. |
|
| HUNT FOR SPINA BIFIDA GENE PICKS UP SPEED |
| A gene in mice has been linked to the congenital birth defect spina bifida and the hunt is now on to see if the equivalent human gene is altered in sufferers, say Australian researchers. |
|
| PLANTS MOVE TO THE BEAT OF THE RISING SUN |
| Leaves move and flowers open in a rhythmic dance that changes according to a plant's latitude, say U.S. researchers. |
|
| THE VOLE TRUTH ABOUT LEMMING DEATHS |
| One of the oddest phenomena in the natural world - the sudden mass death of lemmings - has been resolved, according to a trio of European biologists. |
|
| TURTLES TOUGH OUT SHARK ATTACKS |
| Pregnant sea turtles are capable of suppressing the agony of a severe shark attack just so they can make it to shore and lay their eggs, U.S. and Australian researchers suggests. |
|
| US DEVELOPS LETHAL NEW VIRUSES |
| A scientist funded by the US government has deliberately created an extremely deadly form of mousepox, a relative of the smallpox virus, through genetic engineering. The new virus kills all mice even if they have been given antiviral drugs as well as a vaccine that would normally protect them. |
|
| MAGIC NUMBER TELLS WHEN TO CHANGE SEX |
| From tiny shrimps to massive fish, many species change sex once they reach a certain size, and British researchers have now discovered an amazing universal rule: that they all tend to do this at the same relative size. |
|
| BIG BIRDS' RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE |
| Cassowaries living in the dense jungles of Papua New Guinea emit ultra-low booming sounds - deeper than almost all other bird species - so low it can hardly be heard by humans, new research has found. |
|
| CANCER DIAGNOSED IN 70 MILLION-YEAR-OLD |
| The first discovery of a brain tumour in a dinosaur has revealed that they are indistinguishable from human tumours, suggesting the global disease has barely changed over 70 million years. |
|
| WALRUSES PREFER THE RIGHT TO THE LEFT |
| Walruses have joined the fast-growing list of animals that, like humans, show a distinct preference for using one hand or limb - in this case, walruses are right-flippered - a new study suggests. |
|
| NASA SPIES ON PENGUIN HOTSPOTS |
| Satellite studies have revealed that scattered patches of ice-free sea off the Antarctic coast generate much of the food source on which penguins ultimately rely for survival. |
|
| ANCIENT MUTANT POLLEN OUT FOR THE COUNT |
| Conifer tree pollen from 250 million years ago show the same mutations as those of modern pines hit by fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, a new study has found. |
|
| STARTLING DEEP-SEA ENCOUNTER WITH RARE, MASSIVE GREENLAND SHARK. |
| During a recent submersible dive 3,000 feet down in the Gulf of Maine a HARBOR BRANCH scientist and sub pilot had the first face-to-face meeting ever in the deep sea with a rare Greenland shark. The docile 15-foot creature gently rammed into the submersible's clear front sphere before turning and swimming slowly away. |
|
| BRIGHT AUTUMN COLOURATION IN TREES - A WARNING SIGNAL TO INSECTS? |
| Most deciduous trees change colour in autumn. However, both within and between species, there is considerable variation both in the timing and magnitude of autumn colour change. Hamilton and Brown recently proposed a hypothesis to explain this phenomenon. |
|
| WASP AND VIRUS ALLIANCE BEAT MOTH |
| A parasitic wasp that injects its eggs into the leek moth - a serious agricultural pest - also adds a lethal virus that stops the moth’s immune system from harming the eggs, according to a new study. |
|
| BENDS MAY BE CULPRIT IN WHALE STRANDINGS |
| Gas filled bubbles discovered in the damaged tissues of stranded whales provide new evidence that military sonar can give whales the bends.
An international team of scientists led by Dr P. D. Jepson of the Zoological Society of London report their findings in today’s issue of the journal Nature. |
|
| PURDUE BIOLOGISTS' SPOTLIGHT SOLVES MYSTERIES OF PHOTOSYNTHESIS, METABOLISM. |
| A complete molecular-scale picture of how plants convert sunlight to chemical energy has been obtained at Purdue University, offering potential new insights into animal metabolism as well. |
|
| MENTAL ABILITY LINKED TO SURVIVAL AGE |
| A person's mental ability as a child could well be an indicator of their chances of surviving to a ripe old age, according to a landmark study which has followed up on surveys carried out in the first half of the last century. |
|
| WHALING MAY HAVE DECIMATED SEALS, SEA LIONS |
| Crashes in seal, sea lion and sea otter populations in some parts of the world may have occurred because intense commercial whaling forced killer whales to turn to new prey for food, a new U.S. study suggests. |
|
| GIANT MAMMALS CAUSE PREHISTORY RETHINK |
| Two of the world's lost prehistoric giants, a rhino-sized Australian marsupial and a buffalo-sized South American rodent, were the largest known mammals of their kind and much larger than previously thought, according to two new studies. |
|
| MONKEYS DEMAND FAIR PLAY |
| Humans are not the only species to have a sense of fairness, according to a new U.S. study.
Capuchin monkeys also demand their equal share of food or rewards for tasks they've done, won't settle for an injustice and are miffed when they think they have been cheated. |
|
| OCEAN PLANT LIFE SLOWS DOWN AND ABSORBS LESS CARBON |
| Plant life in the world's oceans has become less productive since the early 1980s, absorbing less carbon, which may in turn impact the Earth's carbon cycle, according to a study that combines NASA satellite data with NOAA surface observations of marine plants. |
|
| SARS ORIGIN A MYSTERY, RE-BIRTH FEARED |
| Despite the discovery of animals in a Chinese live-meat market infected with a virus similar to the one that caused the global SARS outbeak, the source of the disease remains a mystery. |
|
| JEFFERSON AND BRIGHAM AND WOMEN’S RESEARCHERS FIND BLUE LIGHT IMPORTANT FOR SETTING BIOLOGICAL CLOCK |
| Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston and Jefferson Medical College have found that the body’s natural biological clock is more sensitive to shorter wavelength blue light than it is to the longer wavelength green light, which is needed to see. |
|
| JOKES NOT AS FUNNY AS YOU GET OLDER |
| Don't worry, you won't lose your sense of humour as you get older, but you might find it harder to “get” some jokes, new Canadian research has shown. |
|
| FISHING FOR PHOTOS OF RARE OR UNKNOWN DEEP-SEA CREATURES WITH AN ELECTRONIC JELLYFISH LURE |
| Using a new lighted jellyfish lure and a unique camera system, researchers from HARBOR BRANCH are working to reveal for the first time life in the deep sea unaltered by the cacophony of sound and light that have been an integral part of most past research there. From Sept 2-5 a team will be using the lure for the first time in the dark depths of California's Monterey Bay. |
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| NURSERIES IN THE DEEP SEA |
| MOSS LANDING, California--Exploring a deep-sea ridge off Northern California, scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) have discovered a unique undersea nursery, where groups of fish and octopus brood their eggs, like chickens on their nests. This is the first time that marine biologists have directly observed any deep-sea fish brooding its eggs. It is also the first time that two different types of mobile deep-sea animals have been observed brooding together in the same area. Although the scientists do not know exactly why the animals prefer this one area, they believe that the nursery represents a new type of biological "hot spot" (an area of intense biological activity). |
|
| WHITE SHARK ATTACK SHOWS THEY'RE NOT MAN-EATERS |
| Shark expert Peter Klimley, a UC Davis researcher, says the recent attack on a swimmer off Avila Pier in Central California supports his belief that adult great white sharks are selective hunters that would rather eat fat seals than bony human beings. |
|
| ERASING BAD MEMORIES? |
| The day when long-term traumatic memories can be selectively wiped out is one step closer, claim Israeli scientists. |
|
| WSU ECOLOGIST SAYS DEFENSE BY PLANTS TO DISEASE MAY LEAVE THEM VULNERABLE TO INSECT ATTACK |
| Some of the defenses plants use to fight off disease leave them more susceptible to attack by insects, according to a Don Cipollini, Ph.D., a chemical ecologist at Wright State University. |
|
| SPIDER CLEARED OF CAUSING FLESH-EATING ULCER |
| The white-tail spider, whose bite has been blamed for cases of flesh-eating ulcers for decades, has been declared innocent following methodical Australian research. |
|
| GENES CAN EXPLAIN CONVERGENT EVOLUTION |
| Convergent evolution - the explanation for different species evolving common solutions to the same problems, even though they have distinctly different ancestors - has been found to result from just a handful of genes. |
|
| WEEDKILLER MAY ENCOURAGE BLIGHT |
| A WIDELY used herbicide encourages the growth of toxic fungi that devastate wheat fields, laboratory studies by scientists working for the Canadian government suggest. |
|
| CONTROLLING BODY SIZE BY REGULATING THE NUMBER OF CELLS |
| Why are elephants bigger than mice? The main reason is that mice have fewer cells. Research published in Journal of Biology this week uncovers a key pathway that controls the number of cells in an animal, thereby controlling its size. |
|
| HUMAN EYES CAN BE IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE |
| Students who suspect teachers have eyes in the back of their heads may be right - in a way: researchers have proven for the first time that human eyes can focus on more than one point simultaneously. |
|
| SOME VIRUSES FASTER THAN A SPEEDING BULLET |
| Some viruses use violent force to explosively inject their genes into prey, exerting pent-up pressure greater than that of a powerful airgun, an American-French study has found. |
|
| MORE RACCOONS MAY MEAN FEWER SONGBIRDS |
| Songbirds are in trouble throughout the eastern U.S. and new research suggests that raccoons are a major part of the problem. Raccoons love eggs, and the study shows that populations of birds with accessible nests have been dropping since raccoon populations began rising in the early 1980s in Illinois. |
|
| GRANDPARENTS A BOON TO PRIMATES AND WHALES |
| Humans, whales and dolphins have evolved to live well beyond child-bearing age because this helps raise the survival chances of their descendants, argues a new theory of ageing in social animals. |
|
| BEETLES WALK BACKWARDS BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOON |
| Dung beetles use polarised moonlight - light which has different properties in different directions - to walk backwards in a straight line. |
|
| SEX: DO WE REALLY NEED IT? |
| Birds do it, bees do it, humans do it - but nobody knows why sex evolved at all, the world congress of genetics heard in Melbourne today. |
|
| BACTERIA START UNDERGROUND FIRES IN MALI |
| Patches of mysterious shoe-melting, foot-roasting hot ground in parts of West Africa may have been caused by bacteria, not volcanic activity as has been thought for decades. |
|
| LEAF FALL IN ANCIENT POLAR FORESTS STILL A MYSTERY |
| Explorers in the 1800s discovered through fossils that deciduous forests once covered the poles, but researchers still do not know why leaf-dropping trees were preferred over evergreens. |
