specimen

The transparent organism: EMBLEM and Carl Zeiss give labs a unique look at life

...ution film. Another advantage of SPIM is that the specimen is kept alive in a liquid-filled chamber, allowing scientists to track developmental processes like the formation of eyes and the brain in embryonic fish or other model organisms. The presentation of SPIM at scientific conferences has generated a fl...

Scientists use manufacturing methods to reconstruct mastodon

...variety of techniques—borrowing bones from another specimen of the same species, size and stage of development, for instance, or manually sculpting a replacement bone, based on measurements and comparisons with the rest of the skeleton. Now, however, Fisher and his team are using 3-D digitization, modeling a...

Alien woodwasp, threat to US pine trees, found in N.Y.

... eastern United States. The discovery of a single specimen of Sirex noctilio Fabricius, an Old World woodwasp...ecies of bark beetles, when he stumbled across the specimen of S. noctilio . "I recognized it immediately," says Hoebeke, a taxonomic expert who has examined t...

Researchers find first evidence of venom system in extinct mammal

...upper and lower jaw, which is extremely rare for a specimen this old. "This just shows you that no matter how long you've been working on something, you can still learn a lot just by uncovering one little piece of information," Fox added. "And we're fortunate that we are able to work where we do; central Alb...

Discovery of an American salamander where it shouldn't be: Korea

...nd his American colleagues have seen only one live specimen and a few preserved specimens, though Vieites is scheduled to travel to Korea in May to scout the area, which is heavily populated and in the past has been nearly deforested. "The Korean people, already well sensitized to the importance of their nat...

The genetic origins of corn on the cob

...haped ear" was "laid aside as a curiosity" and the specimen was designated Zea ramosa (from the Latin ramosus, "having many branches"). Due to the alteration of a single gene, later named ramosa1, both the ear and the tassel of the plant were more highly branched than usual, leading to loose, crooked kernel r...

$6.5 Million Grant for Microarray Center at Yale School of Medicine

...haped ear" was "laid aside as a curiosity" and the specimen was designated Zea ramosa (from the Latin ramosus, "having many branches"). Due to the alteration of a single gene, later named ramosa1, both the ear and the tassel of the plant were more highly branched than usual, leading to loose, crooked kernel r...

Spiders help scientists discover how muscles relax

...tissue sample, which modifies the structure of the specimen and distorts its shape. Cryo-electron microscopy avoids these problems by rapidly freezing the sample. Using the new technique, the researchers were able to visualize the muscle tissue in a form closer to its structure in the body than had previously...

Researchers identify new catfish family

...me finding many specimens. They collected just one specimen in a recent five-day expedition. The researchers are concerned about the fish's habitat, which is threatened by exploitation of the forests and possible damming of the rivers it lives in. ...

From a Few Wild Ancestors, a Citrus Cornucopia

... few missing or added letters can change the way a specimen is classified and managed -- and possibly how it will be used. “For example, one accession planted in the field,?says Krueger, “was considered to be a Rangpur lime, or Citrus limonia. But when you walked past it, you’d think for sure it was a lemon....

DNA traces evolution of extinct sabertooths and the American cheetah-like cat

...preserved bones of the two sabertooths (a Smilodon specimen from Patagonia and a Homotherium specimen from the Yukon region) and the American cheetah-like cat (a Miracinonyx specimen from the state of W...

New technology shows our ancestors ate…everything!

...ee-dimensional analysis of an object. "You put the specimen in and the microscope is programmed to step down at fine intervals, perform its series of scans, and collect 3D coordinates for each data point," said Teaford. The result is like a map of the earth that shows mountains, valleys and plains in full rel...

UF study first to quantify validity of DNA I.D. tool using marine snails

... values to identify the likelihood of a particular specimen being a brand new species vs. being distantly related to an existing one, he said. Using their database of these well-known animals, the accuracy of thresholds was examined supposing that their identity was unspecified. In these cases, the researche...

Virtual microscopy project wins educational technology award

...connection. The method allows free navigation in a specimen with stepless zooming, and educational annotations as well as overlay graphics to easily be added to the virtual slides. According to the researchers, all steps from processing to viewing of virtual slides parallel the management of aerial and satel...

Ancient humans brought bottle gourds to the Americas from Asia

...zed. The newest of their archaeological samples, a specimen found in Kentucky, was just 1,000 years old -- suggesting the gourds were used in the New World as containers for at least 9,000 years. ...

Earth Rx: A microbial biotechnology prescription for global environmental health

...d techniques. Identifying just a single microbial specimen is a daunting task, considering, that there may be trillions of bacteria in every liter of water. "We have hardly begun to tap the potential that is already provided by nature," said Rittmann. The beginnings of microbial ecology started back in th...

