Lov

Love at first smell

Why do some males smell better than others? Scientists at Cardiff University, in collaboration with colleagues at Max-Plank Society, Germany ?and the help of stickleback fish - have identified the chemical responsible. The researchers found in a study of sticklebacks, that males with body odour that is particularly attractive to females produce small protein fragments (known as "peptides")...

Love's all in the brain: fMRI study shows strong, lateralized reward, not sex, drive

You just can't tell where you might find love these days. A team led by a neuroscientist, an anthropologist and a social psychologist found love-related neurophysiological systems inside a magnetic resonance imaging machine. They detected quantifiable love responses in the brains of 17 young men and women who each described themselves as being newly and madly in love. The multidisciplinary...

Deep thinking: Scientists sequence a cold-loving marine microbe

At home in the deep, dark Arctic Ocean, the marine bacterium Colwellia psychrerythraea 34H keeps very cool--typically below 5° degrees Celsius. How does the bacterium function in this frigid environment? To find out, scientists at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and collaborators have sequenced and analyzed C. psychrerythraea's genome. That genome analysis, posted in the Proceedi...

Grasshopper love songs give insight into sensory tuning

As anyone whose nerves have been jangled by a baby's howl or who have been riveted by the sight of an attractive person knows, nature has evolved sensory systems to be exquisitely tuned to relevant input. A major question in neurobiology is how neurons tune the strength of their interconnections to optimally respond to such inputs. Neuronal circuitry consists of a web of neurons, each trig...

Study Unlocks Insects?Secret for Love in the Dark

Could improve prediction of patient outcomes, lead to tailored treatmentsWhen it comes to inflammation, too much of a good thing can be deadly. In some severely injured patients, this normal healing process can develop into a lethal, whole-body response, including bloodstream infection (sepsis) and multiple organ failure. How and why inflammation turns from healing to harming is still mysterious,...

The secret love life of plants

A large portion of plant seeds is endosperm. It has the important task of nourishing the plant embryo during the early stages of its development. In flowering plants, there is a complicated double-fertilisation mechanism that arises among embryos and endosperm. They develop together into mature seeds. The exact process, and the communication between the two parts of the seeds, has been un...

Learning to love bacteria: Stanford scientist highlights bugs' benefits

Bacteria are bad. Mothers and doctors, not to mention the cleaning product industry, repeatedly warn of their dangers. But a Stanford University School of Medicine microbiologist is raising the intriguing idea that persistent bacterial and viral infections have benefits. Stanley Falkow, PhD, the Robert W. and Vivian K. Cahill Professor in Cancer Research, is publishing his thoughts on this...

Born with a love of speech

Do human newborns develop their preference for speech through in-utero eavesdropping, or is their penchant for speech innate? It's a bedevilling question to test, but one that's central to understanding the origins and dynamics of humans unique propensity for speech. Now a McGill University psychologist believes she's separated out the complicating effects of the uterine sound barrier. And the re...

Ammonia-loving archaea win landslide majority

A genetic analysis of soil samples indicates that a group of microorganisms called crenarchaeota are the Earth's most abundant land-based creatures that oxidize ammonia, according to an international team of researchers from Norway, Germany, United Kingdom and the United States. Soil microbes, in a process known as nitrification, combine ammonia with oxygen to form nitrates, which are...

Innovative method for creating a human cytomegalovirus vaccine outlined

Each year, about 40,000 children are born infected with human cytomegalovirus, or CMV, and about 8,000 of these children suffer permanent disabilities due to the virus ?almost one an hour. These disabilities can include hearing loss, vision loss, mental disability, a lack of coordination, and seizures. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CMV is as common a cause of seriou...

Fire ants: Their true story told by the scientist who loves them

When it comes to fire ants, most people prefer to wipe the venomous little varmints off the face of the Earth ?or at least out of their own back yards. The reviled South American native that invaded the U.S. Sun Belt via 1940s Mobile, Ala., is known in biology circles as Solenopsis invicta and everywhere else as a painful pest in the grass, so to speak. Then there's Walter R. Tschinkel.</p...

LIAI scientists make important finding on cytomegalovirus transmission

Researchers at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology have shown that cytomegalovirus (CMV) in the salivary glands can be reduced ?and in some cases eliminated ?through the use of antibodies to enhance the disease-fighting power of the immune system. The research team’s findings, based on controlled laboratory studies of mice, may also have implications for other chronic virus infec...

Cytomegalovirus exacerbates atherosclerosis through an autoimmune mechanism

Atherosclerosis is the main cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Classic risk factors including smoking, diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol levels are known...