New Genus Of Frogmouth Bird Discovered In Solomon Islands:
Your bird field guide may be out of date now that University of Florida scientists discovered a new genus of frogmouth bird on a South Pacific island. New genera of living birds are rare discoveries -- fewer than one per year is announced globally. David Steadman and Andrew Kratter, ornithologists at the Florida Museum of Natural History, turned up the surprising new discovery on a collecting expedition in the Solomon Islands. Theirs is the first frogmouth from these islands to be caught by scientists in more than 100 years. They immediately recognized it was something different.
Dogs Lived 1.8 Years Longer On Low Calorie Diet: Gut Flora May Explain It:
Changes caused to bugs in the gut by restricting calorie intake may partly explain why dietary restriction can extend lifespan, according to new analysis from a life-long project looking at the effects of dietary restriction on Labrador Retriever dogs. Bugs in the gut are known as gut microbes and they live symbiotically in human and animal bodies, playing an important role in metabolism. Abnormalities in some types of gut microbes have recently been linked to diseases such as diabetes and obesity.
Monkeys' Ability To Reflect On Their Thoughts May Have Implications For Infants, Autistic Children:
New research from Columbia's Primate Cognition Laboratory has demonstrated for the first time that monkeys could acquire meta-cognitive skills: the ability to reflect about their thoughts and to assess their performance.
Lily Of The Valley Fragrance: Determining Interactions With Scent Receptors:
esearchers have attempted a "scent prediction" to test their computer model of lily-of-the-valley fragrance receptor hOR17-4. This molecule was characterized in detail as the first human scent receptor by Hatt and his co-workers, who also discovered it in sperm.
Strawberry Daiquiris: The Extra-healthy Cocktail?:
Strawberries are good for you, but serving them in daiquiri form may make them even healthier, scientists show. While exploring ways to help keep strawberries fresh during storage, researchers from Thailand and the US discovered that treating the berries with alcohol led to an increase in antioxidant capacity and free radical scavenging activity within the fruit. While such a boost helped the berries resist decay, the same compounds would also be expected to make the strawberries healthier to eat.
Human-chimp Gene Study Upsets Long-held View:
Put a human and a chimpanzee side by side, and it seems obvious which lineage has changed the most since the two diverged from a common ancestor millions of years ago. Such apparent physical differences, along with human speech, language and brainpower, have led many people to believe that natural selection has acted in a positive manner on more genes in humans than in chimps. But new research at the University of Michigan challenges that human-centered view. "We often think that we're unique and superior to other species, so there must be a lot of Darwinian selection behind our origin," said Jianzhi (George) Zhang, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. "However, we found that more genes have undergone positive selection in chimpanzee evolution than in human evolution."
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