Science News
clock | March 26, 2009Let's see what's new in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Pathogens and PLoS ONE this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Association of Tinnitus and Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity: Hints for a Shared Pathophysiology?:
Tinnitus is a frequent condition with high morbidity and impairment in quality of life. The pathophysiology is still incompletely understood. Electromagnetic fields are discussed to be involved in…
clock | March 25, 2009Wild Bees Can Be Effective Pollinators:
Over the past few years, honey bee keepers have experienced problems due to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which has hurt honey bee populations, causing some growers of fruits, nuts and vegetables to wonder how their crops will be pollinated in the future.
Bees Prefer Shortest Distance Between Two Flowers:
Insects such as honeybees and bumble bees are predictable in the way they move among flowers, typically moving directly from one flower to an adjacent cluster of flowers in the same row of plants. The bees' flight paths have a direct affect on their…
clock | March 25, 2009There are 8 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
A Dance to the Music of Time: Aesthetically-Relevant Changes in Body Posture in Performing Art:
In performing arts, body postures are both means for expressing an artist's intentions, and also artistic objects,…
clock | March 25, 2009In Horse Play, Adult-to-young Ratio Is Key:
Adults of many animal species play a crucial role in the social development of youngsters. A new study reveals that the ratio of adults to young plays a much more important role in social development than the mere presence of adults.
Triceratops Was A Social Animal, Group Of Dinosaur Fossils Suggests:
Until now, Triceratops was thought to be unusual among its ceratopsid relatives. While many ceratopsids--a common group of herbivorous dinosaurs that lived toward the end of the Cretaceous--have been found in enormous bonebed deposits of multiple…
clock | March 24, 2009There are 14 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Light-Induced Fos Expression in Intrinsically Photosensitive Retinal Ganglion Cells in Melanopsin Knockout (Opn4â/â) Mice:
Retinal ganglion cells that express the photopigment melanopsin are intrinsically…
clock | March 24, 2009Groups Share Information In Workplace, But Not The 'Right' Information:
From the operating room to the executive board room, the benefits of working in teams have long been touted. But a new analysis of 22 years of applied psychological research shows that teams tend to discuss information they already know and that "talkier" teams are less effective.
Racial Biases Fade Away Toward Members Of Your Own Group:
White people don't show hints of unconscious bias against blacks who belong to the same group as them, a new study suggests. But this lack of bias only applied to black people in their…
clock | March 23, 2009Open Revolution:
In 2001, Charles Vest, then President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, announced that MIT would make most of its course material freely available online. Browsing the Web site of MIT's Open Courseware (OCW) project (http://ocw.mit.edu), you feel the stirring of a "my God, it's full of stars" transformation: you can borrow material for your courses, study other teachers' teaching methods, maybe even retake college courses you regret having slept through! Remarkably, OCW is just one highly visible part of an "open education movement." The essays collected in…
clock | March 23, 2009There are 13 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Expert Financial Advice Neurobiologically 'Offloads' Financial Decision-Making under Risk:
Financial advice from experts is commonly sought during times of uncertainty. While the field of neuroeconomics has made…
clock | March 23, 2009Effects Of Stress Last For Life In Birds:
Researchers have discovered the first direct evidence that exposure to stress in young birds affects the way they react to stress when adult. This research, presented at the Society for Endocrinology BES meeting in Harrogate, greatly improves our understanding of how the environment during development influences birds' subsequent physiology, health and survival.
Gliding Bristletails Give Clues On Evolution Of Flight:
Dr. Stephen P. Yanoviak of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has published new research in the Royal Society's Biology Letters…
clock | March 22, 2009Ticking Of Body's 24-hour Clock Turns Gears Of Metabolism And Aging:
All animals, including humans, have an internal 24-hour clock or circadian rhythm that creates a daily oscillation of body temperature, brain activity, hormone production and metabolism. Studying mice, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Northwestern University found how the biological circadian clock mechanism communicates with processes that govern aging and metabolism.
