Science News
clock | March 16, 2009Children As Young As Preschoolers Tend To Follow Majority Opinion:
When we are faced with a decision, and we're not sure what to do, usually we'll just go with the majority opinion. When do we begin adopting this strategy of "following the crowd"? In a new report in Psychological Science psychologists Kathleen H. Corriveau, Maria Fusaro, and Paul L. Harris of Harvard University describe experiments suggesting that this tendency starts very early on, around preschool age.
Your Looks, Creditworthiness May Go Hand In Hand, At Least In The Eyes Of Some Lenders:
New research suggests that a person…
clock | March 14, 2009Fridges And Washing Machines Liberated Women, Study Suggests:
The advent of modern appliances such as washing machines and refrigerators had a profound impact on 20th Century society, according to a new Université de Montréal study. Plug-in conveniences transformed women's lives and enabled them to enter the workforce, says Professor Emanuela Cardia, from the Department of Economics.
Human-generated Sounds May Be Killing Fish:
Anthropogenic, or human generated, sounds have the potential to significantly affect the lives of aquatic animals - from the individual animal's well-being, right…
clock | March 13, 2009There are 24 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:
Regulation of Clock-Controlled Genes in Mammals:
The complexity of tissue- and day time-specific regulation of thousands of clock-controlled genes (CCGs) suggests that many regulatory mechanisms contribute to the…
clock | March 13, 2009What I Was Doing Vs. What I Did: How Verb Aspect Influences Memory And Behavior:
If you want to perform at your peak, you should carefully consider how you discuss your past actions. In a new study in Psychological Science, psychologists William Hart of the University of Florida and Dolores AlbarracaÂn from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reveal that the way a statement is phrased (and specifically, how the verbs are used), affects our memory of an event being described and may also influence our behavior.
American Adults Flunk Basic Science:
Are Americans flunking science? A…
clock | March 12, 2009So, let's see what's new in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computational Biology and PLoS Pathogens 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:
Abnormal Brain Iron Homeostasis in Human and Animal Prion Disorders:
Prion disorders are neurodegenerative conditions of humans and animals that are invariably fatal. The main agent responsible for neurotoxicity in all prion disorders is PrP-scrapie (PrPSc), a β-sheet rich isoform of a normal cell-…
clock | March 12, 2009There are 10 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:
Cage Matching: Head to Head Competition Experiments of an Invasive Plant Species from Different Regions as a Means to Test for Differentiation:
Many hypotheses are prevalent in the literature predicting why some…
clock | March 12, 2009First Right Whale Sedation Enables Disentanglement Effort:
For the first time ever, rescuers used a new sedation delivery system to help free an entangled North Atlantic right whale. The new system was developed at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in collaboration with NOAA and the Univ. of Florida and the Univ. of Wisconsin veterinary schools to make the animals more approachable by rescue boats.
Biologists Find World-record Colony Of Amoeba Clones In Texas Cow Pasture:
A Rice University study of microbes from a Houston-area cow pasture has confirmed once again that everything is bigger…
clock | March 11, 2009Check out the SEEDMAGAZINE.COM. W00t! Looks nifty!
What they say:
Our online magazine team has been hard at work creating a new look for SEEDMAGAZINE.COM, the magazine's homepage. As you'll see, it has a ton of new features and pretty new colors.
The content of the site is now divided into four departments with subcategories in each, which makes for a total of 11 areas of coverage. The departments are: World (politics, development and environment), Ideas (findings and theory), Innovation (technology, design and business) and Culture (books, art and events). You can go straight to one…
clock | March 11, 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:
Buying Years to Extinction: Is Compensatory Mitigation for Marine Bycatch a Sufficient Conservation Measure for Long-Lived Seabirds?:
Along the lines of the 'polluter pays principle', it has recently been proposed…
clock | March 11, 2009American Carnivores Evolved To Avoid Each Other, New Study Suggests:
How do the many carnivorous animals of the Americas avoid competing for the same lunch, or becoming each other's meal? A possible answer comes from a new study by a pair of researchers at the University of California, Davis. Their large-scale analysis shows that it's not just chance that's at play, but avoidance strategies themselves that have been a driving force in the evolution of many carnivores, influencing such factors as whether species are active daytime or nighttime, whether they inhabit forests or grasslands, or…
clock | March 10, 2009I know, I know, I've been traveling so I've been remiss at highlighting the best new articles over the past few days. In the meantime, we published 25 new articles on Friday night, 29 new articles last night, and 30 new articles tonight in PLoS ONE. So, there is a whole lot of them to check out, and as always, I will showcase below some of the stunningly good ones and some I personally am interested in. 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 (…
clock | March 10, 2009Could not resist....
