Science News
clock | December 18, 2009How Ebola Impacts Genetics of Western Lowland Gorilla Populations:
Emerging infectious diseases in wildlife are major threats for both human health and biodiversity conservation. Infectious diseases can have serious consequences for the genetic diversity of populations, which could enhance the species' extinction probability. The Ebola epizootic in western and central Africa induced more than 90% mortality in Western lowland gorilla population. Although mortality rates are very high, the impacts of Ebola on genetic diversity of Western lowland gorilla have never been assessed. We carried out…
clock | December 17, 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, Mendeley, 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:
Pre-Exposure to Moving Form Enhances Static Form Sensitivity:
Motion-defined form can seem to persist briefly after motion ceases, before seeming to gradually disappear into the background. Here we…
clock | December 16, 2009There are 25 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, Mendeley, 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:
The Secret Life of Oilbirds: New Insights into the Movement Ecology of a Unique Avian Frugivore:
Steatornis caripensis (the oilbird) is a very unusual bird. It supposedly never sees daylight, roosting in…
clock | December 15, 2009Applied Climate-Change Analysis: The Climate Wizard Tool:
Although the message of "global climate change" is catalyzing international action, it is local and regional changes that directly affect people and ecosystems and are of immediate concern to scientists, managers, and policy makers. A major barrier preventing informed climate-change adaptation planning is the difficulty accessing, analyzing, and interpreting climate-change information. To address this problem, we developed a powerful, yet easy to use, web-based tool called Climate Wizard (http://ClimateWizard.org) that provides non-…
clock | December 14, 2009There are 54 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, Mendeley, 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:
Tropical Mosquito Assemblages Demonstrate 'Textbook' Annual Cycles:
Annual biological rhythms are often depicted as predictably cyclic, but quantitative evaluations are few and rarely both cyclic and…
clock | December 9, 2009There are 19 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, Mendeley, 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:
White Shark Offshore Habitat: A Behavioral and Environmental Characterization of the Eastern Pacific Shared Offshore Foraging Area:
Although much is known about the behavior of white sharks in coastal…
clock | December 8, 2009The Severity of Pandemic H1N1 Influenza in the United States, from April to July 2009: A Bayesian Analysis:
Accurate measures of the severity of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza (pH1N1) are needed to assess the likely impact of an anticipated resurgence in the autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. Severity has been difficult to measure because jurisdictions with large numbers of deaths and other severe outcomes have had too many cases to assess the total number with confidence. Also, detection of severe cases may be more likely, resulting in overestimation of the severity of an average case. We…
clock | December 7, 2009There are 21 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, Mendeley, 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:
Comparison of Trunk Activity during Gait Initiation and Walking in Humans:
To understand the role of trunk muscles in maintenance of dynamic postural equilibrium we investigate trunk movements during gait…
clock | December 4, 2009Seasonal Differences of Gene Expression Profiles in Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia) Hypothalamus in Relation to Territorial Aggression:
Male song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) are territorial year-round; however, neuroendocrine responses to simulated territorial intrusion (STI) differ between breeding (spring) and non-breeding seasons (autumn). In spring, exposure to STI leads to increases in luteinizing hormone and testosterone, but not in autumn. These observations suggest that there are fundamental differences in the mechanisms driving neuroendocrine responses to STI between seasons.…
clock | December 3, 2009There are 14 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, Mendeley, 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:
A Biological Rationale for Musical Scales:
Scales are collections of tones that divide octaves into specific intervals used to create music. Since humans can distinguish about 240 different pitches over an…
clock | December 2, 2009There are 31 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, Mendeley, 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:
High-Pitched Notes during Vocal Contests Signal Genetic Diversity in Ocellated Antbirds:
Animals use honest signals to assess the quality of competitors during aggressive interactions. Current theory…
clock | December 1, 2009There are 30 new articles in PLoS ONE published yesterday and another 23 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, Mendeley, 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:
Systematic Differences in Impact across Publication Tracks at PNAS:
Citation data can be used to evaluate the editorial policies and procedures of scientific journals.…
clock | November 27, 2009Quantification of Circadian Rhythms in Single Cells:
Earth's 24-h-rotation around its axis is mirrored in the circadian clock that resides within each of our cells, controlling expression of ~10% of all genes. The circadian clock is constructed as a negative feedback loop, in which clock proteins inhibit their own synthesis. During the last decade, a picture has emerged in which each cell is a self-sustained circadian oscillator that runs even without synchronizing cues. Here, we investigated state-of-the-art single-cell bioluminescence recordings of clock gene expression. It turns out that…
clock | November 26, 2009There are 19 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, Mendeley, 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:
Structures of KaiC Circadian Clock Mutant Proteins: A New Phosphorylation Site at T426 and Mechanisms of Kinase, ATPase and Phosphatase:
The circadian clock of the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus can…
clock | November 25, 2009There are 25 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, Mendeley, 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:
The Molecular Ecology of the Extinct New Zealand Huia:
The extinct Huia (Heteralocha acutirostris) of New Zealand represents the most extreme example of beak dimorphism known in birds. We used a combination…
clock | November 24, 2009Last couple of weeks months were awfully busy, on many fronts, not least finalizing the ScienceOnline2010 program, herding cats almost 100 moderators/presenters to do various stuff (e.g., respond to my e-mails) in a timely manner, and making sure that registration goes smoothly. This is also the time of year when activation energy for doing anything except going to bed to hide under the covers is very high for people suffering from SAD. Thus, you did not see many 'original' posts here lately, I know.
But, it's not that I have been totally idle. Apart from teaching my BIO101 lab again, I also…
clock | November 24, 2009There are 39 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, Mendeley, 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:
Alien Invasive Slider Turtle in Unpredicted Habitat: A Matter of Niche Shift or of Predictors Studied?:
Species Distribution Models (SDMs) aim on the characterization of a species' ecological niche and…
clock | November 23, 2009There are 22 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, Mendeley, 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:
Limits of Principal Components Analysis for Producing a Common Trait Space: Implications for Inferring Selection, Contingency, and Chance in Evolution:
Comparing patterns of divergence among separate…
clock | November 20, 2009Friday - PLoS Genetics, Pathogens, Computational Biology and ONE published 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, Mendeley, 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:
Circadian KaiC Phosphorylation: A Multi-Layer Network:
Circadian clocks are endogenous timing mechanisms that allow living organisms to coordinate their activities with…
clock | November 19, 2009There are 25 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, Mendeley, 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:
The Astronomical Orientation of Ancient Greek Temples:
Despite its appearing to be a simple question to answer, there has been no consensus as to whether or not the alignments of ancient Greek temples…