Is Parenting A Joy Or A Trial?:
As the nation prepares to celebrate motherhood, a University of York economist is…
clock | March 21, 2009Fossil Fragments Reveal 500-million-year-old Monster Predator:
Hurdia victoria was originally described in 1912 as a crustacean-like animal. Now, researchers from Uppsala University and colleagues reveal it to be just one part of a complex and remarkable new animal that has an important story to tell about the origin of the largest group of living animals, the arthropods.
Not All Bats Land The Same Way:
People have always been fascinated by bats, but the scope of that interest generally is limited to how bats fly and their bizarre habit of sleeping upside down. Until now, no one had studied…
clock | March 20, 2009Is The Hippopotamus The Closest Living Relative To The Whale?:
Hippos spend lots of time in the water and now it turns out (or researchers argue), they are the closest living relative to whales. It also turns out, the two are swimming in a bit of controversy. Jessica Theodor, an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Calgary, and her colleague Jonathan Geisler, associate professor at Georgia Southern University are disputing a recent study that creates a different family tree for the hippo.
Female Mammals Follow Their Noses To The Right Mates:
Female…
clock | March 19, 2009So, let's see what's new in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Pathogens and PLoS ONE this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Robust Food Anticipatory Activity in BMAL1-Deficient Mice:
Food availability is a potent environmental cue that directs circadian locomotor activity in rodents. Even though nocturnal rodents prefer to forage at night, daytime food anticipatory activity (FAA) is observed prior to short meals…
clock | March 19, 2009Missing Piece Of Plant Clock Found:
Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have identified a key protein that links the morning and evening components of the daily biological clock of plants. Their discovery, detailed in the March 13 issue of Science, solves a longstanding puzzle about the underlying biochemical mechanisms that control plant clocks and could provide a new way to increase the growth and yield of agricultural crops.
Long, Sexy Tails Not A Drag On Male Birds:
The long tails sported by many male birds in the tropics look like they're a drag to carry around and a…
clock | March 18, 2009There are 11 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Is the New Primate Genus Rungwecebus a Baboon?:
In 2005, a new primate species from Tanzania, the kipunji, was described and recognized as a member of the mangabey genus Lophocebus. However, molecular investigations…
clock | March 18, 2009Mini Dinosaurs Prowled North America:
Massive predators like Albertosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex may have been at the top of the food chain, but they were not the only meat-eating dinosaurs to roam North America, according to Canadian researchers who have discovered the smallest dinosaur species on the continent to date. Their work is also helping re-draw the picture of North America's ecosystem at the height of the dinosaur age 75 million years ago.
Where Does Consciousness Come From?:
Consciousness arises as an emergent property of the human mind. Yet basic questions about the precise…
clock | March 17, 2009There are 17 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Adult-Young Ratio, a Major Factor Regulating Social Behaviour of Young: A Horse Study:
Adults play an important role in regulating the social behaviour of young individuals. However, a few pioneer studies suggest…
clock | March 17, 2009There are 20 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
The Spatial and Temporal Construction of Confidence in the Visual Scene:
Human subjects can report many items of a cluttered field a few hundred milliseconds after stimulus presentation. This memory decays rapidly…
clock | March 17, 2009Young Dinosaurs Roamed Together, Died Together:
A herd of young birdlike dinosaurs met their death on the muddy margins of a lake some 90 million years ago, according to a team of Chinese and American paleontologists that excavated the site in the Gobi Desert in western Inner Mongolia.
Female Birds 'Jam' Their Mates' Flirtatious Songs:
When a single female is nearby, female antbirds will sing over the songs of their male partners in an apparent attempt to keep their messages from getting through, according to a new report published online on March 12th in Current Biology. Males respond to…
clock | March 16, 2009The Implications of Multiple Circadian Clock Origins:
In the Beginning...
Genetics has had an awesome impact on our understanding of basic processes like circadian rhythms, which were mysterious before the incredibly successful marriage between genetics and recombinant DNA technology about 30 years ago. Subsequent to the pioneering work of Konopka and Benzer [1], genetic screens and DNA sequencing in multiple systems (including but not limited to humans, mice, Drosophila, Neurospora, plants, and cyanobacteria) identified many circadian genes as well as their protein sequences. Coupled with…