trunk in Biological News

Two dietary oils, two sets of benefits for older women with diabetes

... with safflower oil reduced fat in the trunk area, lowered blood sugar and increased muscle ... lose between about two pounds and four pounds of trunk fat simply by taking safflower oil supplements. ... throughout their bodies and specifically in their trunk region. Researchers asked the participants to ...

Getting to the root of science in a nutty way

... is the first research to look at roots in the real setting." To do that, Lombardini bored a hole at a 45-degree angle about 20 inches from the trunk of 20 trees in a 400-tree orchard planted in February. Each hole was fitted with a six-foot clear plastic tube into which a camera will be inserted ...

Study finds link between individual stress and adolescent obesity

... percent of families were considered food insecure. Using five different measures of obesity -- BMI, waist circumference, triceps skinfold thickness, trunk fat mass, and percent body fat -- researchers determined that 15 to 45 percent of children were classified as obese. Yet they found no statistically ...

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

... the formation of body structures in organisms ranging from worms to people. His work showing that Hox9 genes determine where limbs develop along the trunk was published in the journal Nature in 1997. He went on to discover the molecular basis for loss of limbs during snake evolution and the role of ...

Origin of claws seen in 390-million-year-old fossil

... has large bulbous eyes, a circular mouth opening and a pair of segmented, opposable appendages with spines projecting inward along their length. The trunk section is made up of 12 segments, each with small appendages, and a long tail spine. Between the head and trunk, there is a pair of large triangular ...

Defectors take the car, cooperators go by bus

... on otherwise empty streets. Everyone gets to their destination quickly but in less comfort and without the benefits of privacy, in-car audio, or a trunk for transporting cumbersome items. If just a few individuals defect at this point, then they get the biggest reward, because they can move even ...

Earth's original ancestor was LUCA, not Adam nor Eve

... between animals, plant, bacteria, and used them to create a tree of life with branches representing separate species. These all stemmed from the same trunk LUCA, the genetic makeup that we then further characterized." Reconciling conflicting data The group's findings are an important step towards ...

Damage inflicted during cardiac attacks more widespread, MSU researchers find

... the ability of arteries to dilate properly at intervals far away from the site of the attack." Abela compared the process to a tree, with the trunk as the site of the cardiac event and the branches representing arteries where damage is afflicted far away from the trunk. "These findings have ...

Saltwater olives

... saline water in a commercial orchard simulation study in a semiarid area", stated Weisman. Olive trees in both subplots were evaluated for trunk growth, olive yield, oil percentage, olive oil yield, and other characteristics. The data clearly showed a significant difference between the tested ...

Multithreaded supercomputer seeks software for data-intensive computing

... a calculation, the chip dips into the memory, does its work, then accesses the memory again for its next calculation, like an elephant dipping its trunk into a bag of peanuts and eating them one at a time. Each processor-memory unit is linked together over a network, and performance improvements come ...

Primate's scent speaks volumes about who he is

... that becomes critical to marking territory and advertising fitness during mating season. He does a handstand and rubs this gland directly onto a tree trunk to let any interested lemurs know who he is and what he's made of. Scent not only speaks volumes, it's physiologically expensive to make, Drea ...

Sugar linkage could lead to better treatment for autoimmune diseases

... have proved challenging. With sequential mass spectrometry, we systematically untangle this bush, says Reinhold. We take it down to the trunk then try to put it back together to determine its structure. Reinhold and Glycomics Center research scientist David Ashline helped Ravetch ...

Rainfall and river networks prove accurate predictors of fish biodiversity

... are, mathematically speaking, smaller versions of the whole. Fractals occur widely in nature. For example, the branching structure of trees -- from trunk to branch to twig -- are fractals, as are clouds and lightning bolts and snowflakes. Unlike in a savannah, where wildlife move across an open ...