|
| CANNIBAL BACTERIA EAT THEIR BROTHERS AND SISTERS |
| Some bacteria ensure their survival during famine by killing their siblings and eating them in order to avoid hibernating, an American-Spanish team has found. |
|
| BIZARRE PARASITE BUG JOINS WAR BETWEEN THE SEXES |
| A new player has emerged in the war of the sexes: a bizarre 'ultra-selfish' bacterial parasite that hijacks animal reproduction to promote their own existence by favouring female hosts over males, according to a British report. |
|
| ALIEN EARTHWORMS CHANGING ECOLOGY OF NORTHEAST FORESTS. URI RESEARCHERS EVALUATING IMPACT ON ENVIRONMENT. |
| Some forests throughout the Northeast are rapidly changing, but most observers won't notice it unless they take a close look at the soil beneath their feet. That's because the driving force behind the changing forests are earthworms, which play a key role in recycling nutrients in the soil but which may also be altering habitat for plants, salamanders, birds and other wildlife. |
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| PURDUE GENETIC DISCOVERY MAY AID PLANTS AND HUMAN MEDICINE |
| Many aspects of plant growth and development are dependent on the basipetally-biased flow of the hormone auxin, as evidenced by the effects of mutations and pharmacological agents that impair it. Rectification of auxin transport in stems is believed to result from the basal localization within cells of the PIN1 membrane protein, which conducts efflux of the auxin anion. Recently, mutations in two multidrug resistance-like genes were shown to block polar auxin transport in the hypocotyls of Arabidopsis seedlings, indicating that MDR-type (p-glycoprotein) ABC transporters function in the PIN1-dependent polar auxin transport process. Here we show that the mdr mutants display faster and greater gravitropism and enhanced phototropism instead of the impaired curvature development expected in mutants lacking polar auxin transport. The impaired auxin transport and tropism phenotypes are explained by the finding that the mdr mutations disrupt the special accumulation of PIN1 protein along the basal end of hypocotyl cells. Consequently, lateral auxin conductance becomes a larger proportion of the whole; loss of basipetal bias in auxin flow and greater growth differentials across the hypocotyl result. |
|
| MALE Y CHROMOSOME HERE TO STAY |
| The human male sex chromosome does have the ability to repair itself and may not be headed for extinction as had previously been thought, according to a surprising new study. |
|
| COLOUR VISION MEANS PHEROMONES UNNECESSARY |
| Forget about using those expensive sprays to try and attract the opposite sex – humans don't have the ability to detect pheromones, and American research concludes it is due to our colour vision. |
|
| UCSD RESEARCHERS ESTIMATE APPROXIMATELY 400 FRAGILE REGIONS IN THE HUMAN GENOME THAT ARE VULNERABLE TO EVOLUTIONARY 'EARTHQUAKES' |
| Researchers from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Jacobs School of Engineering have uncovered evidence that major evolutionary changes are more likely to occur in approximately 400 ‘fragile’ genomic regions that account for only 5 percent of the human genome. The findings, reported in the June 24 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), undercut the widely held view among scientists that evolutionary breakpoints – disruptions in the order of genes on chromosomes – are purely random. Apart from its implications for evolutionary theory, the study could have major implications for medical research related to diseases such as leukemia, which are caused by clinical (rather than evolutionary) chromosomal breakpoints. |
|
| CADMIUM STUDIES SUGGEST NEW PATHWAY TO HUMAN CANCER |
| Researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences today reported that cadmium – a naturally occurring metal which shows up in food, water and cigarette smoke – disturbs a DNA repair system that is important in preventing cancer. |
|
| MEMORY OF GOOD OLD DAYS RIPENS WITH AGE |
| As people age, their brains selectively filter out bad memories - which helps explain why older people can have a more positive attitude towards life, argue U.S. researchers. |
|
| DRAGONFLIES CAN STAY CAMOUFLAGED DURING FLIGHT |
| Male dragonflies have mastered the art of camouflaging themselves even as they are moving, Australian researchers have discovered. |
|
| MULE CLONING SHEDS LIGHT ON CANCER, AGEING. |
| The first successful cloning of a mule has unexpectedly shed light on human cancers and other age-related diseases, as well as making possible the cloning of champion horses. |
|
| TREES AND FLOWERS MORE AKIN THAN DISSIMILAR, RESEARCH SHOWS. |
| Harvesting wood from weeds? Coaxing lumber from lobelias? Those possibilities aren’t as far-fetched as you might think. |
|
| IS A PICTURE WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS? NOT FOR YOUNG CHILDREN |
| For an adult, a picture might be worth a thousand words, but to an infant or young child, it that may not always be the case.
A new study found that young children preferred and paid more attention to sounds than to visual images when they were presented simultaneously. |
|
| GENE MAY PRODUCE DROUGHT-RESISTANT PLANTS |
| The identification and duplication of a gene that controls production of plants' outermost protective coating may allow Purdue University researchers to create crops with increased drought resistance. |
|
| VIRUS RESEARCHERS CLOSE IN ON THE SECRET LIFE OF DNA |
| Z-DNA, a long-known but still mysterious alternate configuration of DNA, is involved in cellular defenses against viral attack according to the results of a series of experiments linking Z-DNA binding proteins with lethality in pox viruses. |
|
| SARS: LESSONS FROM THE ANIMAL KINGDOM |
| The SARS virus probably originated in animals and may have lost the ability to infect its original host - increasing the possibility it can be eliminated in humans, says a U.S. virus expert. But an animal origin also has implications for the spread of the disease. |
|
| MYSTERY VIRUS PUSHING INDIAN VULTURES TO EXTINCTION |
| Vultures were almost as common as sparrows in India. But the arrival of a mystery virus a decade ago has wiped out 95% of the species, and some scientists believe the gawky birds are on the brink of extinction. |
|
| TREE ANTS FUNDAMENTAL TO RAINFOREST LIFE |
| The total biomass of ants in tropical rainforests exceeds that of mammals, and it now seems herbivorous ants may play a huge role in the carbon economy of rainforests. |
|
| TINY PROTEIN PREVENTS DISEASE-RELATED CELL DEATH |
| Researchers at The Burnham Institute have found that humanin, a small, 24-amino acid protein recently discovered in studies of Alzheimer’s Disease, suppresses activation of the protein Bax. Bax triggers pathologic cell death in a number of diseases, including Parkinson’s, stroke, heart attack and degeneration of ovaries during menopause. These results, to be published later this month in the journal Nature (currently available at the journal’s website), suggest a novel target for therapeutic design based on inhibiting the cell destructive activity of Bax. |
|
| NEW HAIR IN 15 DAYS |
| Scientists at the University of Michigan Medical School have discovered that the transient activation of a protein called ?-catenin can induce new hair growth. |
|
| INSTRUCTION AND PERMISSION IN EYE/BRAIN DEVELOPMENT |
| Researchers at UC Davis are challenging the conventional view of how connections form between the optic nerves and the brain. |
|
| SCIENTISTS OBSERVE NANOSIZE MICROTUBULES 'TREADMILLING' ACROSS PLANT CELLS |
| A study in the journal Science is offering new insights into a long-standing mystery about plant growth. The scientists who conducted the experiment say their results could open new avenues of research for developing more effective herbicides and pharmaceuticals. |
|
| ANCIENT DUNG REVEALS A PICTURE OF THE PAST |
| The successful dating of the most ancient genetic material yet may allow scientists to use preserved DNA from sources such as mammoth dung to help paint a picture of past environments. |
|
| OPPOSITE-SEX TWINS MORE SOCIAL: STUDY |
| A survey carried out among 4,000 Finnish twins and their 22,000 classmates has revealed that opposite-sex twins are more socially adept and emotionally developed than other children, a Finnish researcher said. |
|
| CAMERA HELPS TRACK WHALE SHARK'S HABITS |
| A camera is to be fitted to a whale shark off the Western Australian coast to track the species' breeding ground. Scientists say the sharks are under threat because they are a delicacy in other parts of the world. |
|
| CLONING HUMANS, PRIMATES MAY BE IMPOSSIBLE |
| The cloning of humans and other primates may not be possible with current techniques, U.S. scientists have found, after lab tests with cloned monkey cells showed inherent chaos during basic cell division. |
|
| LIZARDS TOO CLEVER TO BE COLD BLOODED |
| Far from simply baking on a rock, lizards have a highly sophisticated method of keeping themselves warm, Australian scientists have established. |
|
| BI-SEX BIRD BRAIN QUESTIONS ORIGIN OF GENDER |
| Sex differences in the brain may be genetic and not just hormonal, according to U.S. researchers who gained the insight after studying a rare hermaphrodite finch. |
|
| AMOROUS WORMS REVEAL EFFECTS OF CHERNOBYL |
| WORMS contaminated by radioactivity from the Chernobyl nuclear accident have started having sex with each other instead of on their own. According to Ukrainian scientists, they may have changed their sexual behaviour to increase their chances of survival. It's one of the first pieces of direct evidence on how wildlife is affected by radioactive pollution. |
|
| HUMAN REPRODUCTIVE RATES FOLLOW BIOLOGICAL SCALING RULES |
| In nations with high per capita energy consumption, women have fewer children. This phenomenon is an unexpected consequence of the biological scaling relationship between metabolism and reproductive rate: larger species of mammals have higher metabolism but lower birth rates. In the April 2003 issue of Ecology Letters, Moses and Brown show that these same biological scaling rules describe the demographic transition to lower birth rates in human populations. Birth rates decline predictably with increased energy consumption, even though most of that energy comes from fossil fuels, not food. |
|
| HUMUNGOUS FUNGUS: WORLD'S LARGEST ORGANISM? |
| The discovery of the world's largest fungus - up to 8,500 years old and carperting nearly 10 square kilometres of forest floor - has raised questions about what constitutes an individual organism. |
|
| CATERPILLARS FLING FAECES AFAR TO FOOL FOES |
| Caterpillars shoot their faeces more than a metre from their homes to protect themselves from predators, an American ecologist has discovered. |
|
| ALARM AS KILLER VIRUS SPREADS, RESIDENTS FLEE. |
| Medical teams descended on a Hong Kong apartment block on Tuesday to find out why a virus thought to cause atypical pneumonia has spread like wildfire, as fears grow it has mutated into an airborne infection. |
|
| SCIENTISTS FIND EVIDENCE FOR CRUCIAL ROOT IN THE HISTORY OF PLANT EVOLUTION |
