fruit
dr. dolittle | February 28, 2014 Artist's rendition of dendrite regeneration in a fruit fly during metamorphosis. (Chay Kuo Lab, Duke University)
Researchers at Duke University are interested in understanding the metamorphosis of fruit flies from larvae to adult stage in an effort to understand how the insects grow new nerve endings as they undergo this transition. What is interesting is that the flies lose neurons they will not need as an adult and will grow new nerve endings. According to a press release from Duke University, a protein called Cysteine proteinase-1 (Cp1) is important in the regeneration step. In fact,…
esiegel | June 24, 2012"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made." -Groucho Marx
Now that the solstice is behind us and summer is officially here (for most of us), it's time to start enjoying the greatest fruits of the season. With the technical difficulties of the great scienceblogs migration (hopefully) behind us, I think I've discovered how to successfully bring a weekly song back to my weekend posts, too! Have a listen to Aimee Mann as she sings one of my favorites of hers,
Little Bombs.
Out where I live, in Oregon, now is the season that one of my favorite fruits…
gregladen | May 28, 2012First, I want to say that tomatoes are a fruit. Here is a scientific definition of fruit:
Fruit noun, plural: fruits
(1) (botany) The seed-bearing structure in angiosperms formed from the ovary after flowering.
source
See? Tomato is a fruit.
Having said that, in common English parlance we do not call a tomato a fruit. We put the tomatoes in with the vegetables. Is this because we are unknowledgeable? No. It is because we are wise. Anyone who reads Fortune Cookies knows this:
Knowledge is knowing that a Tomato is a Fruit. Wisdom is not putting a Tomato in the Fruit Salad.
There are two…
sastyk | October 11, 2011The first "seed" catalogs of the year are always the tree catalogs, and now is a good time to begin siting and planning for next year's tree stock. We try to add trees to our home orchard every single year, sometimes just a couple, sometimes more.
Now with 27 acres, it may seem that our choices are very different than yours, but in fact, with a large herd of goats, the areas that we can ensure are 100% goat-proof are no larger than many people's good-sized yards. Moreover, because of our cold climate, we have to site many of our most sensitive trees and shrubs in an area the smaller than…
sastyk | August 15, 2011Some parents are soccer parents. Some parents are baseball or gymnastics parents. Some drive constantly to swim, cheer, play volleyball or cricket. My kids do swim, play basketball in winter and pick-up baseball anytime, but our primary family sport is fruit picking.
Historically speaking, berrying is children's work - one sent the kids out into the woods for the afternoon and if they are not eaten by bears (think _Blueberries for Sal_, _Farmer Boy_, and other classic treatments of the "meet the bear in the woods while berrying") they come back with a pail of berries for canning.
We, of…
cagapakis | September 7, 2010A delightful lunch conversation about fruits introduced me to what may be my new favorite symbiotic relationship! Figs are not actually fruits but a mass of inverted flowers and seeds that are pollinated by a species of tiny symbiotic wasps. The male fig flower is the only place where the female wasp can lay her eggs, at the bottom of a narrow opening in the fruit that she shimmies her way through. The baby wasps mature inside the fig into males that have sharp teeth but no wings and females ready to fly. They mate, the males chew through the special fig pollen holders and drop them down to…
oracknows | April 8, 2010Eat your fruits and vegetables.
Hasn't that been a constant refrain over the years from public health authorities? Certainly, I have. The benefits of eating fruits and vegetables have been widely touted, and seemingly with good reason. A diet high in fruits and vegetables, it is said, reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer. In the case of the latter, it as claimed that potential decreases in the risks of some cancers could be as high as 50% a day. As a result, the National Cancer Institute developed the 5-A-Day program, whose goal was to increase people's consumption of fruits…