Out in Biological News

Rosenstiel students come out on top

VIRGINIA KEY, Fla. Four University of Miami (UM) Marine Biology and Fisheries students have received recognition from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Ross Cunning and John Parkinson were awarded fellowships for their research on coral reefs in the laboratory of Dr. Andrew Baker, an assista...

Wiping out the world's mass migrations

Densely packed wildebeests flowing over the Serengeti, bison teeming across the Northern Plainsthese iconic images extend from Hollywood epics to the popular imagination. But the fact is, all of the world's large-scale terrestrial migrations have been severely reduced and a quarter of the migratin...

Princeton geoscientist offers new evidence that meteorite did not wipe out dinosaurs

A Princeton University geoscientist who has stirred controversy with her studies challenging a popular theory that an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs has compiled powerful new evidence asserting her position. Gerta Keller, whose studies of rock formations at many sites in the United States, Me...

When cells reach out and touch

MicroRNAs are single-stranded snippets that, not long ago, were given short shrift as genetic junk. Now that studies have shown they regulate genes involved in normal functioning as well as diseases such as cancer, everyone wants to know: What regulates microRNAs? Scientists at Johns Hopkins we...

New drug agent knocks out multiple enzymes in cancer pathway

A team of 24 researchers from the U.S., Europe, Taiwan and Japan and led by University of Illinois scientists has engineered a new anti-cancer agent that is about 200 times more active in killing tumor cells than similar drugs used in recent clinical trials. The study appears this week in the ...

Teeth of Columbus' crew flesh out tale of new world discovery

MADISON The adage that dead men tell no tales has long been disproved by archaeology. Now, however, science is taking interrogation of the dead to new heights. In a study that promises fresh and perhaps personal insight into the earliest European visitors to the New World, a team or researche...

1 drug may help people both lay down the drink and put out the cigarette

A popular smoking cessation drug dramatically reduced the amount a heavy drinker will consume, a new Yale School of Medicine study has found. Heavy-drinking smokers in a laboratory setting were much less likely to drink after taking the drug varenicline compared to those taking a placebo, accordin...

Cleaning the atmosphere of carbon: African forests out of balance

Tropical forests hold more living biomass than any other terrestrial ecosystem. A new report in the journal Nature by Lewis et al. shows that not only do trees in intact African tropical forests hold a lot of carbon, they hold more carbon now than they did 40 years ago--a hopeful sign that tropi...

Researchers iron out new role for serotonin

Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigators have found a surprising link between brain iron levels and serotonin, a neurotransmitter involved in neuropsychiatric conditions ranging from autism to major depression. Appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week...

Fast-food diet cancels out benefits of breastfeeding in preventing asthma

Many studies have shown that breastfeeding appears to reduce the chance of children developing asthma. But a newly published study led by a University of Alberta professor has found that eating fast food more than once or twice a week negated the beneficial effects that breastfeeding has in protec...

New drug holds out promise of normal diet for sufferers of devastating PKU genetic disease

Imagine being forced to say no to a child crying for more food at supper. Sadly, Margie Fischer doesn't have to imagine it; that was normal life at her family's dinner table for years. Her daughter Maggie, now 20, suffers from phenylketonuria (PKU), a genetic disease that means her body can't tole...

Satellites search out South Pole snowfields

As skiers across the world pay close attention to the state of the snow on the slopes, there are a different group of scientific snow-watchers looking closely at a South Pole snowfield this January. Scientists from around the world coordinated by the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) are ...

Step out for PAD

You probably know that poor diet and lack of exercise can lead to dangerous deposits of fatty plaques in arteries. But it is not just the heart that is affected blood flow can be blocked to the legs too, leading to pain when walking, immobility and even in extreme cases, amputation. Approximat...

MIT nanotubes sniff out cancer agents in living cells

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--MIT engineers have developed carbon nanotubes into sensors for cancer drugs and other DNA-damaging agents inside living cells. The sensors, made of carbon nanotubes wrapped in DNA, can detect chemotherapy drugs such as cisplatin as well as environmental toxins and free radical...

Time running out on coral reefs as climate change becomes increasing threat

Increasing pressures from climate change will reach a tipping point in less than a decade triggering a significant decline in the health of the planet's coral reef ecosystems according to the findings in an international report issued today. Released by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network...

Two from one: Pitt research maps out evolution of genders from hermaphroditic ancestors

PITTSBURGHResearch from the University of Pittsburgh published in the Nov. 20 edition of Heredity could finally provide evidence of the first stages of the evolution of separate sexes, a theory that holds that males and females developed from hermaphroditic ancestors. These early stages are not ...

