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Tag: "sun" at biology news

The circadian clock: Understanding nature's timepiece

...al strategies as simple as not drying out when the sun comes up. Plants and animals have their own environmental niches and also unique temporal niches, as any cat owner can tell you. ...

How monarch butterflies are wired for navigation

...feature of butterflies that use a time-compensated sun compass," wrote the researchers. They also speculated that another such clock-related pathway of fibers they detected between two regions of the butterfly brain may play a role in regulating the insects' hormonal system, to induce the longevity that ...

Hybrid grass may prove to be valuable fuel source

...roughout the day. He measures the intensity of the sun and then places a leaf in a chamber, allowing him to measure the rate of photosynthesis depending upon ambient sunlight. Preliminary results show that Miscanthus has a 27 percent greater rate of photosynthesis at midday compared with switchgrass. Ni...

Scientists create digital bacteria to forge advances in biomedical research

...sner in devising simulations to understand how the sun reverses its magnetic field every 11 years. Each digital cell in AgentCell is a virtual Escherichia coli, a single-celled bacterium, which is equipped with all the virtual components necessary to search for food. These digital E. coli contain their ...

Errors in the measurement of global warming corrected

... the journal Science, says that direct heat of the sun on temperature probes of the weather balloon (radi...t feels hotter when you are standing in the direct sun than when you are standing in the shade," said Sherwood. "We can't hang our hats on the old balloon ...

Displaced songbirds navigate in the high Arctic

...geomagnetic field lines are steep and the midnight sun makes star navigation impossible for much of the summer. White-crowned sparrows are nocturnally migrating birds that breed in northern Canada and perform long migrations covering a few thousand kilometers to winter in the southern United States. In...

Plants reveal a secret and bring researchers nearer a cleaner future

...e state. How far away are we then from using the sun to power our daily lives? Michael Haumann, the main author of the publication, asserts that "these are important results that will make an impact in the photosynthesis community. They help our understanding of how solar energy is used in plants and c...

HIV inserts into human genome using a DNA-associated protein

...t this strategy helps the virus make hay while the sun is shining, as it were, producing lots of viral copies during a short time, so that the virus can maximize production of daughter virions," says Frederic Bushman, PhD, Professor of Microbiology at Penn. This present study demonstrates the first pie...

Researchers discover why melanoma is so malignant

...t as melanocytes--cells that protect the skin from sun damage by producing pigmentation--morph into cancer cells, they immediately reawaken a dormant cellular process that lets them travel swiftly throughout the body. Central to this reawakened process is a gene called Slug (named after the bizarre e...

Science's Breakthrough of the Year: Watching evolution in action

...powered electricity by recreating the power of the sun on Earth. Science 's Breakdown of the Year -- U.S. Particle Physics: With the cancellation of two major experiments and talk of an early closing for one of the three existing particle colliders, U.S. particle physics is Science 's breakdown of 200...

Microbes under Greenland Ice may be preview of what scientists find under Mars' surface

...ed in Mars' atmosphere, ultraviolet light from the sun would have broken down the amount observed in about 300 years if some process was not replenishing the methane, Price noted. While interaction of carbon-bearing fluid with basaltic rock might be responsible, methanogens might instead take in subsurfa...

Hot-spring bacteria flip a metabolic switch

...o radically different metabolic identities. As the sun goes down, these cells quit their day job of photosynthesis and unexpectedly begin to fix nitrogen, converting nitrogen gas (N2) into compounds that are useful for cell growth. The study, published January 30 in the early online edition of the Proce...

HPV subtype associated with squamous cell skin cancers

...n control subjects. The authors write, "Although sun exposure and sun sensitivity are the major risk factors for [skin] cancers, our data support a role of HPV, particula...

Science finds new fix for UV-damaged skin in arthritis treatment

For many women, accumulated sun exposure has already permanently damaged their skin cells, causing them to overproduce pigment that shows up as unsightly dark splotches and uneven skin tone over time. But new research indicates that glucosamine - a compound best known for treating ...

Mosquito spray increases toxicity of pyrethroids in creek, study finds

...nts to leave their outdoor furniture unused in the sun for a day or two to let the pyrethrin and PBO residue degrade rather than send the runoff into the creeks. ...

How plants avoid feeling the burn

Too much sun ?for plants as well as people ?can be harmful to long-term health. But to avoid the botanical equivalent of "lobster tans," plants have developed an intricate internal defense mechanism, called photoprotection, which acts like sunscreen to ward off t...

Light guides flight of migratory birds

...and of intense polarized light 90 degrees from the sun that passes directly overhead through the zenith a...rees to the right and left of the sun. Just as the sun location changes with latitude and the time of year, so does the alignment of the band of polarized ...

Scientific issues associated with carbon-neutral energy sources such as cellulosic ethanol

...ves approximately 4,000 times more energy from the sun each year than the total projected human uses in the year 2050, Somerville commented. Green plants growing throughout the world capture the sun's (solar) energy and convert it to bio-chemical energy in a process called photosynthesis. There are vast...

Buildup of damaged DNA in cells drives aging

...ear old Afghan boy who was highly sensitive to the sun and had other debilitating symptoms including weig...ve a 2,000-fold increased risk of skin cancer from sun exposure. When the investigators obtained cells from the boy and tested them for NER activity, th...

Too mellow for our predatory world

...spread-eagled, on black lava rocks, soaking up the sun - behaviour that would be unthinkable in an environment with predators, where reptiles are persistently exposed to the threat of being devoured by others. The absence of predators may lead to adaptations in the behaviour of insular animals. Over a ...

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