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Tag: "explanation" at biology news

Why we could all do with a siesta

...ween meals for example. "This may well provide an explanation for after-meal tiredness and why it is difficult to sleep when hungry. "Now we know how glucose stops orexin neurons 'firing', we have a better understanding of what may occur in disorders of sleep and body weight. "This research perhaps sheds ligh...

Beauty and the brain

...t the question "why?" has remained open. A popular explanation has been an evolutionary, sexual-selection one tha...the value of a potential mate. But whereas that explanation makes intuitive sense when it comes to human faces, Winkielman said, it strains credulity when appli...

Electronic chip, interacting with the brain, modifies pathways for controlling movement

...ulation site. The researchers said that a likely explanation for these changes is the strengthening of pathways within the cortex from the recording to the stimulation site. This strengthening may have been produced by the continuous synchronization of activity at the two sites, generated by the recurrent brai...

Steep oxygen decline halted first land colonization by Earth's sea creatures

...Dinosaurs thrived and nothing else did. There's an explanation for that, and it is that the air sac breathing system in dinosaurs and their descendants, modern birds, is more efficient than systems used by other organisms," Ward said. He and his colleagues tested that hypothesis by examining the breathing sys...

A simple feedback resistor switch keeps latent HIV from awakening

...n the environment. Their model may also provide an explanation for some puzzling observations about Tat and HIV. Tat contains at least two acetylation sites that must both be deacetylated to turn off transcription. The authors propose this requirement may avoid making the off state so easy to reach that the viru...

Study offers window into human behavior, brain disease

...ven the fact that they are evolutionarily new, the explanation may be that there are still "kinks" in the genetic programming of the neuronal circuits. "VENs probably help us in some wonderful way, which would explain why natural selection has pushed their rapid evolution in humans," he says. "Still, in the c...

Hard-wiring the fruit fly's visual system

... and connections that need to be made. A possible explanation for the findings is that the fruit fly has many fewer neurons than vertebrates, and the system can therefore just rely on the genetic components in flies," said Bellen. "In vertebrates, complexity is added because of the challenge of millions of ne...

Human testis harbors HIV-1 in resident immune cells

... resident immune cells of the testis, providing an explanation for the persistence of virus in semen even after effective highly active antiretroviral therapy. The related report by Roulet et al., “Susceptibility of human testis to human immunodeficiency virus-1 infection in situ and in vitro,?appears in the Dec...

Long-term cancer risk follows stem cell transplant recipients

...been previously reported in the literature and the explanation for this finding is uncertain," say the authors. "Since the risk of developing a solid neoplasm post-allogeneic transplantation continues to increase with time," suggest the authors, "extended follow-up will be needed to more fully assess the inci...

Dragonfly's metabolic disease provides clues about human obesity

...en observed. He and Schilder began looking for an explanation and ultimately found many key differences between the tissues and performance of healthy dragonflies and parasite-infected dragonflies that match symptoms of metabolic syndrome in humans. One symptom involves the signaling molecule, p38 MAP kinase, ...

Male chimpanzees prefer mating with old females

...pause and, therefore, age. The converse of such an explanation suggests that species that appear to lack long-term pair bonding and menopause (such as chimpanzees) should not exhibit such strong preferences by males for young females. In the new work, researchers examined this idea by studying male mate prefe...

High HPV concentrations combined with smoking significantly raise risks of cervical cancer

...sence causing cervical cancer," Gunnell said. "One explanation for this interaction could involve the influence of smoking on persistence of HPV infection, probably due to localized immune suppression. Conversely, it could be related to the progression of neoplastic growth, since HPV and smoking appear to alter ...

Worms produce surprise insight into human fever

... in C. elegans immunity provides both a molecular explanation for the beneficial role of behavioral fevers in poikilotherms and a mechanism by which fever works in metazoans, says Aballay. It also raises questions about the HSF-1 pathway in humans and whether drugs currently used to reduce fever in infect...

'Allergy cells' can aggravate cancer and psoriasis

...t and his research group have now found a possible explanation for the link between mast cells and several non-allergic diseases. The study, which is presented online by The Journal of Clinical Investigation, shows that mast cells can be activated in a previously unknown way that might lead to chronic inflammati...

A buffet for early human relatives

...ity," the study's authors write. "Another possible explanation is that these individuals were migrating between more wooded habitats and more open savannas." Cerling says the study "shows that our early human relatives were able to eat a varied diet and therefore were more adaptable in savanna environments t...

Nobel Laureate finds 'elegant' explanation for DNA transcribing enzyme's high fidelity

...? These findings offer “an unexpected and elegant explanation that’s both beautiful and simple, as nature invari... differ by only one oxygen atom. In search of an explanation in the current study, the researchers screened hundreds of crystals to achieve higher data quality a...

A potential biological cause for sudden infant death syndrome

...ented. The findings also provide a biological explanation for why SIDS occurs twice as often in males than females ?male SIDS infants had significantly fewer 5-HT1A receptors than female SIDS infants. In addition, serotonin abnormalities help explain why infants under 6 months are most vulnerable to SI...

Huddling and a drop in metabolism allow penguins to survive the South Pole cold

...s up to 40-41°C. The team believes that a possible explanation for the constancy (or slight decrease) of core temperature inside the dense huddles, in contrast to the expected temperature rise, is the depression of metabolic rate. Such depression could be achieved by entering sleep. In fact, during tight huddles...

Virtual duck bills demonstrate species coexistence

...efficient and out-compete the other. The classical explanation is that each species has evolved morphological or physiological traits that allow it to exploit some resources more efficiently than all other species. Such partitioning of resources essentially provides each species with exclusive access to resource...

Many couples choose to donate surplus embryos for stem cell research

... authors of the report, was the complete and clear explanation of their options through an interview process with a legal advisor and embryologist, which helped couples navigate the confusing legal situation and address any concerns they might have had about donation for research purposes. While the findings ref...

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