Science News
clock | December 30, 2007Adult Male Chimpanzees Don't Stray Far From The Home:
When it comes to choosing a place to live, male chimpanzees in the wild don't stray far from home, according to a new report. The researchers found that adult male chimps out on their own tend to follow in their mother's footsteps, spending their days in the same familiar haunts where they grew up. Male chimpanzees are generally very social, but how they use space when they are alone might be critical to their survival, the researchers said.
Solving Another Mystery Of An Amazing Water Walker:
Walking on water may seem like a miracle to…
clock | December 29, 2007Two grape genomes were published this year, one in Nature, the other in PLoS ONE. Larry Moran explains the methodologies and results of both and discusses the trustworthiness of each. The Nature paper is explained in The Grapevine Genome, and the PLoS ONE paper is discussed in The Second Grapevine Genome Is Published. Obligatory Readings of the Day.
clock | December 28, 2007On Fridays, I take a look at what's new in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, Pathogens, Computational Biology and Genetics. Here are some of my picks for this week:
Neglected Diseases and Poverty in "The Other America": The Greatest Health Disparity in the United States?:
Large numbers of the poorest Americans living in the United States are suffering from some of the same parasitic infections that affect the poor in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
The Long and Thorny Road to Publication in Quality Journals:
Within the "Ten Simple Rules" series in PLoS Computational Biology, Dr. Bourne…
clock | December 27, 2007There are 30 new articles in PLoS ONE this week. Here are my picks:
Ultrasonic Communication in Rats: Can Playback of 50-kHz Calls Induce Approach Behavior?:
Rats emit distinct types of ultrasonic vocalizations, which differ depending on age, the subject's current state and environmental factors. Since it was shown that 50-kHz calls can serve as indices of the animal's positive subjective state, they have received increasing experimental attention, and have successfully been used to study neurobiological mechanisms of positive affect. However, it is likely that such calls do not only reflect…
clock | December 27, 2007Songbirds Offer Clues To Highly Practiced Motor Skills In Humans:
The melodious sound of a songbird may appear effortless, but his elocutions are actually the result of rigorous training undergone in youth and maintained throughout adulthood. His tune has virtually "crystallized" by maturity. The same control is seen in the motor performance of top athletes and musicians. Yet, subtle variations in highly practiced skills persist in both songbirds and humans. Now, scientists think they know why.
Scientist On Quest For Disappearing Eel:
A Queen's environmental scientist will head a new…
clock | December 27, 2007Lots of good stuff in PLoS Biology this week:
Cognitive Dimensions of Predator Responses to Imperfect Mimicry:
Many palatable animals, for example hoverflies, deter predators by mimicking well-defended insects such as wasps. However, for human observers, these flies often seem to be little better than caricatures of wasps--their visual appearance and behaviour are easily distinguishable from those which they are attempting to mimic. This imperfect mimicry baffles evolutionary biologists, because one might expect natural selection to do a more thorough job. Here we discuss two types of…
clock | December 24, 2007Study Of Bear Hair Will Reveal Genetic Diversity Of Yellowstone's Grizzlies:
Locks of hair from more than 400 grizzly bears are stored at Montana State University, waiting to tell the tale of genetic diversity in the Yellowstone Ecosystem.
My friend Tim Langer has done a very similar study here in North Carolina.
Squirrels Use Old Snake Skins To Mask Their Scent From Predators:
California ground squirrels and rock squirrels chew up rattlesnake skin and smear it on their fur to mask their scent from predators, according to a new study by researchers at UC Davis.
Anne-Marie has more.
Pinot Noir…
j7uy5 | December 23, 2007Roche
Molecular Diagnostics offers a test that can determine which
type of genes a person has for enzymes that metabolize antidepressant
medication. The test costs $ 300 to $400, and can be ordered
by healthcare professionals, or by consumers.
The idea is that it might be possible to predict which medications
might be better for a particular patient. That has appeal,
because many people have to try more than one medication in the quest
to find one that is both tolerable and effective.
If a person metabolizes a drug much more rapidly than most
people, then that person might need a higher…
clock | December 22, 2007On Pilobolous:
When I first wrote my post on Pilobolus (here and here) I really wanted to do something extra, which I could not do at the time. If you scroll down that post, you will see I reprinted the Figure 1 from the Uebelmesser paper. What I wanted to do was find (and I asked around for something like that) the exact times of dawn and dusk at the site where Uebelmesser did her work and thus be able to figure out the dates when the tests were done and the exact phase-relationship between the dawn and the time when Pilobolus shoots its spores.
Now, I see that such a chart exists (via) and…
clock | December 22, 2007
Is there any kid who does not love giraffes? They are just so amazing: tall, leggy, fast and graceful, with prehensile tongues and a need to go through complex calistehnics in order to drink. The favourites at zoos, in natural history museums and on TV nature shows.
Giraffes were also important players in the history of evolutionary thought and I bet you have all seen, and heard the criticisms of, the iconic comparison between Lamarck's and Darwin's notions of evolution using a comic strip featuring giraffes and how they got their long necks.
