Science News
clock | July 11, 2007You really don't want to be an enemy of the aphids - two papers today! The first is quite straightforward:
Aphids Make 'Chemical Weapons' To Fight Off Killer Ladybirds:
Cabbage aphids have developed an internal chemical defence system which enables them to disable attacking predators by setting off a mustard oil 'bomb', says new research. The study shows for the first time how aphids use a chemical found in the plants they eat to emit a deadly burst of mustard oil when they're attacked by a predator, for example a ladybird. This mustard oil kills, injures or repels the ladybird, which then…
j7uy5 | July 9, 2007
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">We are most
accustomed to seeing power generation windmills on dry land, here in
the USA. In Europe, some are on land and some are offshore.
They generally are considered eyesores. Myself, I
think they are beautiful. I love to see them up on a ridge,
turning away, churning out megawatts for our energy-hungry populace.
Would I want one in my back yard? Sure. In fact,
there is a fair probability that I will put one there, if it won't
alienate my neighbors too much.
But there's the rub. Despite the fact that I think they are
aesthetically…
clock | July 8, 2007Many Insomniacs Turn To Valerian And Melatonin To Help Them Sleep:
A study published in the July 1st issue of the journal SLEEP finds that large segments of the U.S. population use valerian or melatonin to treat their insomnia.
The study, authored by Donald L. Bliwise, PhD, of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, focused on the data collected from 31,044 individuals from the 2002 Alternative Health/Complementary and Alternative Medicine Supplement to the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS).
Dr. Bliwise discovered that, of the survey sample, 5.9 percent used valerian and 5.2 percent used…
clock | July 8, 2007
Life Elsewhere In Solar System Could Be Different From Life As We Know It:
The search for life elsewhere in the solar system and beyond should include efforts to detect what scientists sometimes refer to as "weird" life -- that is, life with an alternative biochemistry to that of life on Earth -- says a new report from the National Research Council. The committee that wrote the report found that the fundamental requirements for life as we generally know it -- a liquid water biosolvent, carbon-based metabolism, molecular system capable of evolution, and the ability to exchange energy with the…
j7uy5 | July 7, 2007Speciation
is the formation of new species of organisms. Often, the term
is used to describe an event in the course of evolution in which one
species gets divided into two groups, after which the process of
genetic change occurs differently in each group. When the
differences are so great, that representatives from one group do not
interbreed successfully with members of the other, then a new species
has formed.
I know, when you get down to the details, it is tough to come up with a
universally acceptable way to define a species, but that is
href="http://www.philosophynow.org/issue50/…
clock | July 5, 2007Understanding Smooth Eye Pursuit: The Incredible Targeting System Of Human Vision:
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have shed new light on how the brain and eye team up to spot an object in motion and follow it, a classic question of human motor control. The study shows that two distinctly different ways of seeing motion are used - one to catch up to a moving object with our eyes, a second to lock on and examine it.
Wolves Of Alaska Became Extinct 12,000 Years Ago, Scientists Report:
The ancient gray wolves of Alaska became extinct some 12,000 years ago, and the wolves in Alaska…
clock | July 4, 2007Stressed-out African Naked Mole-rats May Provide Clues About Human Infertility:
A tiny, blind, hairless subterranean rodent that lives in social colonies in the harsh, semi-arid conditions of Africa could shed light on stress-related infertility in humans, the 23rd annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology will hear.
Glimmer Of Hope For Tahitian Tree Snails' Survival:
Despite the mass extermination of Tahiti's unique species of tree snails in recent decades, much of their original genetic diversity can still be found in remnant populations that survive on the…
clock | July 3, 2007A bunch of papers just went live on PLoS-ONE and, after a quick scan, these three papers caught my eye:
The Durability of Public Goods Changes the Dynamics and Nature of Social Dilemmas:
An implicit assumption underpins basic models of the evolution of cooperation, mutualism and altruism: The benefits (or pay-offs) of cooperation and defection are defined by the current frequency or distribution of cooperators. In social dilemmas involving durable public goods (group resources that can persist in the environment-ubiquitous from microbes to humans) this assumption is violated. Here, we examine…
clock | July 3, 2007Wood Ant Queen Has No Egg-laying Monopoly:
The reproductive monopoly of the ant queen is not as strong as is often thought. Dr. Heikki Helanterä and Prof. Lotta Sundström, biologists working at the University of Helsinki, Finland, investigated worker ovary development and egg laying in nine Northern European wood ant species of the genus Formica, and revealed wide spread reproductive endeavours by workers.
City Site Was Dinosaur Dining Room:
A dinosaur bone bed in southwest Edmonton that served as a feeding area for the direct ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex has revealed that two dinosaurs,…
evolgen | July 1, 2007It's not entirely obvious at first, but this article in the New York Times is about the problems with gene patents in a world where one gene does not equal one protein. Now, we've known that this model isn't entirely correct, what with alternative splicing and all. Additionally, the human genome also contains many "genes" which are only transcribed into RNAs, but not translated into proteins. All of this has been pretty much accepted by geneticists for a few years.