| If ancient plants had not migrated from the shallow seas of early Earth to the barren land of the continents, life as we know it might never have emerged. And now it appears this massive floral colonization may have been spurred by a single genetic mutation that allowed primitive plants to make lignin, a chemical process that leads to the formation of a cell wall. |
|
| CLIMATE CHANGE LINKED TO MIGRATORY BIRD DECREASE |
| Biologists believe that climate change is affecting living things worldwide, and the latest evidence suggests that warmer winters may mean fewer migratory birds. New research shows that as winter temperatures have risen in central Europe, the number of migratory birds has dropped. Ultimately, this may also decrease the number of migratory bird species there. |
|
| KEY TO CONTROLLING HAIR GROWTH DISCOVERED |
| The process that controls hair formation has been identified by U.S. scientists, giving new hope to people with too little in the right place or too much in the wrong place. |
|
| PINE TREES MAY HELP CREATE SMOG, ACID RAIN |
| Rather than being a global warming solution, pine trees may be inducing smog and acid rain by releasing vast amounts of nitrogen oxide into the air, researchers have discovered. |
|
| INDISCRIMINATE NURSING IN COMMUNAL BREEDERS: A ROLE FOR GENOMIC IMPRINTING |
| In several communally nesting mammal species, females indiscriminately nurse each others' offspring. Previous hypotheses have suggested that the inability to recognize one's own young during lactation is the result of costs incurred by recognition errors. In an article to appear in the March issue of Ecology Letters, researchers from Cambridge University now propose an alternative hypothesis based on sexual conflict theory and genomic imprinting. |
|
| CRASH IN MALE SAIGA ANTELOPE NUMBERS DRIVES SPECIES CLOSER TO EXTINCTION |
| Scientists researching the population numbers of saiga antelope in Russia have found that in the case of the male, there may be a deadly truth in the old boast, 'So many women, so little time.' |
|
| CROWS BETTER TOOL-MAKERS THAN CHIMPANZEES |
| New Caledonia's unique crows are more sophisticated at making and using tools than man's closest relatives, the chimpanzees, New Zealand researchers have discovered. |
|
| METAL IONS MAY PLAY BIG ROLE IN HOW WE SENSE SMELLS |
| Of the five basic senses, the sense of smell is the least understood. Now, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have sniffed out potential clues to how olfactory receptors in the nose detect odors. Those clues may also explain why dietary zinc deficiencies lead to a loss of smell. |
|
| ENZYME CONTROLS 'GOOD CHOLESTEROL' |
| A recently discovered enzyme called endothelial lipase regulates the structure, metabolism and blood concentration of high density lipoprotein (HDL), the so-called "good cholesterol," said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine in a report in the online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. |
|
| PROGESTERONE REGULATES MALE BEHAVIOR TOWARD INFANTS |
| In an unexpected discovery, a team led by Northwestern University scientists has become the first to show that progesterone, a hormone usually associated with female reproduction and maternal behavior, plays a key role in regulating male aggression toward infants in mice. Testosterone, not progesterone, had been thought to be responsible. |
|
| SEX AND GENDER SCIENTISTS EXPLORE A REVOLUTION IN EVOLUTION |
| Sex and gender scientists explore a revolution in evolution. Darwin may have been wrong about sex. Or at least too narrow minded.
At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, leading researchers and theorists in the evolution of sexual behavior will gather to present the growing evidence that Darwin's idea of sexual selection requires sweeping revisions. |
|
| LARGER NUTS END UP FURTHER FROM TREE |
| Trees are better off if they produce large nuts. This is revealed in research by Patrick Jansen from Wageningen University. Scatterhoarding rodents appear to prefer burying larger nuts for later. The bigger the nut, the further it is buried from the tree and the more frequently it is forgotten. |
|
| MICE HAVE A SPECIAL NOSE FOR LOVE, RESEARCHERS FIND |
| Mice on the prowl for a mate use an essential but unexpected organ - a 'second nose' which figures out gender, status and even if romantic feelings are mutual, scientists have discovered. |
|
| ANCIENT DNA MAY BE MISLEADING SCIENTISTS |
| Ancient DNA in skeletons has a tendency to show damage in a particular region, resulting in misleading genetic data and mistaken conclusions about the origin of the skeleton, British scientists said. |
|
| RAT-BORNE DISEASES ON THE RISE, SCIENTISTS WARN |
| Infectious diseases carried by rats may be a human health time-bomb, researchers warned an international conference in Canberra. |
|
| GLOBAL WARMING TRIGGERS CHANGE IN SQUIRREL GENES |
| Animals have been observed changing their genetic make-up in response to global warming for the first time, according to Canadian researchers. |
|
| RESEARCHERS HELP TRACE ORIGIN OF MADAGASCAR’S MAMMALS. RESEARCH ANSWERS ONE OF NATURAL HISTORY'S MOST INTRACTABLE QUESTIONS. |
| All of Madagascar's living Carnivora (an order of mammals that includes dogs, cats, bears, hyenas and their relatives) descended from a single species that dispersed from Africa to Madagascar, apparently floating across the ocean barrier aboard wayward vegetation about 24 million to 18 million years ago. Previously, scientists believed that Madagascar's seven living species of native Carnivora represented two to four separate lineages, which would have implied that these animals colonized the island independently several times. |
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| PREHISTORIC TUSKS POINT TO EARLIEST FOSSIL EVIDENCE OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SEXES. FINDINGS POINT TO COMPLEX SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR. |
| The large tusks of an animal that roamed Earth before the dinosaurs may provide the earliest evidence yet of male-female distinctions in land animals that existed millions of years ago, say U of T scientists. |
|
| COMPUTER SCIENTIST LOCATES MORE THAN 1,000 NOVEL GENES IN MOUSE AND HUMAN. 'BEST LAID PLANS OF MICE AND MEN'. |
| Using both the mouse and human genomes, a computer scientist at Washington University in St. Louis and international collaborators have developed a method for predicting novel genes in both genomes. With the method the scientists have discovered 1,019 novel genes that are found in both man and mouse. The breakthrough is expected to speed up discovery of genes in both genomes as well as those of other mammals. Because it is efficient and cost-effective, laboratories are likely to use it and pursue genetic studies on a number of major fronts. |
|
| BREATHING WITHOUT LUNGS: HOW INSECTS DO IT |
| Insects don't have lungs, so how do they breathe? Using tiny air sacs no-one even knew existed, according to American scientists who have taken the first close-up views of the process. |
|
| ELECTRIC GEL GIVES SHARKS ABILITY TO SENSE HEAT |
| Sharks have a remarkable gel in their snouts that produces electricity in response to tiny temperature changes, giving them an added ability to spot prey, scientists have discovered. |
|
| LIONS DEVELOPING A TASTE FOR HUMANS |
| Eating humans is learned behaviour passed down through generations of lions, suggests surprising new American research. |
|
| RESEARCHERS DISCOVER ANXIETY AND AGGRESSION GENE IN MICE. OPENS NEW DOOR TO STUDY OF MOOD DISORDERS IN HUMANS |
| Researchers report finding a gene that is essential for normal levels of anxiety and aggression. Calling it the Pet-1 gene, researchers at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine Department of Neurosciences say that when this gene is removed or "knocked out" in a mouse, aggression and anxiety in adults are greatly elevated compared to a control (also called wild type) mouse. |
|
| DIGITAL X-RAY MICROTOMOGRAPHY YIELDS STUNNING VIEWS OF LIMB REGENERATION |
| Employing high-tech, digital X-ray microtomography (microCT), Northwestern University scientists have discovered the way in which newts form new bone and cartilage during limb regeneration. Newts are a type of salamander, the only vertebrates capable of rebuilding lost structures such as limbs throughout their lifetimes. |
|
| PALAEONTOLOGISTS IN A FLAP OVER FOUR-WINGED DINOSAURS |
| The discovery of fossils in China with feathers on both their front and hind limbs has given the 'gliding' theory of the origins of flight an enormous boost. |
|
| EXPANDING THE GENETIC CODE: THE WORLD’S FIRST TRULY UNNATURAL ORGANISM |
| From time immemorial, every living thing has shared the same basic set of building blocks -- 20 amino acids from which all proteins are made. That is, until now: A group of scientists say they have, for the first time, created an organism that can produce a 21st amino acid and incorporate it into proteins completely on its own. The research should help probe some of the central questions of evolutionary theory. |
|
| DINOSAURS EXPERIENCED CLIMATE CHANGES BEFORE K-T COLLISION |
| Climate change had little to do with the demise of the dinosaurs, but the last million years before their extinction had a complex pattern of warming and cooling events that are important to our understanding of the end of their reign, according to geologists. |
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| POLAR BEAR HEADED FOR EXTINCTION, SAYS UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA SCIENTIST |
| Unless the pace of global warming is abated, polar bears could disappear within 100 years, says a University of Alberta expert in Arctic ecosystems. |
|
| WHAT ARE 3-D SPIDER WEBS FOR? |
| The classic radial or "orb" spider web captures flying insects efficiently with a small amount of silk but such flat webs leave spiders exposed to their own predators. The derived "araneoid sheet web weavers" transformed the flat orb web into, usually, three-dimensional cobwebs and sheet webs. |
|
| PALM LEAVES ACT LIKE FLOWERS |
| Flowers of insect-pollinated plants attract visitors by visual and / or olfactory cues but sometimes, it appears, other organs may steal the scene. In an article published in the January 2003 issue of Ecology Letters, scientists from the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique have found that the European dwarf palm, which grows on the Mediterranean coasts, attracts its specialised pollinating weevil in a very surprising way. |
|
| RESEARCH FINDS LIFE 1000 FEET BENEATH OCEAN FLOOR |
| A new study has discovered an abundance of microbial life deep beneath the ocean floor in ancient basalt that forms part of the Earth's crust, in research that once more expands the realm of seemingly hostile or remote environments in which living organisms can apparently thrive. |
|
| NO SEX PLEASE: WE'RE BRITISH LADYBIRDS |
| A sexually transmitted disease has infested a scarce species of British ladybird - a disease the insect seems to have picked up from hanging around wood ants, scientists told a European conference. |
|
| SMELLY FLOWER PLAYS ROTTEN TRICK ON FLIES |
| A Mediterranean flower so accurately mimics the stench of rotting flesh that it lures flies to lay their eggs on it, thereby tricking them into acting as pollinators, Swedish scientists have discovered. |
|
| MICROORGANISM ISOLATED IN SPACE |
