Classic in Biological News

Darwin in a test tube

... (PNAS), the work demonstrates some of the classic principles of evolution. For instance, research ... but had separated into different species a classic concept in Darwinian evolution known as "niche ... per generation. These are both examples of classic evolutionary strategies for survival, says Joyce. ...

Volcanoes may have provided sparks and chemistry for first life

... according to a new analysis of samples from a classic origin-of-life experiment by NASA and university ... volcano. "We found that in comparison to Miller's classic design everyone is familiar with from textbooks, ... had little of the molecules used in Miller's classic experiment, it becomes difficult to see how life ...

Animal and plant communication at the ESA Annual Meeting

... things. Bugs pretending to be ants are protected against attack A classic example of a mutualism, or a mutually beneficial relationship between two ... in a competition-free space," she says. "It emphasizes that even the most classic examples of mutualism in nature are not infallible." Pitcher plants' ...

Worker ants of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your fertility

... mechanism, which we call 'reproductive constraint,' that challenges the classic paradigm that behaviour, such as policing, is the only way to enforce ... one or many queens surrounded by their specialized female workers are classic examples of what are called eusocial organisms. "More primitive, or ...

Mass extinctions and the evolution of dinosaurs

... the new research also shows that dinosaurs evolved into all their classic lifestyles big predators, long-necked herbivores, etc. long before they ... oceans. Historically the rise of the dinosaurs has been treated as a classic case in which a group evolves key features that allow it to rapidly ...

The Rett Syndrome Research Trust launches operations

... In the U.S., the frequency of autism has risen to 1 in 150 children. classic Rett Syndrome affects females almost exclusively. Symptoms typically begin ... She comments on the relevance of this work to conditions beyond classic Rett Syndrome: "Rett Syndrome and MECP2 disorders provide an opportunity ...

October Geology and GSA Today media highlights

... were still low. Erosion rate unexpectedly declined in the Early and Late classic periods as Maya population densities rose exponentially. Anselmetti et al. ... long before their accelerated population growth and ultimate demise in the classic period. This example of ancient human impact on the environment is ...

Study finds a high rate of asthma in college athletes

... also many presentations of exercise-induced asthma, many of which were not classic cases, making diagnosis challenging. Exercise-induced asthma occurs ... with known asthma. In addition, one out of every 10 people has no classic features of chronic asthma, yet still experience symptoms of asthma during ...

Canadian researchers set to study impact of nanomaterials on aquatic ecosystems

... The research team will also develop new testing techniques specifically designed for assessing the impact of new nanomaterials because classic toxicity tests may not be appropriate for some of them. The toxicological data derived from this project will provide an important foundation for a ...

Scientists examine perceptions of risk and the spread of disease

... to model the risks of emerging infectious diseases look at the disease itself and human behavior. The SPIDER Working Group aims to build on that classic view by also considering the economic impact of human decisions about risk. "Epidemiological science has gotten good at modeling and projecting ...

Scientists examine human behavior and the threat of disease

... to model the risks of emerging infectious diseases look at the disease itself and human behavior. The SPIDER Working Group aims to build on that classic view by also considering the economic impact of human decisions about risk. "Epidemiological science has gotten good at modeling and projecting ...

Triage technology with a Star Trek twist

... University's School of Medicine in St. Louis, S&T's Tech Solutions group is developing the Standoff Patient Triage Tool (SPTT), a device that classic Star Trek fans will recognize for its resemblance to the medical diagnostic tool known as the tricorder . Because time is the most precious ...

Yeast missing sex genes undergo unexpected sexual reproduction

... genes in yeast, Reedy learned that forms of Candida yeast undergo meiosis but generate offspring of several types. About two-thirds have the classic 50:50 division of chromosomes from the split parent cell, but a third of them have an extra chromosome or even double copies of all chromosomes. ...

