Science News
clock | September 15, 2008A Morning-Specific Phytohormone Gene Expression Program underlying Rhythmic Plant Growth:
In plants, stems elongate faster at dawn. This time-of-day-specific growth is controlled by integration of environmental cues and the circadian clock. The specific effectors of growth in plants are the phytohormones: auxin, ethylene, gibberellins, abscisic acid, brassinosteroids, and cytokinins. Each phytohormone plays an independent as well as an overlapping role in growth, and understanding the interactions of the phytohormones has dominated plant research over the past century. The authors present a…
clock | September 15, 2008There are 9 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. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Snake Cathelicidin from Bungarus fasciatus Is a Potent Peptide Antibiotics:
Cathelicidins are a family of antimicrobial peptides acting as multifunctional effector molecules of innate immunity, which are firstly found in mammalians. Recently, several cathelicidins have also been found from chickens and fishes. No cathelicidins from other non-mammalian…
clock | September 15, 2008How Corals Adapt To Day And Night:
Researchers have uncovered a gene in corals that responds to day/night cycles, which provides some tantalizing clues into how symbiotic corals work together with their plankton partners. Corals are fascinating animals that form the largest biological constructions in the world, sprawling coral reefs that cover less than 0.2 % of the seafloor yet provide habitats for more than 30% of marine life. In shallow waters that don't have abundant food, corals have developed a close relationship with small photosynthetic critters called dinoflagellates.
Giant…
clock | September 14, 2008Photos Reveal Myanmar's Large And Small Predators:
Using remote camera traps to lift the veil on Myanmar's dense northern wild lands, researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society have painstakingly gathered a bank of valuable data on the country's populations of tigers and other smaller, lesser known carnivores (see photo attachments). These findings will help in the formulation of conservation strategies for the country's wildlife.
Erectile Dysfunction Related To Sleep Apnea May Persist, But Is Treatable:
For sufferers of sleep apnea, erectile dysfunction (ED) is often part of the…
clock | September 13, 2008Male-specific Neurons Directly Linked To Gender-specific Behaviors:
New research identifies a few critical neurons that initiate sex-specific behaviors in fruit flies and, when masculinized, can elicit male-typical courtship behaviors from females. The study, published by Cell Press in the September 11th issue of the journal Neuron, demonstrates a direct link between sexual dimorphism in the brain and gender differences in behavior.
My, What Big Teeth You Had! Extinct Species Had Huge Teeth On Roof Of Mouth:
When the world's land was congealed in one supercontinent 240 million years ago,…
clock | September 12, 2008There 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. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Circadian Control of the Daily Plasma Glucose Rhythm: An Interplay of GABA and Glutamate:
The mammalian biological clock, located in the hypothalamic suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN), imposes its temporal structure on the organism via neural and endocrine outputs. To further investigate SCN control of the autonomic nervous system we focused in the present…
clock | September 12, 2008Female Spiders Eat Small Males When They Mate:
Female spiders are voracious predators and consume a wide range of prey, which sometimes includes their mates. A number of hypotheses have been proposed for why females eat males before or after mating. Researchers Shawn Wilder and Ann Rypstra from Miami University in Ohio found that the answer may be simpler than previously thought. Males are more likely to be eaten if they are much smaller than females, which likely affects how easy they are to catch.
Cryopreservation Techniques Bring Hopes For Women Cancer Victims And Endangered Species:…
clock | September 11, 2008So, let's see what's new in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Pathogens and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases 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:
Is Mate Choice in Humans MHC-Dependent?:
There has been a longstanding hypothesis that selection may have led to mating patterns that encourage heterozygosity at Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) loci because of improved immune response to pathogens in the…
clock | September 11, 2008There 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. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Practice Makes Imperfect: Restorative Effects of Sleep on Motor Learning:
Emerging evidence suggests that sleep plays a key role in procedural learning, particularly in the continued development of motor skill learning following initial acquisition. We argue that a detailed examination of the time course of performance across sleep on the finger-tapping…
j7uy5 | September 11, 2008Geophysicists have
href="http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-09/whoi-m2e091008.php">issued
a warning, that the May earthquake in China has increased the
risk of a follow-up quake.
Geophysicists used computer models to calculate the
changes in stress along the Xianshuihe, Kunlun, and Min Jiang
faults—strike-slip faults like the San
Andreas—which lie about 150 to 450 kilometers (90 to 280
miles) from the Longmen Shan rupture that caused the devastating quake.
The research team also examined seismic activity in the region over the
past decade.