| How far up into the sky does the biosphere extend? Do microorganisms exist at heights of 40 km and in what quantity? To answer these questions several research institutes in India collaborated on a path-breaking project to send balloon-borne sterile "cryosamplers" into the stratosphere. The programme was led by cosmologist Professor Jayant Narlikar, Director of the Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, with scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Studies contributing their various expertise. |
|
| LIFE MAY HAVE EMERGED FROM ROCKS |
| A major new theory argues that life began in tiny cavities in rocks that acted like cells - challenging the established view that it began as self-replicating molecules floating in the chemical soup of the early Earth. |
|
| STUNG BY SUCCESS: INTENSIVE FARMING MAY SUPPRESS POLLINATING BEES |
| Intensive, industrial-scale farming may be damaging one of the very natural resources that successful crops require: pollinating bees. A study by Princeton scientists found that native bee populations decline dramatically as agricultural intensity goes up. |
|
| RESEARCHERS BEGIN TO UNLOCK GENETIC MYSTERIES OF DOWN SYNDROME |
| One of the most common genetic abnormalities is Down syndrome, which occurs when a person inherits three copies of chromosome 21 instead of the normal complement of two. Although the association has long been known, no one understands how the extra genetic material produces the syndrome, which is the most common genetic cause of mental retardation. |
|
| PHYTOPLANKTON IMPLICATED IN GLOBAL WARMING |
| The ubiquitous one-celled ocean organisms, phytoplankton, play a significant and previously unknown role in warming the planet by capturing and absorbing the Sun's radiation, American researchers have found. |
|
| HOW CRAYFISH DO THE LOCOMOTION |
| Using computer models and experiments, researchers at the University of California, Davis, have identified the neurons and connections that are necessary for crayfish to swim. |
|
| ONCE BIG BAD WOLF, NOW MAN'S BEST FRIEND: SCIENCE STUDIES TRACE DOGS' ORIGINS |
| Domesticated dogs first appeared in East Asia, spread across Asia and Europe, and then accompanied their two-legged companions into the New World 12,000-14,000 years ago. This scenario is suggested by two reports in the journal Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. |
|
| WHAT CAME FIRST? BIGGER BRAINS OR LOTS OF SEX? |
| LOW fertility and frequent pregnancy complications may be the price that we have paid for evolving a large brain.
For the fetus to get enough nutrients to grow a hefty brain the placenta has to aggressively invade a mother's uterus, says a new theory. But that can also provoke her immune system, causing dangerous complications. |
|
| DEPLETION OF BODY CHEMICAL CAN CAUSE MEMORY, MOOD CHANGES |
| The chemical in turkey that may cause people to nod off after Thanksgiving dinner also plays a role in maintaining good mood and memory, especially among people with a family history of depression, says new research published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. |
|
| SCIENTISTS DISCOVER ANCIENT PROTEIN AND DNA SEQUENCES IN THE SAME FOSSIL |
| For the first time in the world, researchers at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, along with collaborators at the University of Oxford, Harvard University, and Michigan State University have uncovered two genetically informative molecules from a single fossil bone. In addition to the recovery of mitochondrial DNA, the complete sequencing of a bone protein, osteocalcin, makes this a major scientific breakthrough. Extending this work to additional fossils could change perceptions of evolutionary theory. Results of the study are published in the December issue of GEOLOGY, published by the Geological Society of America. |
|
| HOW MANY FISH IN THE SEA? CHECK THEIR GENES. |
| How do you manage fish stocks if you don’t know how many fish are out there? Look at their genes, according to an Australian scientist developing a new tool to track populations. |
|
| AFRICAN BEETLE THREATENS AUSTRALIAN BEES |
| A small African beetle with the potential to cripple the honey industry has been identified in Australia, scientists announced this week. |
|
| UGA STUDENT QUESTIONS WHY SNAKES CROSS ROADWAYS |
| Kimberly Andrews is no ordinary student. When challenged by University of Georgia ecology professor Whit Gibbons to come up with a research project that would add to the scientific literature on herpetology (the study of reptiles and amphibians), she came up with a twist on the old riddle: "Why do snakes cross the road?" |
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| MRI TECHNIQUE LETS RESEARCHERS DIRECTLY COMPARE SIMILARITIES, DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MONKEY AND HUMAN BRAIN |
| Researchers have developed a new way to use a decade-old imaging method to directly compare the brains of monkeys with those of humans. Their report appeared in the journal Science. |
|
| ION CHANNELS ALLOW BACTERIA TO RESIST STOMACH ACID |
| Researchers have found that a primitive type of ion channel similar to those found in mammalian nerve cells helps bacteria resist the blast of acid they encounter in the stomach of their hosts. |
|
| STUDY BACKS THEORY THAT ACCUMULATING MUTATIONS OF 'QUIET' GENES FOSTER AGING |
| A theory that suggests the aging process might be safely slowed by targeting genes that are quiet early but threaten damage later in life has gotten a boost from new findings from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. |
|
| WHAT'S SO FUNNY? |
| What has been billed the largest scientific study ever into humour has finally come to an end, throwing light on what jokes crack people up and why. |
|
| SCIENTISTS DECIPHER GENETIC CODE OF MALARIA PARASITE |
| In a landmark contribution to the age-old battle against malaria, a consortium of scientists including The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) announced today that they have deciphered the complex genetic code of the parasite that causes the deadliest form of the disease. Malaria is one of the world's most devastating infectious diseases, killing more than a million people a year in developing nations. |
|
| LIVING DINOSAURS |
| If we are to believe the message of a new exhibit demonstrating the evolutionary transition from dinosaurs to birds, dinosaurs are not extinct. |
|
| COULD PARASITES UNDERMINE THE MIGHTY MALE? |
| One reason why men die earlier than women is men may be more prone to parasites, according to a British biologist. |
|
| HOW DOES YOUR CANCER GROW? |
| Australian researchers have determined the three dimensional structure of an important protein detected on cancer cells, paving the way for the development of new drugs to treat cancer. |
|
| GENE FOUND THAT HELPS NERVE CELLS SURVIVE BY PREVENTING CELL SUICIDE |
| Why do some nerve cells survive and regrow after injury while others shrink away and die? A new discovery by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) shows that the expression of a particular gene may be responsible for protecting neurons from death. The results, published in the September 26 issue of Neuron, could lead the way for new treatment strategies for a variety of neurological diseases. |
|
| EAVESDROPPING OCCURS AMONG ANIMALS, FINDS EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGIST |
| Eavesdropping among animals influences their behavior, Lee Dugatkin, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Louisville, has found. |
|
| BIG-BOTTOMED SHEEP HAVE A RARE GENETIC MUTATION THAT BUILDS MUSCLE, NOT FAT. |
| Scientists have discovered an elusive, mutated gene named for the Greek goddess, Aphrodite Kallipygos, that causes certain sheep to have unusually big and muscular bottoms. They hope the genetic mutation will illuminate how muscle and fat are deposited in these animals and possibly in humans. |
|
| PENN STUDY MAY EXPLAIN CLICHE OF 'HOT-HEADED' MEN |
| Penn scientists map and measure the seat of impulsive behavior in the brain
There is a sound neurological basis for the cliche that men are more aggressive than women, according to new findings by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. |
|
| GENE CONTROLS PLANT'S CLOCK AND FLOWERING TIME |
| Plants have never impressed anyone with their intelligence, but they do measure the seasons and tell time. After all, a Christmas cactus blooms only in winter and an evening primrose opens just at dusk. |
|
| DNA’S OSCILLATING DOUBLE HELIX HINDERS ELECTRICAL CONDUCTION |
| DNA has an oscillating double-helix structure. This oscillating means that the DNA molecules conduct electricity much less well than was previously thought. Ultrafast cameras were one of the devices the researchers from Amsterdam used to demonstrate this. |
|
| CORNELL ENTOMOLOGISTS DISCOVER SEX-PHEROMONE LINK TO INSECT EVOLUTION, SUGGESTING PROBLEMS FOR PEST CONTROL THROUGH MATING DISRUPTION |
| Cornell University entomologists have unlocked an evolutionary secret to how insects evolve into new species. The discovery has major implications for the control of insect populations through disruption of mating, suggesting that over time current eradication methods could become ineffective, similar to the way insects develop pesticide resistance. |
|
| WOOHOO! NEW OWL SPECIES FOUND. |
| Australian ornithologists have managed to do what other bird specialists have been trying to do for decades - track down a mystery owl in Indonesia. |
|
| IT STARTED WITH A GOO GOO GA |
| Experts have long debated whether baby talk is related to language, but new research looking at mouth symmetry during babbling suggests that “ga ga ga” is a key step on the way to real words. |
|
| SONGBIRDS USE MENTAL POINTER WHEN PLAYING TUNES |
| That spontaneous serenade from the zebra finch is not only more rehearsed than cellist Yo-Yo Ma's chamber music, but the bird even keeps its "finger" on its mental sheet music both day and night. |
|
| WHY THE HAMMERHEAD SHARK'S HEAD IS IN THE SHAPE IT'S IN |
| A comprehensive examination of how the unique head and snout affects maneuverability and the role of its electrosensory function for seeking food along the ocean floor. |
|
| TINY BUGS IN MEALYBUGS HAVE SMALLER BUGS INSIDE THEM |
| Like tiny Russian dolls, the mealybugs that infest your houseplants carry bacteria inside their cells that are themselves infected with another type of bacteria. A new study by researchers at the University of California, Davis, shows that instead of spreading from bug to bug, the second set of bacteria infected the first several times in the past and are now being passed along and evolving with them. |
|
| THE MANE THING ABOUT LIONS |
| The lion’s mane is indeed all for show - new research shows that lionesses go for dark-maned lions and males tend to avoid their darker and longer-haired opponents - and it’s all got to do with testosterone. |
|
| SCIENTIST SAYS OSTRICH STUDY CONFIRMS BIRD 'HANDS' UNLIKE THOSE OF DINOSAURS |
| To make an omelet, you need to break some eggs. Not nearly so well known is that breaking eggs also can lead to new information about the evolution of birds and dinosaurs, a topic of hot debate among leading biologists. |
|
| STONE THE CLEVER CROWS |
| The New Caledonian crow has surprised English researchers with its tool-making skills.
