Tag: "rough" at biology news

Viral protein influences key cell-signaling pathway

... network of membranes within the cell known as the rough endoplasmic reticulum (RER). Among other things, the RER helps regulate the amount of calcium in the cell. The investigators found that the p12 protein allows calcium to leak out of the RER, thereby causing calcium levels to rise elsewhere in the cel...

Chemicals in tattoo inks need closer scrutiny

...esearchers. "Tattoos are no longer limited to the rough and rowdy," says Haley Finley-Jones, an undergraduate chemistry student and lead author of the study. "With the growing popularity of tattoos among young people, it is vital that we develop a better understanding of this form of self expression." Th...

At the molecular level, the predator is the prey

...in this week's Nature that a toxin produced by the rough skinned newt, Taricha granulosa, has forced several evolutionary changes in the garter snake Thamnophis sirtalis or, more specifically, in the snake nerve cell protein that endures the toxin's attacks. Embedded in the surface of garter snake nerve c...

York scientists warn of dramatic impact of climate change on Africa

...going it looks like Africa is going to be in for a rough ride over the next few decades," Dr Lovett said. ...

New bioinformatics technique for systematically analyzing key regions in DNA that help control gene activity

...said, "we used a machine learning technique called rough sets to mathematically model general rules that co...he June issue of the journal Genome Research. The rough sets technique was developed by Zdzislaw Pawlak in Poland in the 1980s and is particularly suitable ...

Fruit fly research set to revolutionize study of birth defects

... have bent legs (and wings), tufts of bristles and rough eyes." While identifying this gene array is significant in its own right, the successful use of fruit flies in this kind of study is a revelation to the researchers who view it as an efficient model for the initial testing of "rescue" therapies to...

Watch your step when the going gets rough

...t of situation people encounter when rambling over rough terrain, where they need to accurately place their feet on well defined targets. Getting it right may avoid your slipping or twisting an ankle. "This visual guidance mechanism could also help gymnasts on the beam, or acrobat walkers on a tightrope, a...

The world's deepest dinosaur finding - 2256 metres below the seabed

...e Norwegians found one using a drill. The somewhat rough uncovering of Norway's first dinosaur happened in the North Sea, at an entire 2256 metres below the seabed. It had been there for nearly 200 million years, ever since the time the North Sea wasn't a sea at all, but an enormous alluvial plane. It is ...

In the mind's eye: How the brain makes a whole out of parts

...f stained glass to create a design. "Humans do a rough categorization of objects very quickly," Connor sa...imal or not. Our results show that this immediate, rough impression probably depends on recognizing just one or more individual parts of what we see. Fine di...

Penguins waddle but they don't fall down, UH researchers say

...ough these endearing animals may seem unsuited for rough terrain, penguins will travel more than 75 miles across rugged ground terrain to reach their nesting sites. Kurz believes the penguins have learned to use the waddling motion in a way that makes their movements more efficient, adjusting for the limi...

Tiny shock absorbers help bacteria stick around inside the body

...ons helps the bacteria hang on tightly, even under rough fluid flow inside the body, researchers report in ...ecoil to dampen sudden changes in forces caused by rough and rapidly changing flow conditions," explained study co-author Dr. Viola Vogel, professor in the D...

MIT 'seeing machine' offers hope to blind

... and this was by far the best, even in this rough, rough shape." Goldring and colleagues are now working toward a large-scale clinical trial of a color seeing machine (the device tested in the pilot trial was black and white). With the color version, participants can explore a museum gallery containing so...

Life and death in the hippocampus: what young neurons need to survive

...to elbow its way into pre-existing networks. "It's rough in there!" he concedes. "The NMDA receptor-mediated event is a competition between mature cells vying for connectivity and young guys competing with both the mature cells and their peers to fit in. You are selecting for the cell that performs best in...

Nice guys do finish first in lizards' evolutionary race

...ly so your buddy can get some tail may seem like a rough life, but it not only works for some lizards, it also gives a fascinating peek into hard-wired altruism in evolutionary biology. Side-blotched lizards spend their year on earth looking to reproduce, and their strategies have lessons about evolution....

Humpback whales have brain cells also found in humans

... this mammal. Although brain to body mass ratio, a rough measure of intelligence, is lower for baleen whales such as the humpback compared to toothed whales such as dolphins, the structure and large brain size of baleen whales suggests that they too have a complex and elaborate evolutionary history. Pat...

Dinosaurs -- stones did not help with digestion

...f the stones, which had been partly smooth, became rough in the stomachs during the experiments. The mass of the stones then corresponded on average to one per cent of the body mass of the birds. 'Whereas occasionally stones were found together with sauropod skeletons, we don't think they are remains of...

Study: Living coral reefs provide better protection from tsunami waves

...e water. A dead reef, on the other hand, is not as rough -- it tends to erode and exerts less drag on the w...lent mountain of water crashing over a complicated rough surface presented Kunkel with a number of obstacles for her own study -- specifically, how to find a...

Mysterious 'neural noise' actually primes brain for peak performance

...y, intuition may be less a burst of insight than a rough consensus among your neurons. Pouget and his team are now expanding their findings across the entire cortex, because every part of our highly developed cortex displays a similar underlying Bayes-optimal structure. "If the structure is the same, t...

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