Sense in Biological News

Penn State entomologists seek fungus to blunt mosquitoes' sense of smell

... Sick people often lose their sense of smell and their appetite. If this happened to ... that will infect mosquitoes and impair their sense of smell. Supported by a recent $100,000 grant ... to determine how much the infected mosquitoes' sense of smell is suppressed, thus reducing their ...

Rice psychologist explores perception of fear in human sweat

... occurs in humans. Given that more than one sense is typically involved when humans perceive ... face and the voice. There, an emotion from one sense modulates how the same emotion is perceived in ... sense, especially when the signal to the latter sense is ambiguous. "Our findings provide direct ...

Girls have superior sense of taste to boys

... New knowledge: Girls have a better sense of taste than boys. Every third child of school ... such a large-scale study has been done on the sense of taste of children and young people and what ... a known fact that women generally have a finer sense of taste than men. "We also asked the pupils to ...

Deprived of a sense of smell, worms live longer

... fed it just takes a chemical that blocks their sense of smell. Three years ago, the researchers, ... the drugs inhibit neurons in the worm's head that sense chemicals in their surroundings the neurons are ... their metabolism and life span." If roundworms sense that food is abundant, their metabolism adjusts ...

UC Riverside biochemists devise method for bypassing aluminum toxicity effects in plants

... again because the plant was no longer able to sense the damage aluminum caused. In other words, by ... this growth checkpoint, plants are not able to sense the effects of aluminum; they continue to grow ... factor only in the root tip, the plant will not sense aluminum's damage to the root. The root then ...

Like eavesdropping at a party

... how cells and molecules manage to appropriately sense and respond to the variety of calcium ... To figure out how calmodulin's two lobes can sense different sources of calcium, the team took a ... time might play a role in calmodulin's ability to sense both local and global calcium levels. "Once a ...

Summer heat too hot for you? What is comfortable?

... the molecular mechanisms that enable animals to sense dangerous temperatures; such as extremely high ... much more poorly understood is how animals sense very small temperature differences in the ... have discovered that the fruit fly uses TRPA1 to sense single degree changes in the comfortable range. ...

Do birds have a good sense of smell?

... press release is available in German . The sense of smell might indeed be as important to birds as ... for Ornithology) and her colleagues. The sense of smell in birds was, until quite recently, ... have shown that some bird species use their sense of smell to navigate, forage or even to ...

Meeting to highlight health impacts of smell and taste

... uncovering valuable clues through studies on the sense of taste. Studies on sweet taste receptors are ... chronic sinusitis often also diminishes the sense of smell (and, thus, flavor perception). In spite ... on factors of chronic sinusitis that erode the sense of smell. (Tuesday, July 22, Symposium, 7:00 to ...

BBVA Foundation international study on attitudes to stem cell research

... ethical framework of each individual, and in this sense moral criteria of religious inspiration are a key ... distributed between those believing it makes no sense to talk about a moral condition of the embryo and ... quite sharply divided: 27% state that it makes no sense to talk about the moral condition of an embryo ...

UD researchers discover novel 'gene toggles' in world's top food crop

... of DNA unravel. The first strand, called the sense transcript, produces messenger RNA, which carries ... the gene. In the newly discovered case, the sense messenger RNA and antisense RNA operate ... differences limit the pairing ability between the sense and the antisense to a small region that includes ...

Researcher discovers pathway plants use to fight back against pathogens

... Previous studies have shown that plants can sense attacks by pathogens and activate their defenses. ... into growth and development. However, when plants sense pathogens, they have to use some of their energy ... According to the study, plants first sense the attack of a pathogen, and then activate ...

People not always needed to alleviate loneliness

... Graduate School of Business. When people lack a sense of connection with other people, they are more ... dehumanization. People who enjoy a strong sense of social connection are less likely to perceive ... occur during times of war, during which a strong sense of nationalism or group identity tend to emerge. ...

Scripps research team blocks bacterial communication system to prevent deadly staph infections

... bacteria known as autoinducers, because bacteria sense when concentrations of these autoinducers are ... bacteria are present. Bacteria basically sense they have enough of their buddies around to allow ... keyholes on cell surfaces that allow bacteria to sense autoinducers, but such strategies have been ...

Study identifies pathway required for normal reproductive development

... bulbs, the portion of the brain involved in the sense of smell, and to have a critical role in ... lack of both reproductive development and a sense of smell. PROK2s involvement in these systems ... Kallmann syndrome and 50 with IHH and a normal sense of smell. Three members from the same family in ...

Sweet smell

... physical factor that could explain how our brains sense odors. The new study, conducted by Prof. Noam ... To identify the general principles by which our sense of smell is organized, the researchers began with ... our perception of smell, a large part of our sense of whether an odor is pleasant or unpleasant is ...

Inside the brain of a crayfish

... food or mates or dangerous predators and also to sense motion in the water that also could indicate the ... of an area of the brain devoted to a particular sense gives us a good idea of how an animal perceives ... percent of a crustaceans brain is devoted to the sense of smell. This shows how important detecting ...

Your gut has taste receptors

... in specialized taste cells of the gut where they sense glucose within the intestine. We now know that the receptors that sense sugar and artificial sweeteners are not limited ... new studies are titled- T1R3 and gustducin in gut sense sugars to regulate expression of Na+-glucose ...

Forest fire prevention efforts will lessen carbon sequestration, add to greenhouse warming

... Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society. "That seems to make common sense and sounds great in theory, but when you actually go through the data it ... The study authors concluded that fuel reduction may still make more sense in east-side Cascade Range and other similar forests, but that the ...

Author says challenging simple concepts can save planet

... rules. She says humans crave structure, particularly rules that make sense to us as individuals and which foster a sense of inclusion. We will accept the right rules, she says, citing as an ...