Network Features of the Mammalian Circadian Clock:
The circadian clock is the biological clock found throughout the body that coordinates the timing of molecular and cellular processes on a 24-hour rhythm. It is composed of numerous transcription factors that feed back and control their own expression. To explore how the clock functions in the face of genetic perturbations, we disrupted its function by knocking down gene expression of known clock genes in a dose-dependent fashion. We measured the expression of clock genes following knockdown and constructed perturbation-…
clock | March 8, 2009Daytime Sleepiness Provides Red Flag For Cardiovascular Disease:
Clinicians should be alert to patients reporting "excessive" day time sleepiness (EDS), says the European Society of Cardiology, after a French study found healthy elderly people who regularly report feeling sleepy during the day have a significantly higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.
Virtual And Real Worlds: Two Worlds Of Kids' Morals:
Children's moral behavior and attitudes in the real world largely carry over to the virtual world of computers, the Internet, video games and cell phones. Interestingly, there are…
clock | March 7, 2009How Moths Key Into Scent Of A Flower:
Moths need just the essence of a flower's scent to identify it, according to new research from The University of Arizona in Tucson. Although a flower's odor can be composed of hundreds of chemicals, a moth uses just a handful to recognize the flower.
Naked Mole Rats May Hold Clues To Successful Aging:
Naked mole rats resemble pink, wrinkly, saber-toothed sausages and would never win a beauty contest, even among other rodents. But these natives of East Africa are the champs for longevity among rodents, living nine times longer than similar-sized mice. Not…
clock | March 6, 2009Climate Change Affecting Europe's Birds Now, Say Researchers:
Climate change is already having a detectable impact on birds across Europe, says a Durham University and RSPB-led scientific team publishing their findings to create the world's first indicator of the climate change impacts on wildlife at a continental scale.
Diversity Of Birds Buffer Against West Nile Virus:
North American scientists studying West Nile virus have shown that more diverse bird populations can help to buffer people against infection. Since the virus first spread to North America it has reached epidemic proportions…
clock | March 5, 2009Lemurs: Secret Social Drama Among Humanity's Distant Cousins:
The guys were all stressed out. There were new infants in the community, and the guys knew from experience that that's when invaders were likely to come and kill the babies, particularly the male infants.
Birds Move North With Climate Change:
For the first time, researchers have documented a shift in breeding ranges for northerly species in North America. The study parallels findings in Europe.
Tropical Lizards Can't Take The Heat Of Climate Warming:
From geckos and iguanas to Gila monsters and Komodo dragons, lizards are among the…
clock | March 4, 2009First Fossil Brain: Shark Relative That Lived 300 Million Years Ago Yields Very Rare Specimen:
A 300-million-year-old brain of a relative of sharks and ratfish has been revealed by French and American scientists using synchrotron holotomography at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). It is the first time that the soft tissue of such an old fossil brain has ever been found.
Evidence Appears To Show How And Where Brain's Frontal Lobe Works:
A Brown University study of stroke victims has produced evidence that the frontal lobe of the human brain controls decision-making along a…
clock | March 3, 2009There are 16 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.
First, one for our new Palaeontology Collection:
Bird-Like Anatomy, Posture, and Behavior Revealed by an Early Jurassic Theropod Dinosaur Resting Trace:
Fossil tracks made by non-avian theropod dinosaurs commonly…
clock | March 3, 2009One-third Of Americans Lose Sleep Over Economy:
One-third of Americans are losing sleep over the state of the U.S. economy and other personal financial concerns, according to a new poll released today by the National Sleep Foundation (NSF). The poll suggests that inadequate sleep is associated with unhealthy lifestyles and negatively impacts health and safety.
Genes Important To Sleep Discovered:
For many animals, sleep is a risk: foraging for food, mingling with mates and guarding against predators just aren't possible while snoozing. How, then, has this seemingly life-threatening behavior…
clock | March 2, 2009Underlying Sleep Problem Linked To Attention-deficit/hyperactivity Disorder In Children:
A study in the March 1 issue of the journal SLEEP suggests the presence of an intrinsic sleep problem specific to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and supports the idea that children with ADHD may be chronically sleep deprived and have abnormal REM sleep.
Butterfly Found To Be New Species, Because Of Its Mustache:
After nearly a century in the Natural History Museum collections, a new butterfly species has been discovered because of its mustache.
Coffee Cultivation Good For Diversity In…