World's oldest living tree discovered in Sweden

... summers have been colder over the past 10,000 years, these trees have survived harsh weather conditions due to their ability to push out another trunk as the other one died. The average increase in temperature during the summers over the past hundred years has risen one degree in the mountain ...

UCLA researchers solve decade-old mystery

... the way that hydrogen is stored on-board the vehicle. With current technologies, hydrogen gas storage tanks have to be as large as or larger than the trunk of a car to carry enough gas to travel only one to two hundred miles. While liquid hydrogen is denser and takes up less space, it is very ...

New genus of self-destructive palm found in Madagascar

... discovered in Madagascar; its name will be published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society on 17 January 2008. The mystery palm has a huge trunk which towers over 18m high and fan leaves which are 5m in diameter ?among the largest known in flowering plants. This is the most massive palm ever ...

Oceans Past: A Guide to Oceans Future

... decades earlier, says Loren McClenachan. Sponger Money Never Done was sung both in the Bahamas and Key West during the 19th century Look in my trunk and see whats there, sponger money, One hundred dollars was my share, sponger money, Im gonna take away your woes, sponger money, Im gonna buy you ...

Social standing influences elephant movement

... observed elephant interaction, taking note of the telltale behavior of social dominance, such as the flaring of the ears, a tusk poke here or a trunk slap there, to determine rank. Three of the GPS-collared elephants were from very dominant families, two were in the middle, and two were ...

Living fossils have hot sex

... suggests have been around since the Permian Period roughly 290 million to 250 million years ago. The cycad species in the study has most of its trunk underground. Leafy fronds stick up above ground and a single cone male or female grows in the middle of the fronds. The cone looks similar to a ...

Wild Gorillas Handy with a Stick

... from the forest and broke off the thin, long trunk from a dead shrub with both hands. She then jammed the trunk into the ground and grasped it with her left hand ... food with her right hand. Efi then placed the trunk on the swampy ground in front of her, and, ...

Scientists journey to southern Africa to unravel the secret world of elephant communication

... sensations as well. "Bulls often lay their trunk on the ground when freezing," she observes. "We ... dealt with before." SIDEBAR: Anatomy of the trunk and feet offers new clues to elephant seismic ... receptors of low-frequency vibrations. The trunk may be the most versatile appendage in nature. ...

Falling ants glide back to trunk to avoid dangers of forest floor

... their uncanny ability to land on the tree's trunk and climb back to the very spot from which they'd ... and hang on, though they often tumble down the trunk a few feet and occasionally bounce off. They can ... Cephalotes atratus ?are able to land on the tree trunk and climb back up, as compared to a mere 5 ...

UBC researchers reveal dwarf aquatic plants' hidden ancestry

... these moss-size plants are instead part of an older line of flowering plants that includes the water lilies. This ancient line split off the main trunk of the family tree of flowering plants soon after they began to diversify, at least 135 million years ago, during the age of the dinosaurs. ...

Mystery of fossilized trees is solved

... condition." Dr Berry worked with colleagues from Binghampton University, New York and from New York State Museum, which discovered the two trunk fossils. Their findings are published in the April 19 edition of the scientific journal Nature. ...

Chimpanzees found to use tools to hunt mammalian prey

... behavior was systematic and consistent, suggesting that it was habitual. The hunting behavior included forceful jabbing motions into branch or trunk hollows, and chimpanzees were seen to subsequently open the hollows by breaking wood off from a distance, suggesting that the jabbing actions were ...

Researchers offer clues to how leaves patterns are formed

... the most evolutionary implications, is that plants use the same mechanism to regulate vein formation in the leaf and branch formation on the main trunk and on the main root. The finding that the leaf is like a two-dimensional model of a tree may change the way plant scientists work, says Scarpella. ...

Why Christmas trees are not extinct

... a result, water moving up through an evergreen must pass through 10 times as many valves (known technically as "pits") as water moving up through the trunk of other trees. Sperry said that should be a severe handicap for conifers in competing against flowering trees for water. Yet conifers thrive, ...