ESA's Earth observation missions: Sharing teams and facilities boosts efficiency

... With ESA's family of Earth observation missions expanding, it makes sense to share operations engineers across satellites and conduct mission ... ESA's new Earth Explorer satellite GOCE was launched on 17 March, it made sense to situate the new team members in the combined DCR as well. ...

Neuroscientists discover long-term potentiation in the olfactory bulb

... memory in the olfactory bulb, the part of the brain that processes the sense of smell. Their study, entitled "Long-term plasticity of excitatory ... was one glaring exception: the part of the brain that first processes the sense of smell, the olfactory bulb. Gao, a fourth-year graduate student, had ...

Winners announced in the Elsevier Grand Challenge

... between the four finalists. All of the tools were developed with a strong sense of the community's needs." "I was impressed not only with the quality ... with one another, they were very open with their ideas, and a real sense of community has developed around the Elsevier Grand Challenge. We feel, ...

Students least informed about environmental science are most optimistic

... attitudes about the environment assessed students' familiarity with and sense of responsibility for environmental issues. Green at 15? showed that the ... For most countries, there was no strong association between the students' sense of responsibility for environmental issues and their proficiency in ...

Translating the conversation between the brain and blood vessels

... question: Does hypertension occur because the brain loses its ability to sense that the blood vessels are stretching under high pressure? In a study with obese rats, they found the rats' brains could sense the stretch but still became hypertensive, eliminating that mechanism as a ...

Rutgers study finds many consumers ignore food product recalls

... Despite widespread awareness of recent foodborne illness outbreaks and a sense that the number of food recalls is increasing, about half of Americans say ... communications about food recalls may be the way to overcome the sense that the messages are meant for someone else. Providing consumers with ...

Making a point: Picoscale stability in a room-temperature AFM

... By reflecting a laser beam from the top of the cantilever, researchers can sense changes in the force and build up a nanoscale topographic image of the ... in a fluid. The JILA solution uses two additional laser beams to sense the three-dimensional motion of both the test specimen and the AFM probe. ...

Behind closed eyes

... has now revealed details of that activity, explaining why, even though our sense centers are working, we don't experience sights or sounds when there's ... there during rest. The resting oscillations appear to be strongest when we sense nothing at all during dream-free sleep. The slow fluctuation pattern ...

Nicotine activates more than just the brain's pleasure pathways

... pathway, the peripheral Trpm5 protein pathway one that helps animals sense a bitter taste. Mice which had their Trpm5 pathway deleted were unresponsive to several different tastes, including bitterness, but they could still sense the presence of nicotine. "The mice preferred plain water to the nicotine ...

Nano-tetherball biosensor precisely detects glucose

... for many purposes. "Depending on where in the body you might want to sense glucose, you would need to detect different concentrations - for example, ... different glucose concentrations," Porterfield said. Being able to sense small quantities while at the same time detecting a wide range of ...

Shape changes in aroma-producing molecules determine the fragrances we detect

... in the journal " Chemistry & Biology ," shed new insight into how our sense of smell works and have potential applications in the design of flavors ... into a U shape blocked the receptor and left the cell unable to sense octanal. "Conformationally constrained odorants were more selective in ...

Caltech researchers get first look at how groups of cells coordinate their movements

... move at one time, but because we were able to take that data and make sense of it." Making sense of the data meant reducing the movement of each cell to a vector, and then ...

No place like home: New theory for how salmon, sea turtles find their birthplace

... salmon and sea turtles can detect the Earth's magnetic field and use it to sense direction during their first migration away from their birthplace to the ... turtles several years of age possess a more sophisticated "magnetic map" sense that helps them navigate to specific areas rich in food. Sea turtles ...

Cell movements totally modular, Stanford study shows

... said. "The hardest part was organizing all of the data and making sense out of it," he added. Generating the data took only a year. Analyzing, retesting and making sense of these data took close to two more. This discovery, at least in the ...

Key to function of dinosaur crests found in brain structure

... Some paleontologists have suggested that the crests heightened the sense of smell by increasing the surface area of the sensory tissue. Others have ... for the nasal cavity. The portion of the brain responsible for the sense of smell was relatively small and primitive, indicating that the crest did ...

Brain structure provides key to unraveling function of bizarre dinosaur crests

... Some paleontologists have suggested that the crests heightened the sense of smell by increasing the surface area of the sensory tissue. Others have ... for the nasal cavity. The portion of the brain responsible for the sense of smell was relatively small and primitive, indicating that the crest did ...

San Diego Supercomputer Center and UCSD announce 'Triton Resource'

... Resource is a unique environment that will facilitate our ability to make sense of the tsunami of data available to us, and drive solutions of the most ... per second). This facility will address the critical need to make sense of the massive amounts of research data generated by today's scientific ...

The Science Coalition's '10 questions' for the presidential debate

... education. All questions are designed to elicit from each candidate a sense of where his administration would stand on a range of critical issues ... Science Coalition believes it is critical that the American people have a sense of the candidates' perspectives on basic scientific research, as their ...

Painful heat sensed by 'painless' in flies

... (transient receptor potential) channels. They found that the channel can sense noxious heat directly. The channel activity was modulated by intracellular ... Dr. Sokabe said, "this is the first report to show that flies can sense hazardous heat by a specific sensor, namely 'Painless'. This finding may ...

Novel anti-cancer mechanism found in long-lived rodents

... are hypersensitive to cues from the surrounding tissue. If the cells sense that conditions are inappropriate for growth, they slow down cell ... a strict monitoring function within their cells that may be able to sense appropriate and inappropriate cell divisioni.e., healthy reproduction and ...