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Tag: "movements" at biology news

Math that powers spam filters used to understand how brain learns to move our muscles

...r less predictable “guesstimates” of human muscle movements to explain how the brain draws on both what it rec... it possible to predict the best ways to teach new movements and help design physical therapy regimens for the disabled or impaired. Reza Shadmehr, Ph.D., pr...

Massive herds of animals found to still exist in Southern Sudan

...d a significant portion of kob due to the animals’ movements during the surveys. As a result, they believe that there could actually be well over a million white-eared kob in Southern Sudan. Combined with the tiang and Mongalla gazelle, the team believes this would represent larger numbers than even those of ...

Reconstructing the biology of extinct species: A new approach

...elps stabilize an animal's gaze and coordinate its movements as it travels through the environment -- should be irrevocably linked to the type of locomotion produced by its limbs. "If an animal evolves a new way of moving about the world, its organ of balance must evolve accordingly," Walker explains. From t...

Scientists close in on missing carbon sink

...and more than we realized." Capturing vertical movements Most of the computer models produced incorrect estimates because, in relying on ground-level measurements, they failed to accurately simulate the movement of carbon dioxide vertically in the atmosphere. The models tended to move too much carbon d...

Definitive evidence found of a swimming dinosaur

...aight path. "The dinosaur swam with alternating movements of the two hind limbs, a pelvic paddle swimming mo... "It is a swimming style of amplified walking with movements similar to those used by modern bipeds, including aquatic birds." The question of whether dinosau...

Common treatment for methamphetamine overdose may damage brain cells

... the loss of cells results in abnormal involuntary movements resembling Tourette's syndrome and Huntington's disease." ...

Human stem cell treatment restores motor function in paralyzed rats

...tor function, measured by a suppression of spastic movements and improved muscle tone, was shown in 40 to 50 percent of the animals tested. A post-mortem study of those animals showed a robust maturation of neurons and an increase in the expression of inhibitory neurotransmitters in the spinal cords of rats t...

Fast and slow -- How the spinal cord controls the speed of movement

... human spinal cords and Parkinson’s disease, where movements slow down and become erratic. The study, "A Topog...while cells further up the spinal cord activate as movements speed up. By removing specific neurons in the lower spinal cord with laser beams, the researchers...

In Iran, cheetahs collared for the first time

...vast areas for their survival. Understanding their movements as they travel between reserves is one of the first steps in establishing a plan to secure and connect the few remaining populations of this incredible animal." Once ranging from the Red Sea to India, the Asiatic cheetah today is hanging on by only...

Bones in motion: Brown scientists to create new 3-D X-ray system

...il. Researchers will be able to track 3-D skeletal movements with 0.1 millimeter accuracy and see the equivalent of 1,000 CT images per second. The result will be a powerful tool with applications for basic and applied research: testing new theories of biomechanics, such as muscle-tendon interactions; ...

Imaging pinpoints brain regions that 'see the future'

...t experiences, including memories of specific body movements and visual perspective changes ?data stored as we navigated through similar settings in the past. These findings, McDermott suggests, offer strong support for a relatively recent theory of memory, which posits that remembering the past and envisio...

Tracking sperm whales and jumbo squid

...ce would transmit recorded data about the animal’s movements to an orbiting satellite. Jumbo squid also were abundant, with numerous small fishing boats hauling in a total catch of about 10,000 squid per night throughout the six-day study. Captured squid were outfitted with a pop-up archival transmitting ta...

When your brain talks, your muscles don't always listen

...he repeated contraction of muscles is essential to movements such as walking," Knight said. "However, our muscles have a reduced capacity to contract or 'twitch' as we grow older. We lose fast-twitch muscle fibers as we age." However, there are steps we can take to preserve this critical motor capacity, acc...

Robotic therapy helps restore hand use after stroke

... seven patients, HOWARD shaped and helped complete movements across all sessions, while six had complete support from HOWARD for only the second half of the sessions. At the end of three weeks, all patients had improved in their ability to grasp and release objects. Their average score on an Action Research...

Trusting your instincts leads you to the right answer

...'t guesswork at all. Dr Zhaoping said: "Our eye movements are often involuntary. What seems like a random darting of the eye is often an essential subconscious scanning technique that allows us to pick out unique and distinctive features in a crowd ?such as colour or orientation. Soon after our eyes have fi...

Out of Africa -- Bacteria, as well

...rs to use H. pylori data to work out the migratory movements of modern man. "The parallels between the spread of man and of H. pylori are truly astonishing," says Achtman. "This bacterium could help us attain further information on aspects of human history that are still hotly disputed today if we analyzed H. ...

Conceptualizing a cyborg

...atient's thoughts could convert nerve signals into movements of a prosthetic, while sensory stimuli, such as temperature or pressure provides feedback to adapt the movements. The central feature of the proposed interface is the ability to create transplantable living nervous tissue already coupled to elec...

Lizards 'shout' against a noisy background

...he background, the faster and more exaggerated the movements of the lizards. Anole lizards are interesting to evolutionary biologists because different species are found on different islands all over the Caribbean. The lizards are not particularly closely related -- they are separated by 30 million years of...

On automatic pilot

...the cerebellum. It regulates the automation of our movements and as a result the cerebrum can perform other tasks. However, how the cerebellum performs this task is not clear. Dutch researcher Angelique Pijpers reconstructed a part of cerebellar functioning in rats and investigated how it mediates in the contr...

How does your brain tell time?

...echanism ?which generates and counts regular fixed movements -- underlies timing in the brain. In contrast, Buonomano suggests a physical model that operates without using a clock. He offers an analogy to explain how it works. "If you toss a pebble into a lake," he explained, "the ripples of water produ...

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