FSU biologist says new dinosaur is oldest cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex

...ate model for scientists. The bones of the smaller specimen had only six closely spaced rings and no widely spaced ones, indicating that it was a nearly grown juvenile who died prematurely, not simply a smaller, adult female. "I study these animals as living organisms, not just as specimens on an evolutionar...

Dogs keep dying: Many owners unaware of toxic dog food

...ed of aflatoxin poisoning should also have a liver specimen sent to Cornell to definitively confirm the pathologic changes in the liver unique for aflatoxin toxicity, such as fatty degeneration of individual cells. "Even if dogs show no signs of illness, if they have eaten the affected food, they should hav...

Unraveling the viral mechanism

...rful cryoelectron microscopes operated at very low specimen temperature and very high energy that Chiu and others use in their work that looks at different biological nano-machineries at the nanoscale. In fact, Dr. Wen Jiang, previously trained in the BCM Graduate School for Biomedical Sciences' Graduate Pro...

3-D model reveals secrets of metastasis

...MIT BioImaging Center. The microscope divided each specimen into virtual slices, generating a new stack of images every 15 minutes. "It took me about a year to get enough data because the microscope wasnâ?super>TM t designed for high-throughput experiments," he says. Fortunately, the BioImaging Center h...

Scientists describe new African monkey genus ?first in 83 years

...anager at The Field Museum, where the world's only specimen of this forest-dwelling monkey "resides" in the mu...tice to work with Stanley on the skull of the only specimen of Kipunji. They used the Field Museum's extensive primate collection to compare Kipunji with other...

Mobile DNA part of evolution's toolbox

...ve gone extinct millions of years ago until a live specimen was caught in 1938 off the east coast of South Africa. The coelacanth is a descendant of the ancient marine organism that gave rise to the terrestrial vertebrates more than 360 million years ago. Humans are therefore separated from the coelacanth by ...

Study suggests evolutionary link between diet, brain size in orangutans

...ull's discoverers suggested that the small-brained specimen represented a new dwarf early human species that somehow survived until fairly recently. Critics argue that it actually is a modern human afflicted with microcephaly, a genetic disorder characterized by an abnormally small head and an underdeveloped ...

The first tree genome is published: Poplar holds promise as renewable bioenergy resource

...o to Alaska. The sequenced DNA was isolated from a specimen collected along the banks of the Nisqually river in Washington State. The poplar project supports a broader DOE drive to accelerate research into biofuels production, under the Bush Administration's Advanced Energy Initiative. In August, the depart...

Genetic study of Neanderthal DNA reveals early split between humans and Neanderthals

...d DNA extracted from a 38,000-year-old Neanderthal specimen from Vindija, Croatia. They recovered 65,250 base pairs of the Neanderthal's 3 billion total base pairs and utilized traditional sequencing technologies used for the Human Genome Project as well as the new parallel pyrosequencing method to clone and ...

New bird discovered on unexplored Columbian mountain

... by the team and used in the description as a type specimen was released unharmed, a DNA sample and photograph...ing been taken. This is the first time that a live specimen has been used for the description of a new bird following the approval by the International Commissi...

Engineering the heart piece by piece

...e conditions at the same time, while allowing each specimen to be “stretched?using a specially made device that can both apply forces and measure the forces generated when the tissue begins contracting and beating on its own. In the new paper, the team reports that it has achieved a doubling of the contractin...

UF scientists discover new genus of frogmouth bird in Solomon Islands

...collecting trip led by Kratter in 1998 turned up a specimen on Isabel, a 1,500-square-mile island in the Solomons. Today, the only museum specimen of this bird in the world, with an associated skin and skeleton, is housed at the Florida Museum. ...

40,000-year-old skull shows both modern human and Neandertal traits

...between 2003 and 2005. Radiocarbon dating of the specimen produced only a minimum age (more than 35,000 years), but similarity in morphological traits with the Oase 1 human mandible ?found in 2002 on the surface of the cave, adjacent to the excavation area, and dated to about 40,500 years ago ?lead the team...

Scientists discover 5 new species of sea slugs from the Tropical Eastern Pacific

...t, Mexico. Cuthona behrensi, a beautiful white specimen with white-tipped rhinophores named for nudibranch specialist Dave Behrens, who supported the research effort, was found by Alicia Hermosillo under a rock at 13m depth at Los Frailes, Golfo de Chiriqui, Panama. Eubranchus yolandae was collected f...