Science News
clock | April 30, 2008There are 49 new articles in PLoS ONE this week. Here are some titles I found interesting:
Echolocating Bats Cry Out Loud to Detect Their Prey:
Echolocating bats have successfully exploited a broad range of habitats and prey. Much research has demonstrated how time-frequency structure of echolocation calls of different species is adapted to acoustic constraints of habitats and foraging behaviors. However, the intensity of bat calls has been largely neglected although intensity is a key factor determining echolocation range and interactions with other bats and prey. Differences in detection…
clock | April 30, 2008Single-celled Bacterium Works 24/7:
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have gained the first detailed insight into the way circadian rhythms govern global gene expression in Cyanothece, a type of cyanobacterium (blue-green algae) known to cycle between photosynthesis during the day and nitrogen fixation at night.
How Birds Navigate: Research Team Is First To Model Photochemical Compass:
It has long been known that birds and many other animals including turtles, salamanders and lobsters, use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate, but the nature of their global positioning…
clock | April 29, 2008Birds Can Detect Predators Using Smell:
Many animal species detect and avoid predators by smell, but this ability has largely been ignored in the study of birds, since it was traditionally thought that they did not make use of this sense. However, it has now been discovered that birds are not only capable of discerning their enemies through chemical signals, but that they also alter their behaviour depending on the perceived level of risk of predation.
Help For Insomnia Patients? Different Processes Govern Sight, Light Detection:
A Johns Hopkins University biologist, in research with…
clock | April 29, 2008Why We Sleep: The Temporal Organization of Recovery:
"If sleep does not serve an absolutely vital function, then it is the biggest mistake the evolutionary process has ever made," Allan Rechtschaffen said. Studies of sleep and sleep deprivation suggest that the functions of sleep include recovery at the cellular, network, and endocrine system levels, energy conservation and ecological adaptations, and a role in learning and synaptic plasticity.
One Rhodopsin per Photoreceptor: Iro-C Genes Break the Rule:
A long-standing general principle in vision research holds that single photoreceptors…
clock | April 26, 2008Early Human Populations Evolved Separately For 100,000 Years:
A team of Genographic researchers and their collaborators have published the most extensive survey to date of African mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Over 600 complete mtDNA genomes from indigenous populations across the continent were analyzed by the scientists, led by Doron Behar, Genographic Associate Researcher, based at Rambam Medical Center, Haifa, and Saharon Rosset of IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, NY and Tel Aviv University. Analyses of the extensive data presented in this study provide surprising insights into the early…
clock | April 24, 2008Nurture Over Nature: Certain Genes Are Turned On Or Off By Geography And Lifestyle, Study Suggests:
Score one for the nurture side of the nature vs. nurture debate, as North Carolina State University geneticists have shown that environmental factors such as lifestyle and geography play a large role in whether certain genes are turned on or off. By studying gene expression of white blood cells in 46 Moroccan Amazighs, or Berbers - including desert nomads, mountain agrarians and coastal urban dwellers - the NC State researchers and collaborators in Morocco and the United States showed that up…
clock | April 23, 2008There are 41 new articles published this week in PLoS ONE. A always, make comments and ratings while browsing and reading the articles. Here are just a few picks - titles I found interesting - but you should go and check all the others as well:
Nutrition or Detoxification: Why Bats Visit Mineral Licks of the Amazonian Rainforest:
Many animals in the tropics of Africa, Asia and South America regularly visit so-called salt or mineral licks to consume clay or drink clay-saturated water. Whether this behavior is used to supplement diets with locally limited nutrients or to buffer the effects of…
clock | April 23, 2008Life Expectancy Worsening Or Stagnating For Large Segment Of U.S. Population:
One of the major aims of the U.S. health system is improving the health of all people, particularly those segments of the population at greater risk of health disparities. In fact, overall life expectancy in the U.S. increased more than seven years for men and more than six years for women between 1960 and 2000. Now, a new, long-term study of mortality trends in U.S. counties over the same four decades reports a troubling finding: These gains are not reaching many parts of the country; rather, the life expectancy of…
clock | April 22, 2008Mutations in a Novel, Cryptic Exon of the Luteinizing Hormone/Chorionic Gonadotropin Receptor Gene Cause Male Pseudohermaphroditism:
A person's sex is determined by their complement of X and Y (sex) chromosomes. Someone who has two X chromosomes is genetically female and usually has ovaries and female external sex organs. Someone who has an X and a Y chromosome is genetically male and has testes and male external sex organs. Sometimes, though, the development of the reproductive organs proceeds abnormally, resulting in a person with an "intersex" condition whose chromosomes, gonads (ovaries…
clock | April 22, 2008Neanderthals Speak Again After 30,000 Years:
Dr. Robert McCarthy, an assistant professor of anthropology in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters at Florida Atlantic University, has reconstructed vocal tracts that simulate the sound of the Neanderthal voice.