Bird songs change with environment

... says she first noticed that sparrows seem to be changing their tunes while working on her doctoral research. She ran across some old recordings of classic sparrow songs from 1970, and noted that the old tunes seemed a little different from the ones the kids are singing today. To evaluate how much ...

100 reasons to change the way we think about genetics

... Lamarck, whose writings on evolution predated Charles Darwin's, believed that evolution was driven in part by the inheritance of acquired traits. His classic example was the giraffe. Giraffe ancestors, Lamarck surmised, reached with their necks to munch leaves high in trees. The reaching caused their necks ...

Diuscovery in amber reveals ancient biology of termites

... is very close and has been stabilized now for a very long time because of its obvious value," Poinar said. "It's exciting to understand that this classic example of mutualism has been going on now for at least 100 million years." As well as outlining this age-old example of mutualism, the new study ...

Grasslands: The future of sustainable agriculture

... landscapes, and who recognize the paramount importance of grass and grazing animals to good farming everywhere." Taking its inspiration from the classic USDA yearbook Grass: The 1948 Yearbook of Agriculture, which was written at a time of political, environmental, and economic turbulence, much like ...

Predators ignore peculiar prey

... of a dorsal stripe among a group of model salamanders on the foraging behavior of a flock of Blue Jays. He said, "Maintenance of variation is a classic paradox in evolution because both selection and drift tend to remove variation from populations. If one form has an advantage, such as being harder ...

Songs raise awareness about aquatic invasive species

... aquatic invasive species can transfer from one body of water to another. The music was also designed to appeal to this demographic, with a focus on classic rock, country and folk. The songs have received exposure on a number of radio stations throughout the state, and are also being distributed with ...

Songbird study from CSHL, CCNY provides concrete measure of biology's impact on culture

... an adult. But where did that adult tutor's song come from? Obviously from it's own father, but where did this passed-down song originate? "This is a classic chicken-and-egg problem," says Mitra. He hypothesized that if the song of an isolated songbird were transmitted over multiple generations, the ...

Your brain on -- and off -- caffeine

... that stopping daily caffeine consumption produces changes in cerebral blood flow velocity and quantitative EEG that are likely related to the classic caffeine withdrawal symptoms of headache, drowsiness and decreased alertness. More specifically, acute caffeine abstinence increased brain blood ...

truTV and Cox Offer Free Digital Fingerprinting to Help Prevent Crimes Against Children

... System, Inc., is responsible for the sales and marketing of Turner's 10 domestic basic cable networks - TBS, CNN, HLN, TNT, Cartoon Network, Turner classic Movies, CNN International, CNN en Espanol, Boomerang and truTV - to cable and satellite affiliates and special markets throughout the United States, ...

The life histories of the earliest land animals

... shows what adult animals looked like. But the appearance and lifestyle of juvenile animals often differ dramatically from those of the adults. A classic example is provided by frogs and salamanders. New discoveries from Uppsala, Cambridge and Duke Universities, published in Science , show that some ...

MIT: How you feel the world impacts how you see it

... In the classic waterfall illusion, if you stare at the downward motion of a waterfall for some period of time, stationary objects like rocks appear to drift ...

truTV and Cox Offer Free Digital Fingerprinting to Help Prevent Crimes Against Children

... System, Inc., is responsible for the sales and marketing of Turner's 10 domestic basic cable networks - TBS, CNN, HLN, TNT, Cartoon Network, Turner classic Movies, CNN International, CNN en Espanol, Boomerang and truTV - to cable and satellite affiliates and special markets throughout the United States, ...

UF scientist tapped by Howard Hughes Medical Institute to pursue 'best ideas'

... development, because that's when the genetic blueprint for the body is being executed," Cohn said. He began by studying chick embryos, a classic scientific model of limb development. At University College London, he discovered that the embryonic master switch for limb formation was a ...