They found that the May 12 event…
clock | September 10, 2008There are 12 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. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Obesity as a Perceived Social Signal:
Fat accumulation has been classically considered as a means of energy storage. Obese people are theorized as metabolically 'thrifty', saving energy during times of food abundance. However, recent research has highlighted many neuro-behavioral and social aspects of obesity, with a suggestion that obesity, abdominal…
clock | September 10, 2008Anthropologists Develop New Approach To Explain Religious Behavior:
Without a way to measure religious beliefs, anthropologists have had difficulty studying religion. Now, two anthropologists from the University of Missouri and Arizona State University have developed a new approach to study religion by focusing on verbal communication, an identifiable behavior, instead of speculating about alleged beliefs in the supernatural that cannot actually be identified.
White Men Attach Greater Stigma To Mental Health Care:
Beyond financial and access barriers to mental health care, factors such as…
clock | September 9, 2008There are 12 new articles in PLoS ONE today. I guess picking all 12 would not really be 'picking'? But all 12 are interesting to me! OK, here are six, and you go and look at the other six as well. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers.
Social Waves in Giant Honeybees Repel Hornets:
Giant honeybees (Apis dorsata) nest in the open and have evolved a plethora of defence behaviors. Against predatory wasps, including hornets, they display highly coordinated Mexican wave-like cascades termed 'shimmering'. Shimmering…
clock | September 9, 2008Fake News Shows Don't Teach Viewers Much About Political Issues, Study Finds:
A new study suggests that entertainment news shows such as The Daily Show or The Colbert Report may not be as influential in teaching voters about political issues and candidates as was previously thought.
Discovery Challenges Fundamental Tenet Of Cancer Biology:
Yale researchers have identified an unusual molecular process in normal tissues that causes RNA molecules produced from separate genes to be clipped and stitched together.
Memory Enhanced By Sports-cheat Drug:
A drug used to increase blood production in…
clock | September 8, 2008Marijuana Ingredients Show Promise In Battling Superbugs:
Substances in marijuana show promise for fighting deadly drug-resistant bacterial infections, including so-called "superbugs," without causing the drug's mood-altering effects, scientists in Italy and the United Kingdom are reporting.
Can Science Improve Man's Best Friend?:
If you could design the perfect dog, what would it look like? Tall, short, fluffy, wiry, black, white, tan or brindle? While animal buyers often look closely at physical characteristics, behavioural traits can make the difference between a dog becoming a much loved…
clock | September 8, 2008There 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. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Nominalization and Alternations in Biomedical Language:
This paper presents data on alternations in the argument structure of common domain-specific verbs and their associated verbal nominalizations in the PennBioIE corpus. Alternation is the term in theoretical linguistics for variations in the surface syntactic form of verbs, e.g. the different forms of…
clock | September 7, 2008Long-held Assumptions Of Flightless Bird Evolution Challenged By New Research:
Large flightless birds of the southern continents - African ostriches, Australian emus and cassowaries, South American rheas and the New Zealand kiwi - do not share a common flightless ancestor as once believed. Instead, each species individually lost its flight after diverging from ancestors that did have the ability to fly, according to new research conducted in part by University of Florida zoology professor Edward Braun.
Artificial Meadows And Robot Spiders Reveal Secret Life Of Bees:
Many animals learn to…
clock | September 6, 2008Honest Lovers? Fallow Buck Groans Reveal Their Status And Size During The Rut:
It is known that the phonic structure of calls produced by males during the breeding season may signal quality-related characteristics in many different types of animals. Previous research on mammals has mainly focused on the relationship between the acoustic components of vocalizations and one aspect of male quality: body size.
Digitizing Archives From The 17th Century:
A researcher on a short trip to a foreign country, with little money, but a digital camera in hand has devised a novel approach to digitizing…
clock | September 5, 2008Thinking People Eat Too Much: Intellectual Work Found To Induce Excessive Calorie Intake:
A Universite Laval research team has demonstrated that intellectual work induces a substantial increase in calorie intake. The details of this discovery, which could go some way to explaining the current obesity epidemic, are published in the most recent issue of Psychosomatic Medicine.
Children With TVs Or Computers In Their Room Sleep Less:
Middle school children who have a television or computer in their room sleep less during the school year, watch more TV, play more computer games and surf the net…
clock | September 5, 2008There are 9 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. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Sampling for Global Epidemic Models and the Topology of an International Airport Network:
Mathematical models that describe the global spread of infectious diseases such as influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and tuberculosis (TB) often consider a sample of international airports as a network supporting disease spread. However, there is no…