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Tag: "assumed" at biology news

Surprising symbiosis: Glassy-winged sharpshooter eats with friends

...s, cannot make for themselves. But researchers had assumed that the sharpshooter needed just one bacterial symbiont (in this case, B. cicadellinicola), as does the biologically similar aphid. University of Arizona evolutionary biologist Nancy Moran, who has extensively studied the co-evolution of insects a...

Study identifies substances in grapefruit juice that interact dangerously with some drugs

...these drugs to enter the body. It was originally assumed that the ingredients responsible for drug interactions were the flavonoids that give grapefruit juice its bitter taste. The new study shows that a group of chemicals called furanocoumarins are the likely culprit. "This is the best evidence to date...

Movie spies on malaria parasite's sneaky behavior

...to infect another person. Researchers have long assumed that the form of the parasite that infects red blood cells, called a merozoite, was released from a ruptured liver cell and moved on its own back to the bloodstream. But studies in the laboratory have shown that the liver's resident macrophage immune...

Large dinosaurs were extremely hot in their day, UF study finds

...ulation density." For many years, scientists had assumed that dinosaurs were cold-blooded, or ectotherms, with a slow metabolism that required the sun's heat to regulate temperature. But in the late 1960s, the notion emerged that dinosaurs, like mammals and birds, might have been warm-blooded, or endotherm...

Flick of whiskers helps tease out brain's 'shadow' signaling system

...at astrocytes weren't communicating much, and they assumed that astrocytes, which are 10 times as plentiful as neurons, simply don't make up an important signaling network. So Nedergaard devised a new way to "listen" for astrocyte activity, developing a sophisticated laser system to look at their activity b...

Researchers discover which organs in Antarctic fish produce antifreeze

...the discovery of these antifreeze proteins, it was assumed they had to be produced in the liver, since the vertebrate liver is well known as a source of secreted plasma protein, so there was no reason to think otherwise," said Chi-Hing "Christina" C. Cheng, a professor of animal biology. "It turns out that t...

Spinal cord bridge bypasses injury to restore mobility

...ury site. Silver said the medical community also assumed that the cut axon tips died when they hit the scar wall. In prior research in his lab by his graduate student, Tom, it was discovered that axons are alive and continue to attempt to grow for years. Silver describes them as "trucks stuck in mud goin...

Virtual realities against pain

...erefore a reduction in the stimulus itself. It was assumed that the ideal distractor would require an optimum amount of attention involving various senses (visual, auditory and kinaesthetic), an active emotional involvement, and participation from the patient to compete with the signals of the harmful stimul...

Scientists aim to thwart use of flu as bioweapon

...t just sort of blended into the background. People assumed that since there is a vaccine, it wasn't a disease of interest any more. "But with bird flu on the horizon and the vaccine shortages that have occurred in recent years, it's become a hotbed of research interest. Besides, flu is responsible for 35,00...

Food-crop yields in future greenhouse-gas conditions lower than expected

...r CO2 fertilization effect on yield than currently assumed for C3 crops, such as rice, wheat and soybeans, and possibly little or no stimulation for C4 crops that include maize and sorghum," said Stephen P. Long, a U. of I. plant biologist and crop scientist. FACE technology, such as the SoyFACE project at ...

Production of key Alzheimer's protein monitored for first time in humans

...s take many years to develop, some researchers had assumed that the creation and clearance rates for Abeta were very slow. But the initial test of the new technique, applied to six healthy volunteers, suggests the opposite. "Abeta has the second-fastest production rate of any protein whose production rate ...

NASA study solves ocean plant mystery

...s of algae or phytoplankton before, we have always assumed that equally green waters were equally productive," Behrenfeld said. "We now know this is not the case, and that we have to treat areas lacking iron differently." For the tropical Pacific, correction for this "iron-effect" decreases scientists' est...

Parachuting allows krill to eat and run

...ered was not considered to be large because it was assumed that DVM happened just once every 24 hours. In the new work, the researchers found that krill are capable of many migrations each night. What is more, the downward migration may be particularly rapid as the krill fan out their swimming legs and ent...

Blood flow in brain takes a twist, affecting views of Alzheimer's

...increased activity possible. Most scientists have assumed that the more blood that flows to a particular part of the brain, the more activity on the part of neurons, the nerve cells that send electrical signals that are widely considered to be "brain activity." The assumption that more blood flow equals mor...

Rewind, please: Nature paper shows that cell division is reversible

...rtain events in the cell cycle that have long been assumed irreversible may, in fact, be reversible." Cell division occurs millions of times each day in the human body and is essential to life itself. In the lab, Gorbsky and his OMRF colleagues were able to control the protein responsible for the division ...

Leave it to salmon to leave no stone unturned

...s dam building by beavers, but much of ecology has assumed that most other organisms simply react to the physical and chemical conditions around them. A handful of papers since 1999, including one by Moore in 2004, has focused on the disturbance created by spawning salmon and the ecosystem at large. In this ...

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

... 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 complex way: The tap roots transfer rainwater from the surface to res...

Why nerve cells work faster than the theory allows

...pulse, do not work independently of each other, as assumed so far, but support each other during the opening process. This new type of mechanism appears to help the cells transmit fast changing signals and suppress slow signals. Every living cell maintains a voltage difference across its cell membrane. Ner...

Study finds evolution doesn't always favor bigger animals

...mass in colder environments. Biologists had long assumed that Bergmann's Rule--named after the 19 th century German biologist Christian Bergmann--reflected the adaptation of warm-blooded animals to become larger when they move in colder environments. The reason: Bigger animals have smaller surface to volum...

Satellites show Amazon parks, indigenous reserves stop forest clearing

...for governments and environmental groups, who have assumed for years that the most important tool for tropical forest conservation is the creation of protected areas. A tropical forest ecologist, Nepstad has studied Amazon forests and strategies for their conservation for the last 21 years. His research in...

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