Seattle Times reporters win ASM public communications award

... of MRSA in Washington State hospitals as well as official reluctance to meet the problem head-on. Combining statistical analysis, use of sources, and classic investigative reporting, "Culture of Resistance" effected real change in the state's handling of MRSA cases. By day three of the series, Washington ...

Female mammals follow their noses to the right mates

... of The Quarterly Review of Biology . Historically, most examples of female mate choice and its evolutionary consequences are found in birds. The classic case is the peacock's tail. The ornate tails do nothing to help peacocks survive. Rather, they emerged because peahens prefer to mate with males that ...

UC San Diego bioengineering professor trey ideker wins 2009 Overton Prize

... using genome-scale measurements, an emerging field in which he became a pioneer. He was still a Ph.D. student when, in 2001, he published a classic paper [in the journal Science] demonstrating how biological networks are mapped and tested using a systems biology approach that has attracted well ...

Human aspects of climate change to be focus of conference at Illinois

... E. Schlesinger, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Illinois; and Dan Vergano, a science writer for USA Today. "Studying the rise and fall of classic Maya kings and the critical role climate change played in their demise made me appreciate how similar stories are occurring today," said Lucero, who ...

Novel electric signals in plants

... next leaf, but the activation of so-called proton pumps. "This is the reason why the "system potential" we measured cannot at all be compared to the classic action potential as present in nerves of animals and also in plants", says Hubert Felle from Gieen University. Action potentials follow all-or-none ...

Pure fructose frequently confused with high fructose corn syrup

... pure fructose that purport to show that the body processes high fructose corn syrup differently than other sugars due to fructose content are a classic example of this problem because pure fructose cannot be extrapolated to high fructose corn syrup. The abnormally high levels of pure fructose used in ...

Historical photographs expose decline in Florida's reef fish, new Scripps study finds

... groupers declined through commercial fishing since at least the 1880s. "The ongoing debate about the status of fisheries in the Florida Keys is a classic problem of the Shifting Baselines syndrome," says Scripps Professor Jeremy Jackson. "Managers mistakenly assume that what they saw in the 1980s was ...

Evolution education for K-12 teachers needs beefing up, says CU-Boulder professor

... homeopaths and other "hucksters," according to a University of Colorado at Boulder biology professor. On the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's classic book "The Origin of Species" that first described natural selection in detail, polls still show that only about one third of Americans believe ...

Molecule that suppresses immune response under study in type 1 diabetes

... about reducing that risk." A three-year, $646,000 grant from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International will enable studies in a classic model of type 1 diabetes: a normal-weight mouse that develops diabetes. Eighty percent of the female mice get diabetes by age 12 to 15 weeks. MCG ...

Mammals that hibernate or burrow less likely to go extinct

... authors. "Species that don't sleep or hide are short-lived, but they may be more likely to leave successful descendants. "In a way it's the classic choice between security and progress." ...

Biofeedback from the zoo

... animals in a zoo. "We've developed a program that allows us to videotape people that suffer from overt compulsions and compare their behavior to classic displays of neurotic or healthy behavior from the animal kingdom, observed in the wild or in captivity," says Prof. David Eilam from the Department ...

Gene therapy demonstrates benefit in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

... space into which we can inject genes," adds Evans, who is also the Maurice Muller Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Harvard Medical School. A classic autoimmune disease, RA develops when, for unknown reasons, the body's immune system turns against itself, causing joints to become swollen and ...

Nicotine activates more than just the brain's pleasure pathways

... similar to the way taste is perceived. These findings complement what is known about the effects of nicotine in the dopamine pathway. This is the classic pleasure pathway in the brain, much studied by addiction experts. "Our study in no way contradicts prior findings about nicotine and dopamine," ...

Invasive plants challenge scientists in face of environmental change

... in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and nitrogen deposition on the Great Plains amplify the ability of weedy species to compete with native plants. classic weed control techniques like pulling, mowing, herbicide treatments, fire and grazing that knock back invaders often leave ecological "vacuums" that ...