Slowly-developing Primates Definitely Not Dim-witted:
Some primates have evolved big brains because their extra brainpower helps them live and reproduce longer, an advantage that outweighs the demands of extra years of growth and development they spend reaching adulthood, anthropologists from Duke University and the…
clock | April 20, 2008Mighty Microbes: Bacteria Filaments Can Bundle Together And Move Objects 100,000 Times Bacterium's Body Weight:
Researchers from The University of Arizona and Columbia University have discovered that tiny filaments on bacteria can bundle together and pull with forces far stronger than experts had previously thought possible.
Work Hassles Hamper Sleep, Study Shows:
Common hassles at work are more likely than long hours, night shifts or job insecurity to follow workers home and interfere with their sleep. That's the conclusion of a University of Michigan study presented April 17 at the annual…
clock | April 18, 2008Clues To Ancestral Origin Of Placenta Emerge In Genetics Study:
Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have uncovered the first clues about the ancient origins of a mother's intricate lifeline to her unborn baby, the placenta, which delivers oxygen and nutrients critical to the baby's health.
Lizards Undergo Rapid Evolution After Introduction To A New Home:
In 1971, biologists moved five adult pairs of Italian wall lizards from their home island of Pod Kopiste, in the South Adriatic Sea, to the neighboring island of Pod Mrcaru. Now, an international team of researchers has…
clock | April 16, 2008We were too busy to notice, but apparently, PLoS ONE reached a new milestone this week - the 2000th article! Wow! That's a lot!
This week we have a new Journal Club, already getting lively so you should all picth in and add your comments to the discussion. It is on the article on human evolution: Identifying Selected Regions from Heterozygosity and Divergence Using a Light-Coverage Genomic Dataset from Two Human Populations and the commentary can be found here.
And here are some titles from this week's crop that got my attention - the first one listed being the first Taxonomy article ever…
clock | April 16, 2008Antioxidant Users Don't Live Longer, Analysis Of Studies Concludes:
The vitamin industry has long touted antioxidants as a way to improve health by filling in gaps in diet, but a new review of studies found no evidence that the nutrition supplements extend life. Worse, the review authors said that some antioxidants could increase risk for death.
Researchers Mimic Bacteria To Produce Magnetic Nanoparticles:
When it comes to designing something, it's hard to find a better source of inspiration than Mother Nature. Using that principle, a diverse, interdisciplinary group of researchers at the U.…
j7uy5 | April 15, 2008Here at ScienceBlogs, we've regularly posted about the thorny issue of
antibiotic overuse, and the subsequent antibiotic resistance.
This is a good example of evolution in action; it's also a
good reason why we need to study and understand evolution.
But antibiotic resistance is not the only such example. The
same principle applies to herbicides and weeds.
Naturally, a good example comes to us courtesy of
href="http://www.monsanto.com/" rel="tag">Monsanto,
the company that
href="http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805?printable=true¤tPage=all…
clock | April 14, 2008Insects Evolved Radically Different Strategy To Smell:
Darwin's tree of life represents the path and estimates the time evolution took to get to the current diversity of life. Now, new findings suggest that this tree, an icon of evolution, may need to be redrawn. In research to be published in the April 13 advance online issue of Nature, researchers at Rockefeller University and the University of Tokyo have joined forces to reveal that insects have adopted a strategy to detect odors that is radically different from those of other organisms -- an unexpected and controversial finding that may…
clock | April 13, 2008Shift Work Linked To Organ Disease, Study Suggests:
Disruption of an individual's natural sleep-wake cycle has been determined to be a contributing factor in the development of organ disease. The findings of U of T researchers were recently published in the Journal of American Physiology.
Mass Media Campaigns Can Convince Young Adults To Adopt Safer Sex Practices, Study Shows:
-- Two University of Kentucky researchers from the department of communication in the UK College of Communications and Information Studies have learned that targeted mass media campaigns alone can be effective in…
clock | April 11, 2008Massive Study Of Madagascar Wildlife Leads To New Conservation Roadmap:
An international team of researchers has developed a remarkable new roadmap for finding and protecting the best remaining holdouts for thousands of rare species that live only in Madagascar, considered one of the most significant biodiversity hot spots in the world.
Flowers' Fragrance Diminished By Air Pollution, Study Indicates:
Air pollution from power plants and automobiles is destroying the fragrance of flowers and thereby inhibiting the ability of pollinating insects to follow scent trails to their source, a new…
clock | April 11, 2008There are 39 new articles in PLoS ONE this week - here are my picks and you go and look around for more:
The Cayman Crab Fly Revisited -- Phylogeny and Biology of Drosophila endobranchia:
The majority of all known drosophilid flies feed on microbes. The wide spread of microorganisms consequently mean that drosophilids also can be found on a broad range of substrates. One of the more peculiar types of habitat is shown by three species of flies that have colonized land crabs. In spite of their intriguing lifestyle, the crab flies have remained poorly studied. Perhaps the least investigated of…
evolgen | April 9, 2008PLoS Biology's press releases have taken another step toward being dismissed as "crap" by people who know jack shit about evolution, thanks to a new press release published last week.
It starts off like so:
Evolution has taken another step away from being dismissed as "a theory" in the classroom, thanks to a new paper published this week in the online open-access journal PLoS Biology.
And goes on like this:
As all students of Darwin know, evolution occurs when there is variation in a population; where some variants confer a survival or reproductive advantage to the individual, and where the…