Sucking in Biological News

Clinical trial shows quadriplegics can operate powered wheelchair with tongue drive system

... available to the user at the same time are significant advantages over the common sip-n-puff device that acts as a simple switch controlled by sucking or blowing through a straw. Some sip-n-puff users also consider the straw to be a symbol of their disability. Since Tongue Drive users simply ...

Evolution of a contraceptive for sea lamprey

... of sharks. In contrast to sharks, fish and land vertebrates, lampreys have no jaw. They feed on fish by attaching themselves to the fish and sucking their body fluids. Their aggressive consumption of game fish has eliminated many natural predators of the alewife, another invasive species on the ...

Cheap love costs the Earth

... there are not enough of them. "At Lake Naivasha, the good companies make up about half of the total. That is not enough; together, the industry is sucking the lake dry. The country's legislation is strong, but its enforcement is weak so companies whose only interest is profit take advantage of that." ...

Crib-side studies help struggling newborns go home without feeding tubes

... of feeding difficulties include difficulty breathing, spluttering, coughing during and after feeds, aspiration, regurgitation, failure to coordinate sucking and swallowing with breathing, and irritability during feeds. These feeding difficulties can be seen in patients with systemic illness and may relate ...

Stronger coastal winds due to climate change may have far-reaching effects

... stronger, more persistent winds stimulates excessive growth of phytoplankton (microscopic algae), which ultimately sink to the bottom and decompose, sucking oxygen out of the bottom waters. Snyder said these conditions may become more prevalent in the future, and stronger winds all along the coast may ...

Scientists announce top 10 new species, issue SOS

... SOS report are online at species.asu.edu . Among the top 10 picks is an ornate sleeper ray Electrolux addisoni whose name reflects the vigorous sucking action displayed on the videotape of the feeding ray from the east coast of South Africa that may rival a well-known electrical device used to suck ...

Eat less or exercise more? Either way leads to more youthful hearts

... phase of the cardiac cycle), then let go (the analog of the filling or diastolic phase) and the rubber bulb springs back to its original shape, sucking air back in. Similarly, the heart's muscle and connective tissue are elastic, and after ejecting blood to the body during contraction (systole), the ...

Odd protein interaction guides development of olfactory system

... is acting as a decoy receptor, said U. of I. cell and developmental biology professor Huey Hing, who led the study. It is nonproductively just sucking up the ligand. Nobody has ever seen a receptor acting in this way. The receptor is actually regulating the ligand. The researchers made this ...

New light trap captures larval stage of new species; DNA barcode technology used

... species of Atlantic gobies by having fewer fin rays and lacking a frenum, the small fold of tissue in the pelvic fins of most gobies that forms a sucking disc for grasping the substrate. The fish was sent to Dr. Benjamin Victor of the Ocean Science Foundation in California, who used a new ...

Japanese beetle may help fight hemlock-killing insect

... ecosystems throughout the eastern United States and Canada, is in serious danger of extinction because a tiny, non-native insect is literally sucking the life out of it. Entomologists at Virginia Tech are now studying a beetle from Japan that may be a natural predator of Adelges tsugae, or ...

'Alien' jaws help moray eels feed

... the wild, they can reach 10 feet in length. Most fish feed by suction. When it comes upon food or prey, the fish rapidly expands its mouth cavity, sucking in water and the food with it. Some fish feed by overtaking prey with their mouth open or grabbing it in their jaws, but most of those fish then use ...

Born with a love of speech

... The infants were observed for changes in their sucking behaviour. "The neonates changed their ... Dr. Vouloumanos. "What we found is that their sucking behaviour increased to hear speech and it decreased when the sucking would elicit the non-speech sounds." The ...

Ancient amphibians evolved a bite before migrating to dry land

... of sutures in the skull roof indicate whether a fish captures its prey by sucking it into the mouth -- like a goldfish -- or by biting on it directly, like ... in a faint pushing together of the frontal bones in the skull, while a sucking motion would pull those bones ever so slightly apart. By comparing the ...

Contrary to common wisdom, scientist discovers some mammals can smell objects under water

... Using a high-speed camera, he discovered how they do it. After observing that the moles were blowing bubbles out of their nostrils and then sucking them right back in, he determined they were exhaling and inhaling the bubbles rapidly, between five and 10 times per second. That is about the same ...

Ohio University researchers discover evolutionary oddity in flamingos

... they bend their necks, tilt their bills upside down in the water and swish their heads from side-to-side. Their large tongue acts like a piston, sucking water into the front of the bill and then pushing it out the sides. Fringed plates on the tongue trap algae and crustaceans in the circulating water. ...

Scientists discover why cornea is transparent and free of blood vessels, allowing vision

... of their epithelial layers. They began to theorize that the large amounts of VEGFR-3, in this new, non-vascular location, might be attracting and sucking up all the C and D VEGF growth factors, thereby blocking them from binding with VEGFR-2. And, because this binding took place in a non-vascular ...

Deep-rooted plants have much greater impact on climate than experts thought

... of vegetation in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and in local cooling through transpiration, they have assumed a simple model of plants sucking water out of the soil and spewing water vapor into the atmosphere. The new study in the Amazonian forest shows that trees use water in a much more ...

Embryos tell story of Earth's earliest animals

... from other organisms is the ability to ingest other organisms, either by consuming them as food, as humans do, or by digesting food externally and sucking up the aftermath, in the manner of starfish. ...

Jefferson scientists identify gene defect leading to abnormal skin development and cancer

... years, before the evolution of jaws and bony skeletons. The species parasitizes other fish by attaching with their circular, toothy mouths and sucking the body juices. A single lamprey will feed for about a year, consuming on average 40 pounds of fish. In the Great Lakes, their prey have been ...

Leading lampreys to slaughter: Pheromone for scourge of Great Lakes identified

... years, before the evolution of jaws and bony skeletons. The species parasitizes other fish by attaching with their circular, toothy mouths and sucking the body juices. A single lamprey will feed for about a year, consuming on average 40 pounds of fish. In the Great Lakes, their prey have been ...

Drugs from the deep blue

... could be chemical defenses to deter predators. For example, some fish "taste" food items before swallowing them, sometimes spitting the item out and sucking it back in several times before rejecting or eating it. Some could be natural anti-fouling agents that stop a creature that does not move, like a ...

Bugs, even 'bad' ones, can be educationally beneficial, new book says

... cushion scale (Icerya purchasi), accidentally imported from Australia, threatened California's early citrus industry. At times these pests, whose sucking beaks are permanently attached to and suck juice out of leaves, infested trees so densely that the trees appeared to be covered with snow. ...