The birds are already known for their tool-making behaviour in the wild. However, Professor Alex Kacelnik and his colleagues at the University of Oxford have observed a new approach that probably would not work with natural materials. |
|
| THE CONTRACEPTIVE PLAGUE |
| After more than a decade of trying, Australian researchers have created a highly infectious virus that could wipe out the country's rabbit pests by making them sterile. |
|
| GENETICALLY MODIFIED CROPS MAY PASS HELPFUL TRAITS TO WEEDS, STUDY FINDS. |
| For the first time, researchers have shown that a gene artificially inserted into crop plants to fend off pests can migrate to weeds in a natural environment and make the weeds stronger. |
|
| SATELLITES SEE BIG CHANGES SINCE 1980S IN KEY ELEMENT OF OCEAN'S FOOD CHAIN |
| Since the early 1980s, ocean phytoplankton concentrations that drive the marine food chain have declined substantially in many areas of open water in Northern oceans, according to a comparison of two datasets taken from satellites. At the same time, phytoplankton levels in open water areas near the equator have increased significantly. Since phytoplankton are especially concentrated in the North, the study found an overall annual decrease in phytoplankton globally. |
|
| ALL ABOARD THE SPERM 'TRAIN' |
| Researchers in the UK, Australia and the Czech Republic have observed that in wood mice, sperm join together to speed their route to the egg.
Sperm 'trains' of hundreds of thousands of individuals start forming just after ejaculation, report the scientists in Nature. The sperm link together using a hook on their heads, or by grabbing the tail of the sperm in front. |
|
| UK SCIENTISTS CRACK LOBSTER SHELL COLOUR PUZZLE |
| UK researchers announced a first this week when they reported their discovery of how lobsters change colour from the blue-purple of their ocean-floor camouflage to the distinctive orange-red when cooked. |
|
| RESEARCH SHOWS CLIMATE CHANGE COULD PUSH BATS NORTHWARD |
| Traditionally, biological research into the effects of climate change has focussed on the changes that have already occurred.
What's really necessary, however, is a method to anticipate the effects that climate change will have in the future. A University of Alberta researcher is part of a team that has developed one tool to do just that. |
|
| A HEADY DISCOVERY |
| A seven-million-year-old human skull has been found in the African republic of Chad.
Christened 'Toumai', which means 'hope of life' in the local Goran language, the find is said to be the most important fossil discovery in living memory. |
|
| GOBY DICK |
| Italian researchers have found that when it comes to producing sperm, goby fish know when to hold back.
In an experiment based at the University of Padova, male goby fish proved they can size up the competition from other males and then adjust how much sperm they release. |
|
| NEW RESEARCH SUGGESTS A POTENTIALLY DAMAGING EFFECT OF EXTREMELY LOW FREQUENCY ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS |
| The effect of extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields (ELF-EMF), such as those emitted around high-voltage transmission lines on human health, is controversial. Some studies suggest an association between exposure to ELF-EMF and incidence of leukaemia, although little direct evidence exists that exposure causes damage to biological molecules. |
|
| RESEARCHERS FIND TROPICAL SNAKE WITH UNUSUAL EATING HABITS |
| Everyone knows that snakes swallow their meals in one giant gulp, so University of Cincinnati biologist Bruce Jayne and his colleagues were astonished to discover a tropical snake that eats at a much different pace. The snake, found in Singapore, feasts on soft-shelled crabs which it tears apart and swallows one bite at a time. |
|
| AIRBORNE NUTRIENTS FOR FOREST |
| Trees gather most of their calcium and other metal nutrients from the air, rather than from the deep soil and rock, a study in Chile has confirmed.
Dr Martin Kennedy from the University of California, Riverside and colleagues used a strontium isotope to trace the uptake of metals from the atmosphere and the soil in Chile's southernmost Patagonian forests. |
|
| LIFE: DID IT COME FROM OUTER SPACE? |
| The building blocks of life on Earth may have come from giant clouds of icy dust deep in outer space, astronomers have told an international astrobiology conference in Australia. |
|
| NEW WAY FOUND TO SEE LIGHT THROUGH NOVEL PROTEIN IDENTIFIED BY DARTMOUTH GENETICISTS |
| Dartmouth Medical School geneticists have discovered a new class of proteins that see light, revealing a previously unknown system for how light works. |
|
| COWS IN NAPPIES |
| Most cows would rather go hungry than eat pasture contaminated with dung, an Australian researcher has found - but he had to put the cows in nappies to find out. |
|
| EXAMINING THE HEALING MYSTERY OF ALOE |
| If grandma gets a bedsore, the best thing to put on it might be a plant that's been used for 5,000 years.
The mysterious Aloe vera has been a source for healing since Old Testament times, and a Texas A&M University researcher is trying to uncover just what the substances are in the plant that work wonders and how they do it so that more might be learned about treating wounds. |
|
| 'SLOPPY GENES' BEHAVE LIKE THEIR NEIGHBOURS |
| New findings reveal that the regulation of gene expression is much less strictly controlled than was previously thought.
The inaugural issue of Journal of Biology features groundbreaking research that challenges the traditional view of how genes are controlled. Our current understanding of gene expression, the fundamental process by which proteins are made from the instructions encoded in DNA, is that the process is tightly controlled so that the correct amount of each protein is produced in the right place at the right time. |
|
| THE BIOACOUSTICS RESEARCH PROGRAM PAGE OF BAJA WHALE SOUNDS. |
| The very-low-frequency courtship songs of fin whales and blue whales are the most powerful and ubiquitous biological sounds in the oceans. But the artificial racket created by ships and other human sources could be interfering with whale reproduction and population recovery, marine scientists report in the latest edition (June 20, 2002) of the journal Nature. |
|
| NEW CELLULAR EVOLUTION THEORY REJECTS DARWINIAN ASSUMPTIONS |
| Life did not begin with one primordial cell. Instead, there were initially at least three simple types of loosely constructed cellular organizations. They swam in a pool of genes, evolving in a communal way that aided one another in bootstrapping into the three distinct types of cells by sharing their evolutionary inventions. |
|
| STUDY OF FOSSILS FOUND IN ARCTIC SHOWS PLANTS MORE DEVELOPED AT EARLIER TIME |
| Along with Canadian colleagues, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scientist has discovered fossils of plants dating back some 420 million years. |
|
| RUTGERS GENETICISTS DISCOVER PROBABLE CAUSES OF HYBRID PLANT VIGOR |
| Agricultural breeders have long observed that when plants or animals from different strains are interbred, the offspring tend to be stronger, healthier or generally more fit than either of their parents, although no one knew why this occurred. Now plant geneticists investigating the maize (corn) genome at Rutgers' Waksman Institute of Microbiology have discovered a possible explanation for this phenomenon, known as heterosis or hybrid vigor. |
|
| STUDY OF AQUATIC MUSSELS INDICATES THEY MAY YIELD NEW ANTIFOULING MATERIALS, SURGICAL ADHESIVES |
| New insights into how aquatic mussels bind tightly to rocks and other surfaces could lead to surgical applications and improved adhesives, it was reported today at the Great Lakes Regional meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. |
|
| PEPTIDE PROMOTES NEW GROWTH IN INJURED SPINAL CORDS |
| Yale researchers have developed a synthetic peptide that promotes new nerve fiber growth in the damaged spinal cords of laboratory rats and allows them to walk better, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Nature. |
|
| SOCIAL IMMUNITY |
| Creatures that live in social groups have a greater risk of infectious disease, but according to new research living in a group can also provide a health advantage. |
|
| IT'S THE CAT'S MEOW: NOT LANGUAGE, STRICTLY SPEAKING, BUT CLOSE ENOUGH TO SKILLFULLY MANAGE HUMANS, COMMUNICATION STUDY SHOWS |
| After more than 5,000 years of human-feline cohabitation and enough elaborations on "meow!" to fill a dictionary, cats still haven't mastered language. But a Cornell University evolutionary psychology study ---- analyzing people's reactions to feline vocalizations ---- shows that cats know how to get what they want. |
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| EARLIEST EVIDENCE OF ANIMALS YET? |
| Scientists say they have found fossil evidence of an "animal-like" creature which they report is twice as old as any animal fossils generally accepted by palaeontologists. |
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| U OF MINNESOTA STUDY: ADULT BONE MARROW STEM CELLS CAN BECOME LIVER CELLS |
| Researchers at the University of Minnesota Stem Cell Institute (SCI) have demonstrated, for the first time, the ability of adult bone marrow stem cells to differentiate in vitro as hepatocytes (liver cells) with hepatocyte phenotype and function. The findings will be published in the May 15, 2002 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation. |
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| RESEARCHERS DISCOVER CLUES TO WHALE EVOLUTION |
| A team of international scientists, including Hans Thewissen, an anatomist and paleontologist at the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine (NEOUCOM), has discovered that the inner ear of whales evolved much more quickly than expected, allowing the animals to become fully aquatic early in their evolution. |
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| UF EXPERT: ANCIENT FOSSIL SUGGESTS FLOWERS MAY BE UNDERWATER GIFT |
| The world’s oldest known flower never bloomed, but it has opened scientific questioning into whether all of today’s flowering plants had their origins from beneath ancient waters, says a University of Florida researcher. |
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| HOPKINS SCIENTISTS REVEAL HOW SOUND BECOMES ELECTRIC |
| Scientists from The Center for Hearing and Balance at Johns Hopkins have discovered how tiny cells in the inner ear change sound into an electrical signal the brain can understand.