Giraffes sleep very little and mostly standing…
clock | December 21, 2007Whales Descended From Tiny Deer-like Ancestors:
Hans Thewissen, Ph.D., Professor of the Department of Anatomy, Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy (NEOUCOM), has announced the discovery of the missing link between whales and their four-footed ancestors.
Medical Myths Even Doctors Believ:
Indiana University School of Medicine researchers explored seven commonly held medical beliefs. selected seven medical beliefs, espoused by both physicians and members of the general public, for critical review. They then searched for evidence to support or refute each of these…
evolgen | December 21, 2007There's been a whole lot of hype around the Hawks et al. paper describing a recent burst of adaptive evolution in the human genome. The problem is a lot of people are conflating accelerated adaptive evolution with accelerated evolution. Take this for example:
12/11: Accelerated Human Evolution
In recent years, humans have evolved at a much higher rate than previously thought, according to a new paper in PNAS. By analyzing genome variations, researchers found that the rate of human evolution was fairly stagnant until about 50,000 years ago, and then--because of larger populations, climate…
clock | December 20, 2007Thursday night is a good time to see what is new on PLoS Pathogens, Computational Biology, Genetics and Neglected Tropical Diseases. Here are my picks for the week:
Hemolytic C-Type Lectin CEL-III from Sea Cucumber Expressed in Transgenic Mosquitoes Impairs Malaria Parasite Development:
Malaria is arguably the most important vector-borne disease worldwide, affecting 300 million people and killing 1-2 million people every year. The lack of an effective vaccine and the emergence of the parasites' resistance to many existing anti-malarial drugs have aggravated the situation. Clearly,…
clock | December 20, 2007Does Time Slow In Crisis? No, Say Researchers:
In The Matrix, hero Neo wins his battles when time slows in the simulated world. In the real world, accident victims often report a similar slowing as they slide unavoidably into disaster. But can humans really experience events in slow motion?
Monkeys Can Perform Mental Addition:
Researchers at Duke University have demonstrated that monkeys have the ability to perform mental addition. In fact, monkeys performed about as well as college students given the same test.
Why Diving Marine Mammals Resist Brain Damage From Low Oxygen:
No human can…
clock | December 18, 2007There are 28 new articles published today in PLoS ONE. You know what to do: read, rate, comment, annotate and send trackbacks! My picks for this week:
Light Variability Illuminates Niche-Partitioning among Marine Picocyanobacteria:
Phytoplankton are an important part of food webs in the ocean, and produce much of the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. Due to mixing of water columns in the sea, phytoplankton have to cope with huge changes in the amount of light reaching them. In this study, Six and colleagues found that two different species of phytoplankton have widely differing capacities…
clock | December 18, 2007Global Climate Change: The Impact Of El Niño On Galápagos Marine Iguanas:
A before-and-after study led by Yale biologists, of the effects of 1997 El Niño on the genetic diversity of marine iguanas on the Galápagos Islands, emphasizes the importance of studying populations over time and the need to determine which environmental and biological factors make specific populations more vulnerable than others.
Evolution With A Restricted Number Of Genes:
The development of higher forms of life would appear to have been influenced by RNA polymerase II. This enzyme transcribes the information…
clock | December 17, 2007Basic Math in Monkeys and College Students:
Adult humans possess mathematical abilities that are unmatched by any other member of the animal kingdom. Yet, there is increasing evidence that the ability to enumerate sets of objects nonverbally is a capacity that humans share with other animal species. That is, like humans, nonhuman animals possess the ability to estimate and compare numerical values nonverbally. We asked whether humans and nonhuman animals also share a capacity for nonverbal arithmetic. We tested monkeys and college students on a nonverbal arithmetic task in which they had to…
clock | December 17, 2007New Hope For Sleep Disorders: Genetic Switch For Circadian Rhythms Discovered:
University of California, Irvine researchers have identified the chemical switch that triggers the genetic mechanism regulating our internal body clock. The finding, which uncovers the most specific information about the body's circadian rhythms to date, identifies a precise target for new pharmaceuticals that can treat sleep disorders and a host of related ailments. Paolo Sassone-Corsi, Distinguished Professor and Chair of Pharmacology, found that a single amino acid activates the genes that regulate circadian…
clock | December 16, 2007New Research Alters Concept Of How Circadian Clock Functions:
Scientists from the University of Cambridge have identified a molecule that may govern how the circadian clock in plants responds to environmental changes. The researchers have discovered that a signalling molecule, known to be important for environmental stress signalling in plants, also regulates their circadian clock. They believe that the molecule may therefore incorporate information about environmental changes into the biological clock that regulates the physiology of plants. The research dramatically changes our current…
clock | December 15, 2007Losses Of Long-established Genes Contribute To Human Evolution
While it is well understood that the evolution of new genes leads to adaptations that help species survive, gene loss may also afford a selective advantage. A group of scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz led by biomolecular engineering professor David Haussler has investigated this less-studied idea, carrying out the first systematic computational analysis to identify long-established genes that have been lost across millions of years of evolution leading to the human species.
The actual paper is here…