But rather than putting all of this in the appropriate context, Denise Caruso muddies the waters by overemphasizing the…
clock | June 30, 2007
Lots of new papers just got published in PLoS-Genetics and PLoS-Computational Biology. Here are a couple of papers that caught my eye:
From Morphology to Neural Information: The Electric Sense of the Skate:
The electric sense appears in a variety of animals, from the shark to the platypus, and it facilitates short-range prey detection where environments limit sight. Typically, hundreds or thousands of sensors work in concert. In skates, rays, and sharks, each electrosensor includes a small, innervated bulb, with a thin, gel-filled canal leading to a surface pore. While experiments have…
clock | June 30, 2007First Bacterial Genome Transplantation Changes One Species To Another:
Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) have announced the results of work on genome transplantation methods allowing them to transform one type of bacteria into another type dictated by the transplanted chromosome. The work, published online in the journal Science, by JCVI's Carole Lartigue, Ph.D. and colleagues, outlines the methods and techniques used to change one bacterial species, Mycoplasma capricolum into another, Mycoplasma mycoides Large Colony (LC), by replacing one organism's genome with the other…
clock | June 29, 2007Modern Brains Have An Ancient Core:
Hormones control growth, metabolism, reproduction and many other important biological processes. In humans, and all other vertebrates, the chemical signals are produced by specialised brain centres such as the hypothalamus and secreted into the blood stream that distributes them around the body.
Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL] now reveal that the hypothalamus and its hormones are not purely vertebrate inventions, but have their evolutionary roots in marine, worm-like ancestors. In this week's issue of the journal Cell they…
clock | June 29, 2007The Newest Artificial Intelligence Computing Tool: People:
A USC Information Sciences Institute researcher thinks she has found a new source of artificial intelligence computing power to solve difficult IT problems of information classification, reliability, and meaning. That tool, according to ISI computer scientist Kristina Lerman, is people, human intelligence at work on the social web, the network of blogs, bookmark, photo and video- sharing sites, and other meeting places now involving hundreds of thousands of individuals daily, recording observations and sharing opinions and information…
clock | June 28, 2007A whole bunch of papers got published on PLoS-ONE yesterday. I did not have time to check them out very closely yet, but a few titles immediatelly caught my attention:
High Costs of Female Choice in a Lekking Lizard
by Maren N. Vitousek, Mark A. Mitchell, Anthony J. Woakes, Michael D. Niemack and Martin Wikelski
The cost to males of producing elaborate mating displays is well established, but the energy females spend on mate choice is less clear. This study monitored the heart rates of female Galápagos marine iguanas (Amblyrhynchus cristatus) and found they expended almost a days' worth of…
clock | June 28, 2007Mathematicians Discover A Simple Way To Formulate Complex Scientific Results:
A new analysis of behaviour in a structured population illuminates Darwin's theories of co-operation and competition between kin, and provides an abstract model that could simplify scientists' quest to map behaviour among disease-causing organisms within a cell. The study by Queen's Mathematics and Statistics professor Peter Taylor, and co-authors Troy Day (Queen's) and Geoff Wild (University of Western Ontario) presents a simple formula for balancing the benefit and cost in altruistic acts, allowing researchers to…
clock | June 27, 2007
Foreign Herbivores May Be Key To Curbing Invasive Weeds:
Joint research with scientists in Argentina, Australia and China could lead to discovery of new biological control agents for several exotic weeds plaguing Florida and other U.S. states. Some of the worst offenders are hydrilla, Brazilian pepper, Chinese tallow and Australian pine. These and other aggressive invasive weeds occupy diverse habitats and cause many environmental problems, especially a decrease in biodiversity within infested areas.
How Fish Punish 'Queue Jumpers':
Fish use the threat of punishment to keep would-be jumpers…
clock | June 26, 2007Why Starling Females Cheat:
While women may cheat on men for personal reasons, superb starling females appear to stray from their mates for the sake of their chicks, according to recent research. The study found that superb starling females (Lamprotornis superbus) cheat on their mates for a variety of reasons. Some females mate with subordinate males from within their social group when they need help to raise their chicks. (Superb starlings are cooperative breeders, meaning breeding pairs get help in raising chicks from other family group members.) This additional male then also acquires food…
clock | June 25, 2007Bees Seem To Benefit From Having Favorite Colors:
A bee's favourite colour can help it to find more food from the flowers in their environment, according to new research from Queen Mary, University of London. Dr Nigel Raine and Professor Lars Chittka from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences studied nine bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) colonies from southern Germany, and found that the colonies which favoured purple blooms were more successful foragers.
How Dads Influence Their Daughters' Interest In Math:
It figures: Dads have a major impact on the degree of interest their…
clock | June 24, 2007
Individual Differences In Sleep Structure Are Biologically Determined:
Sleeping pattern variability has long been attributed to differences in several non-biological factors. Now a study from the Sleep and Performance Research Center at Washington State University Spokane, Wash., has shown that these individual differences are in large part biologically determined and may even prove to be genetic in origin.
North Carolina Coastal Economy Vulnerable To Sea Level Rise:
A new report finds that North Carolina's coastline will continue to experience significant loss in land area, property and…