Their finding, published in a recent issue of Nature Neuroscience, could improve the design and programming of hearing aids and cochlear implants by filling in a "black hole" in scientists' understanding of how we hear, say the researchers. |
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| SOCIAL INSECTS COULD OFFER CLUES ABOUT GENETIC CONFLICT |
| Two Rice University biologists believe social insects like ants and bees could provide clues to why some animals -- including humans -- have developed a curious quality in which the genes of their parents vie in direct competition, waging a kind of biochemical war. |
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| MICROBIOLOGY TEAM PROBES BACTERIUM'S SURPRISING SURVIVAL TACTICS |
| A team of microbiologists affiliated with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (UMass) has uncovered the unusual survival strategies used by a common bacterium. The finding could have implications in cleaning up contaminants ranging from petroleum to uranium. |
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| SCIENTISTS PUSH BACK PRIMATE ORIGINS FROM 65 MILLION TO 85 MILLION YEARS AGO. FIELD MUSEUM SCIENTIST CHALLENGES ACCEPTED THEORIES, DATING METHODS. |
| New research that accounts for gaps in the fossil record challenges traditional methods of interpreting fossils and constructing evolutionary trees. Applying a new statistical approach to primates demonstrates that this group-from which humans developed-originated 85 million years ago (Mya) rather than 65 Mya, as is widely accepted. |
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| MEN REGAIN EVOLUTIONARY DRIVER’S SEAT. MUTATION STUDY CONFIRMS STRONG MALE-DRIVEN EVOLUTION AMONG HUMANS AND APES |
| Researchers from the University of Chicago have estimated that genetic mutations – the raw material for evolution – occur 5.25 times more often in males than in females. This discovery should lay to rest any doubts raised by recent studies questioning the dominant role males play in producing mutations for molecular evolution. |
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| AUSTRALIAN FROG IS FIRST TO MAKE ITS OWN CHEMICAL WEAPONS |
| Researchers have identified an Australian poison frog that makes its own toxin rather than getting it from food sources. It is the first documented case of a vertebrate that generates its own poison alkaloids, complex chemicals that are usually associated with plants, the researchers said. |
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| ORGIN OF MYSTERIOUS SUBTERRANEAN GASES IDENTIFIED, SAYS UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO RESEARCHER |
| Evidence of gases similar to those that may have played a part in the formation of the earliest life on the planet has been found by a University of Toronto geochemist. |
|
| HORMONE-RICH SHAMPOOS. ARE HORMONE-RICH SHAMPOOS MAKING SOME GIRLS ENTER PUBERTY EARLY? |
| If your daughter starts puberty early, you might want to check her shampoo. Unbeknown to many parents, a few hair products-especially some marketed to black people-contain small amounts of hormones that could cause premature sexual development in girls. |
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| A FASTER EVOLUTIONARY CLOCK? |
| A discovery by scientists studying ancient DNA from Antarctic penguins may change our understanding of how fast the tree of life grew.
New Zealand scientist, Dr David M. Lambert, and colleagues report in this week's Science on a new method of measuring the rate of DNA evolution. |
|
| FANTASY IS NOT REALITY |
| The expression 'it's all a figment of your imagination' has taken on a new reality with research that shows that imagination occurs in a different part of the brain to the recognition of real objects. |
|
| BRAIN HAS BUILT-IN GRAVITY |
| Neuroscientists say that the brain contains an internal model of gravity — which is why it's so hard to catch a ball in space.
NASA reports that Joe McIntyre of the College de France and colleagues discovered the phenomenon during experiments on board the space shuttle Columbia. |
|
| HUMANS LIVE A DOG'S LIFE |
| A new theory claims that many human behaviours are a result of our long-standing relationship with dogs, and vice versa. |
|
| TYRANNOSAURUS REX PROBABLY COULD NOT RUN FAST, SCIENTISTS SAY |
| King of the Cretaceous, Tyrannosaurus rex stood on two powerful hind limbs and terrorized potential prey with its elephantine size and lethal jaws. The dinosaur was big and bad. But was it fast? |
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| UCLA SCIENTISTS, COLLEAGUES SUBSTANTIATE BIOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF EARLIEST FOSSILS |
| UCLA paleobiologist J. William Schopf and colleagues have substantiated the biological origin of the earliest known cellular fossils, which are 3.5 billion years old. The research is published in the March 7 issue of the journal Nature. |
|
| MOVEMENT WITHOUT SENSES CODED INTO NEURONS, SAYS RESEARCHER |
| Embryonic motor systems intrinsic to central nervous systems and not dependent on sensory cues
An animal's ability to move - like the kicking of a developing baby or the crawling and walking of insects - is intrinsic, not dependent on sensory stimulation, says a U of T neurobiologist. |
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| UNDERGRAD FINDS CLUES TO 400- MILLION-YEAR-OLD MYSTERY |
| Steven Porter, a Johns Hopkins University senior from Cherry Hill, N.J., has conducted original research that adds new and potentially decisive evidence to a debate about the identity of one of the first organisms to make the epochal leap from the sea to dry land approximately 400 million years ago. |
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| LIZARDS AND SALAMANDERS MAY USE LUNGS TO HEAR, STUDY SAYS |
| Certain species of salamanders and lizards can actually hear through their lungs, according to a new study at Ohio State University. |
|
| PLANT WILT LINKED TO IMPOTENCE |
| Research into plants' response to drought has shown there is a chemical link between the process of wilting in plants and impotence in humans. |
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| NEW FRONTIERS FOR DINOSAUR SCIENCE |
| Sereno's ongoing field work in Africa has yielded a menagerie of new dinosaurs. These discoveries have included the giant predator, Carcharodontosaurus, which rivaled Tyrannosaurus in size. Another find was the fleet-footed meat-eater, Deltadromeus, that has no close counterpart on other continents; and the spinosaur, Suchomimus. Giant long-necked plant-eaters, found in a communal death site, included the 60-foot long Jobaria. |
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| ROCK-EATING MICROBES SURVIVE IN DEEP OCEAN OFF PERU |
| Way down deep in the ocean off the coast of Peru, in the rocks that form the sea floor, live bacteria that don't need sunlight, don't need carbon dioxide, don't need oxygen. These microbes subsist by eating the very rocks they call home. |
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| COMMON MICROBES SURVIVE PRESSURES EQUAL TO THOSE FOUND AT 50 KILOMETERS INSIDE THE EARTH’S CRUST |
| Until now, scientists thought that only specially adapted organisms they call extremophiles could exist in seemingly intolerable environments such as high-pressure, high-temperature oceanic hydrothermal vents or in the ice sheets of Antarctica. A study published in the February 22, 2002, issue of Science, however, shows that even common bacteria are viable under high-pressure conditions equivalent to about 50 kilometers beneath the Earth’s crust or 160 kilometers in a hypothetical sea. |
|
| BEYOND SWEET AND SOUR - THE TASTE OF PROTEIN |
| Our understanding of taste has been given a boost by American scientists, who have identified an amino-acid taste receptor. |
|
| BIOLOGISTS HOLD NEW TRUTH TO BE SELF-EVIDENT: THAT PLANTS' STEMS AND LEAVES ARE CREATED EQUAL IN PROPORTION TO ROOTS |
| Add this universal truth to biology textbooks: the mass of a plant's leaves and stems is proportionally scaled to that of its roots in a mathematically predictable way, regardless of species or habitat. In other words, biologists can now reasonably estimate how much biomass is underground just by looking at the stems and leaves above ground. |
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| SCIENTISTS LOOK TO EUROPE AS EVOLUTIONARY SEAT |
| U of T anthropologist David Begun and his European colleagues are re-writing the book on the history of great apes and humans, arguing that most of their evolutionary development took place in Eurasia, not Africa. |
|
| STRANGE ENCOUNTERS OF A REFLECTIVE KIND |
| An Australian neuropsychologist is working on the causes of an unusual condition in which people fail to recognise their own reflections in the mirror. |
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| 343 MILLION YEARS OF PRIMATE AND CARNIVORE EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY AT RISK |
| Washington, D.C. – Scientists have discovered that the greatest concentration of all primate and carnivore evolutionary history exists within those species found only in the 25 biodiversity hotspots. These species – whose combined evolutionary ages total 343 million years – represent genetic lineages that are vital to the future diversity, evolution and survival of these animals according a collaborative study published by the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science (CABS) at Conservation International and biologists from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville in the Feb. 19 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). |
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| THE EUCALYPT'S SURVIVAL SECRET |
| The eucalypt trees burnt in Australia's recent bushfires are already sprouting again — and one botanist has worked out how they do it.
Dr Geoff Burrows from the Department of Agriculture at Charles Sturt University has discovered that eucalypts regrow in a way unlike any other tree in the world. |
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| FLYING HIGH |
| What do the hawkmoth, the fruit fly, and the bird-wrasse fish all have in common? Over millions of years, each of these animals seems to have figured out how to achieve high-lift in their respective medium…. quickly, and with more stability and less heave, pitch, yaw, torque, drag and cavitation than man-made machines have yet been able to approach. |
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| DIFFERENCES BETWEEN BOYS AND GIRLS SHOW LESS THAN THREE WEEKS INTO PREGNANCY |
| Female embryos exert a greater influence than male embryos over the hormone that nurtures early pregnancy, and the difference can be detected as little as 16 days after conception, according to new research published (Wednesday 30 January) in Europe’s leading reproductive medicine journal Human Reproduction. |
|
| DARWIN AND THE WORLD’S FIRST ECOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT |
| Scientists examining the work that influenced Charles Darwin have rediscovered the details of what may be the world’s first ecological experiment. |
|
| PERCEPTION IS STORED IN SINGLE NEURONES |
| Tuebingen Max Planck researchers discover that our perception of diagnostic features is controlled by single neurones.
Perception is something that must be learned. As we recognize things in our environment we gather experience and this experience in turn colours our perception. This is nothing new, of course. But brain researchers are going one step further to ask how different kinds of information are integrated in the brain and what principles govern how perceived objects are represented there. |
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| GONDWANA SPLIT SORTS OUT MAMMALIAN EVOLUTION |
| Placental mammals are a diverse group, with nearly 4000 described species (e.g., rodents, bats, elephants, humans) that bear live young and are nourished before birth in the mother's uterus through the placenta. In contrast, marsupials are commonly thought of as pouched mammals. While the latter also give live birth, they do not have long gestation times; the early development is completed instead in the pouch. |
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| IS THIS THE CELL THAT COULD REVOLUTIONISE MEDICINE? |
| IT MIGHT turn out to be the most important cell ever discovered. It's a stem cell found in adults that can turn into every single tissue in the body.
Until now, only stem cells from early embryos were thought to be able to do this. If the finding is confirmed, it will mean cells from your own body could one day be turned into all sorts of perfectly matched replacement tissues and even organs. |
|
| INSECT BITES ON PLANTS REDUCE PHOTOSYNTHESIS, IMAGING DEVICE SHOWS |
| When insects feed on plants, they get nourishment and the plant gets damaged. The amount of damage has taken on new light, thanks to a new photosynthesis-measuring device that illuminates and photographs never-before-seen injury extending far beyond an insect’s bite. |
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| UT SOUTHWESTERN SPACE RESEARCHERS PINPOINT MECHANISM INVOLVED IN LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS AFTER SPACE FLIGHT |
| In one of the most ambitious medical experiments ever conducted aboard a space shuttle, UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas space researchers have pinpointed the mechanism responsible for the brief loss of consciousness and lightheadedness that many astronauts experience in the upright posture after space flight. |
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| ANTARCTIC MICROBES COULD LIVE ON MARS |
| New Zealand and Canadian scientists have uncovered microbes in Antarctica that live in hostile conditions mirroring those on Mars.
The scientists discovered long-lived colonies of insecticidal fungi and a common species of Penicillium bacteria at two sites in Antarctica's Dry Valleys - so-called because they are ice-free - living three to eight centimetres beneath the surface. |
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| IS THERE A LINK BETWEEN ALCOHOL AND ALLERGIES? |
| Immunoglobulin E (IgE) is a molecule involved in allergic diseases. Atopy - the genetic predisposition to develop IgE antibodies against some antigens in the environment - affects as much as 30 percent of the population, and is believed to be increasing in frequency. In addition to the influence of genetics and allergen exposure, serum IgE levels can also be increased by a number of factors that include parasitic and other infections, neoplasms (abnormal tissue growth) and exposure to certain environmental factors. A study in the January issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research investigates if alcohol may be one such environmental factor. |
|
| INFANT IMMUNE SYSTEM IS STRONGER THAN MANY PARENTS THINK |
| From the moment of birth, infants are capable of responding to numerous challenges to the immune system, including multiple vaccines, according to a new report published in the January issue of Pediatrics. |
|
| DO ELECTRICAL APPLIANCES INCREASE THE RISK OF MISCARRIAGE? |
| The strong magnetic fields produced by some electric appliances and vehicles increase the risk of miscarriage, claim researchers in California. Their findings also suggest that most previous investigations into the health effects of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) have been measuring the wrong thing. |
|
| GENETIC MARKER TELLS SQUASH DOMESTICATION STORY |
| In the January 8 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), The Cucurbit Network and the University of Puerto Rico establish mitochondrial DNA analysis as a powerful tool for understanding relationships among flowering plants. |
|
| STUDY SHOWS HOW PLANT CELLS SPIN COTTON |
| Cotton, paper and wood -- they're all made of the cellulose that plants use for strength and flexibility. But surprisingly, scientists do not know a lot about how plants actually make cellulose. Now research at the University of California, Davis, has shed light on a key step: how fibers get started. |
|
| BUBBLY GOES TO YOUR HEAD |
| New UK research confirms that bubbly champagne really does get you tipsy faster than flat. In a study involving volunteers mingling at two different drinks parties, Fran Ridout from the University of Surrey's Human Psychopharmacology Unit found that people who drank fizzy champagne produced significantly higher levels of alcohol in the first 20 minutes than those who drank flat champagne. |
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| STANFORD RESEARCHERS DEVELOP SYSTEM FOR FIELD TESTING MECHANISMS OF EVOLUTION |
| Evolutionary biology has always faced a major hurdle - how to test a process that takes place over thousands, if not millions, of years. Researchers at Stanford University may have come up with a solution. |
|
| MORE EVIDENCE FOR 'NANOBES' |
| An Australian researcher may have quietly strengthened the evidence for extra-terrestrial life last week at — of all things — a micro-electronics conference.
Dr Philippa Uwins of the University of Queensland announced at a conference in Adelaide on Monday that she had confirmed the presence of DNA in tiny nanoscale structures believed to be the smallest autonomous living organisms on Earth, called 'nanobes'. |
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| PRIMITIVE MICROBE OFFERS MODEL FOR EVOLUTION OF ANIMALS |
| A microorganism whose evolutionary roots can be traced to the era of the first multicellular animals may provide a glimpse of how single-celled organisms made a critical evolutionary leap. |
|
| A LITTLE LARCENY COMES NATURALLY TO NORTHWESTERN CROWS |
| Crows and ravens are depicted as being clever and tricky animals in countless American Indian stories and legends. Those characterizations apparently are right on the mark, according to a pair of University of Washington researchers who have found a species of crow that is constantly looking for opportunities to steal food from other members of its flock. |
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| LOBSTER SNIFFING: HOW LOBSTERS' HAIRY NOSES CAPTURE SMELLS FROM THE SEA |
| Aquatic creatures like lobsters and crabs depend on smell to find food, a suitable mate or to avoid predators, but how do they pluck these odors from the water swirling around them? |
|
| WHAT MAKES EUROPA PINK? DOES EUROPA'S ROSY GLOW BETRAY A FLOURISHING COLONY OF BUGS? |
| The red tinge of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, could be caused by frozen bits of bacteria. Their presence would also help explain Europa's mysterious infrared signal. |
|
| MUSIC - GOOD VIBRATIONS FOR DEAF |
| Deaf people sense vibration in the part of the brain that other people use for hearing, according to the results of a recent study.
This may explain how deaf musicians can sense music, and how deaf people can enjoy concerts and other musical events.
The study was presented at the 87th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America this week. |
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| TIME GOES FUNNY WHEN YOUR EYES MOVE |
| Scientists say they can now explain why when you first turn your attention to a silently ticking clock, the second hand can appear to move slower than normal, and sometimes even stop. |
|
| SMELLING LIKE A GIRL TO KEEP WARM |
| In the spring, male garter snakes pretend they're females, gathering up to a hundred other males around them. What for? Simply to keep warm, says new research.
The findings, by herpetologists at the University of Sydney and Oregon State University, are reported in this week's issue of Nature. |
|
| WHY THE BIG ANIMALS WENT DOWN IN THE PLEISTOCENE-WAS IT JUST THE CLIMATE? |
| There wasn't anything special about the climate changes that ended the Pleistocene. They were similar to previous climate changes as recorded in deep sea cores. So what tipped the scale and caused the extinction? |
|
| CLIMATE CHANGES MOSQUITO'S GENES |
| The pitcher plant mosquito is probably the world's first documented genetic adaptation of an animal to global warming, a 30-year study has found. |
|
| TYPHOID FEVER BUG SEQUENCE RAISES HOPE OF COMPLETE ERADICATION |
| Scientists from Britain, Denmark and Vietnam have deciphered the genetic code of the bacterium responsible for typhoid fever, Salmonella typhi.
Their achievement, reported in the magazine Nature 23.10.01., raises hope for the prospects of completely eradicating typhoid, which currently claims 600,000 lives a year globally. |
|
| SEXUAL VS. ASEXUAL REPRODUCTION: SCIENTISTS FIND SEX WINS |
| Why are most organisms sexual? The question of why most species reproduce sexually and others reproduce asexually has stymied biologists for years (particularly since asexual reproduction has many advantages including producing more offspring.) |
|
| RAFTING RODENTS FROM AFRICA MAY HAVE BEEN ANCESTORS OF SOUTH AMERICAN SPECIES |
| Forty million years ago, rodents from Africa may have colonized South America by rafting or swimming across the Atlantic, Texas A&M University biologists theorize by studying the evolution of rodents, looking at their genes instead of their fossils - an approach that promises to revolutionize the field of evolutionary biology. |
|
| BABOONS CAN THINK ABSTRACTLY, IN THE FIRST STUDY TO SHOW THAT A NON-HUMAN, NON-APE ANIMAL SHARES A CENTRAL ASPECT OF HUMAN INTELLIGENCE |
| Two baboons successfully used analogous thinking to match symbol arrays that were the 'same but different'. More non-human animals may be capable of abstract thought than previously known, with profound implications for the evolution of human intelligence and the stuff that separates homo sapiens from other animals. |
|
| WHY DOES A WORM NEED NEARLY AS MANY GENES AS A MAN? |
| The nematode worm, C. elegans, is the focus of an intense research effort in both developmental biology and genetics because it is one of the simplest multicellular organisms with a nervous system. A new article published in Genome Biology investigates why, despite its apparent simplicity, it needs 20,000 genes when animals as complex as humans make do with only 30,000 or so. |
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| BABY SEA TURTLES USE EARTH’S MAGNETIC FIELD TO NAVIGATE ACROSS ATLANTIC OCEAN AND BACK |
| Working in Florida, scientists have found what they believe is the strongest evidence yet that baby loggerhead turtles "read" the Earth’s magnetic field to help them navigate the massive clockwise current that sweeps the northern Atlantic Ocean. |
|
| COMPLEX MOLECULE FOUND IN SPACE |
| The compound vinyl alcohol has been found in space, raising hopes of clues to the origin of complex organic molecules. The molecule was found in an interstellar cloud of dust and gas near the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy by radio astronomers using the National Science Foundation's 12 Meter Telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona. |
|
| HUGE DINOSAUR FIND IN QUEENSLAND |
| The biggest dinosaur fossil ever found in Australia was announced yesterday at the Queensland Museum. Dubbed 'Elliott', the sauropod dinosaur was found near Winton in western Queensland.
Dr Steve Salisbury, honorary research fellow at the museum, said the fossil could represent the first evidence of a unique group of sauropods. |
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| LEPTIN AND OBESITY: ALL IN THE HEAD? |
| In the absence of leptin signaling, mice, like humans, grow extremely obese and develop many of the common sequellae of obesity in humans, such as diabetes and steatosis of the liver. Introduction of leptin directly into the hypothalamus potently reverses the overeating and obesity seen in leptin-deficient animals. |
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| CATERPILLARS MAKE NOISE TO FEND OFF INTRUDERS, RESEARCHERS DISCOVER |
| Caterpillars defend their homes by drumming up vibrations with their mandibles to drive intruders away, scientists say. At times, the nest-owner and intruder engage in duels that create a symphony of drum-like sounds. |
|
| BACTERIAL COMMUNITIES FOUND TO FOLLOW WATER |
| Miraculous things happen to the desert when it rains - everything changes from brown to green and organisms that have not been seen for months make a brief .emergence from underground lairs. |
|
| OPPORTUNITIES AND RISKS OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD |
| In its new publication, the Senate commission deals with issues concerning the objectives, application and legal framework of green genetic engineering. It comments on conceivable risks resulting from the cultivation and consumption of genetically modified plants or food and refers to safety precautions to protect the consumer. The statement focuses on food from transgenic plants. Animal food is to be dealt with at a later point in a separate publication. |
|
| MIGRATING EELS GIVE CLUES TO POLLUTION |
| The unusual life cycle of the long-finned eel could turn out to be a valuable pollution monitoring tool, Australian researchers have found.
The ear bones of the eels, like those of other fish, show growth rings like those of a tree. Called 'otoliths', the bones can be analysed to indicate changes in the surrounding water going back in time. |
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| HOW BACTERIA HARDEN THEIR ‘ARMOR’ |
| Duke biochemists have identified a key chemical reaction by which some important virulent bacteria alter their outer coat to make it antibiotic-resistant. The scientists say that their finding could lead to drugs to block such protective alteration, preventing bacteria from developing resistance. |
|
| NEW FOSSILS SUGGEST WHALES AND HIPPOS ARE CLOSE KIN |
| Partial skeletons of ancient whales found in Pakistan last year resolve a longstanding controversy over the origin of whales, confirming that the giant sea creatures evolved from early ancestors of sheep, deer and hippopotami and suggesting that hippos may be the closest living relatives of whales. The new finds, reported in the Sept. 21 issue of the journal Science, are the first and only specimens known that combine sheep-like ankle bones and archaic whale skull bones in the very same skeletons. |
|
| NO INCREASED RISK OF BRAIN CANCER FROM ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS |
| Exposure to electromagnetic fields does not increase the risk of developing a brain tumour, finds a study of electricity industry workers, reported in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. |
|
| GENES EXPLAIN WHY MEN ARE TALLER |
| Over 4cm of men's height is due to the combination of just two genes, according to a new study undertaken at the University of Melbourne.
The research, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism this week, identifies one gene on chromosome 15 and one on the Y chromosome as contributors to height in men. These genes may also help explain why men are taller than women. |
|
| MOTHERS TRANSMIT DNA THROUGH DAUGHTERS ONLY |
| Scientists have argued whether or not the often-studied mitochondrial DNA molecule is clonally inherited. It is with assuming clonal inheritance this type of DNA has been used to track the origin of modern human as well as to draw pictures of genetic relationships among other animals and plants. |
|
| THE GENETICS BEHIND MINIATURE PLANTS |
| How do organisms maintain their size and shape despite varying environmental conditions? Unlike animals, plants are sessile and cannot maintain their internal body temperatures during ambient temperature changes. Thus, plants have evolved complex genetic pathways to maintain normal growth patterns during temperature changes. |
|
| MYSTERIES OF THE STUMPY LIZARD REVEALED |
| Can you imagine giving birth to a child the size of a six-year-old? Or not being able to eat or breathe properly for the last third of pregnancy? Welcome to the unique world of the Australian stumpy-tailed lizard! |
|
| LASER TECHNIQUE EXAMINES MOVEMENT IN NUCLEUS OF LIVING CELL |
| By colliding two laser beams head-on, scientists at the University of Illinois can measure the movement of chromatin (tiny packets of DNA) in the nucleus of a living cell. |
|
| STUDY PROVIDES NEW EVIDENCE THAT CHEMICAL IN TOMATO SAUCE MAY HELP FIGHT PROSTATE CANCER, PARTICULARLY IN BLACK MEN |
| A new study involving African-American men - who as a group have the highest incidence of prostate cancer in the world - provides further evidence that lycopene, a chemical found in abundance in tomato sauce, may help prevent or slow the development of the disease. The clinical study was reported 29/08 at the 222nd national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society. |
|
| WHEN ANTIBODIES TURN AGAINST YOU |
| Australian immunologists have found that the Ross River virus uses antibodies, which normally neutralise viral invaders, to its own advantage. |
|
| DOING DIFFERENT TASKS AT ONCE ISN'T EFFICIENT, ESPECIALLY WHEN SHIFTING TO LESS FAMILIAR TASKS |
| New scientific studies reveal the hidden costs of multitasking, key findings as technology increasingly tempts people to do more than one thing (and increasingly, more than one complicated thing) at a time. |
|
| DIGITAL ORGANISMS USED TO CONFIRM EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS |
| Using a revolutionary computer program that gives scientists the opportunity to watch evolution take place before their eyes
using "digital organisms," a team of researchers from Michigan State University and Caltech has confirmed an evolutionary process long suspected but, until now, unproven. |
|
| TINY ANCIENT CRUSTACEAN FORCES RETHINK |
| A tiny fossilised relative of modern-day lobsters is forcing a rethink of beliefs about the emergence of complex organisms. The 511-million-year old fossil is less than half a millimetre long and the oldest complete example of a crustacean, the group that includes lobsters, crabs and prawns. It resembles the juvenile form of today’s barnacles. |
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| NSF AWARDS INTERDISCIPLINARY PENN TEAM $1.45 MILLION TO STUDY, DEVELOP BUILDING BLOCKS OF NANOSTRUCTURES |
| The National Science Foundation has awarded $1.45 million to scientists at the University of Pennsylvania, establishing a new Nanotechnology Science and Engineering Center that will seek out the building blocks of next-generation nanostructures. |
|
| SOIL SUGGESTS EARLY HUMANS LIVED IN FORESTS INSTEAD OF GRASSLANDS |
| Carbon isotope evidence in almost 6-million-year-old soils suggests that the earliest humans already were evolving in - and likely preferred - humid forests rather than grasslands, report a team of scientists working in Ethiopia. |
|
| INDIAN CASTE GROUPS HAVE DIFFERING GENETIC RELATIONSHIPS TO EUROPEANS AND ASIANS |
| A new study of genetic data shows that the ancestors of Indian men came from different parts of the world than those of Indian women and produced modern upper caste Indian populations that are genetically more similar to Europeans and lower caste populations that are more similar to Asians. |
|
| FINLAND'S FATHERS |
| The origin of the Saam nationality living in the north of Scandinavia and Finland has long been a subject of discussions. The Saams and Finns are distinguished from majority Europeans by their intrinsic language culture. They speak the Finnish-Ugorsk dialect more than Indo-European ones. Genetics, trying to decode their unclear origin, had difficulties in selecting the true Saam nationality, since over 2,000 years the nations have strongly intercrossed with one another. |
|
| RESULTS OF A NEW RESEARCH OF PRIMITIVES' SILICIFIED REMAINS CONTRADICT TRADITIONAL THEORY AND SAY IN FAVOR OF INDEPENDENT ORIGIN OF MODERN PEOPLE'S RA |
| In contradiction with a widely-accepted theory, a study conducted at the University of Michigan shows that skeleton remains of primitives anthropologists have found belonged to people who lived not in one specific area, but in different areas of the world. Milford Hom. Folkpoff and his colleagues have compared primitives’ bones and consider that their discovery could trigger new disputes over the races origin. |
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| LIFE EXPECTANCY |
| How long do plants and animals live? It turned out that, in comparison with them, our life is not so sweet.
For instance, inhabitants of the Queensland state (Australia) say the most ancient tree, the macrotsamia, whose age not less than 12 thousand years, grows in this state... |
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| LIFE AFTER CATASTROPHE |
| Barren is a peak of a volcano that rose above the sea level and last erupted in 1991. The scientists discovered that the surface of the hardened lava that flowed out almost nine years ago was absolutely flat with a few patches of slag and ash here and there, its temperature being about 400C. |
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