Zoologists: Sea snakes seek out freshwater to slake thirst

GAINESVILLE, Fla. Sea snakes may slither in saltwater, but they sip the sweet stuff. So concludes a University of Florida zoologist in a paper appearing this month in the online edition of the November/December issue of the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology . Harvey Lillywhite ...

Sniffing out a better chemical sensor

Marrying a sensitive detector technology capable of distinguishing hundreds of different chemical compounds with a pattern-recognition module that mimics the way animals recognize odors, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created a new approach for electr...

Study rules out inbreeding as cause of amphibian deformities

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. Although research has linked inbreeding with elevated rates of deformity in a wide variety of animals, a new study finds it plays no part in the high incidence of malformation among salamanders. Purdue University researchers recently examined 2,000 adult and juvenile salam...

Rare corals breed their way out of trouble

Rare corals may be smarter than we thought. Faced with a dire shortage of mates of their own kind, new research suggests they may be able to cross-breed with certain other coral species to breed themselves out of a one-way trip to extinction. This finding, released by scientists at the ARC Cent...

IOF calls on European citizens to stand tall and speak out for their bones

The International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) kicked off World Osteoporosis Day events today in Brussels. This year's theme of Stand Tall, Speak Out For Your Bones is a global call to take charge and improve osteoporosis healthcare policies around the world. Osteoporosis is a disease that ca...

NIH doles out $3M in new innovator awards to 2 UC San Diego faculty

Two faculty members at the University of California, San Diego have received New Innovator Awards from the National Institutes of Health, awards intended to accelerate the translation of cutting-edge science and research to improvements in human health. Karen Christman, assistant professor of...

Tel Aviv University researchers root out new and efficient crop plants

A part of the global food crisis is the inefficiency of current irrigation methods. More irrigated water evaporates than reaches the roots of crops, amounting to an enormous waste of water and energy. Tel Aviv University researchers, however, are investigating a new solution that turns the prob...

Pregnant mice block out unwelcome admirers to protect their pups

Mouse mothers-to-be have a remarkable way to protect their unborn pups. Because the smell of a strange male's urine can cause miscarriage and reactivate the ovulatory cycle, pregnant mice prevent the action of such olfactory stimuli by blocking their smell. Researchers from the European Molecular ...

Sounding out heart problems automatically

Sounding the chest with a cold stethoscope is probably one of the most commonly used diagnostics in the medical room after peering down the back of the throat while the patient says, "Aaaah". But, research published in the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Medical Engineering and In...

Scientists set out to measure how we perceive naturalness

Natural products are highly valued by consumers yet their properties have been difficult to reproduce fully in synthetic materials, placing a drain on our limited natural resources. Until now ... Scientists at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) are working towards producing the world's fi...

Tasty meal out of reach

Dutch Rubicon laureate Chris Smit has concluded that small mammals, such as rabbits and mice, play a major role in the development of natural diversity. Smit researched how scrub becomes established in natural grassland. It seems that prickly shrubs are important in protecting plants and preventin...

Finding out what the Big Bang and ink jets have in common

It often turns out there is more to commonplace everyday events than meets the eye. The folding of paper, or fall of water droplets from a tap, are two such events, both of which involve the creation of singularities requiring sophisticated mathematical techniques to describe, analyse and predict....

A new analysis method allows to find out the sex of the baby from the second month of pregnancy

The spin off of the University of Granada Lorgen, in collaboration with the Foetal Medicine Unit of the Maternity Hospital Virgen de las Nieves of Granada, has managed to develop a genetic trial that identifies the sex of the foetus from the eighth week of pregnancy separating the DNA found in th...

New cell-based sensors sniff out danger like bloodhounds

COLLEGE PARK, Md.--A small, unmanned vehicle makes its way down the road ahead of a military convoy. Suddenly it stops and relays a warning to the convoy commander. The presence of a deadly improvised explosive device, or IED, has been detected by sophisticated new sensor technology incorporating ...

Ecologists tease out private lives of plants and their pollinators

The quality of pollen a plant produces is closely tied to its sexual habits, ecologists have discovered. As well as helping explain the evolution of such intimate relationships between plants and pollinators, the study one of the first of its kind and published online in the British Ecological So...

Turning on cell-cell communication wipes out staph biofilms

University of Iowa researchers have succeeded in wiping out established biofilms of Staphylococcus aureus (staph) by hijacking one of the bacteria's own regulatory systems. Although the discovery is not ready for clinical application, the findings offer insight into a dispersal mechanism for staph...

Is there anybody out there?

Is there anybody out there? Probably not, according to a scientist from the University of East Anglia. A mathematical model produced by Prof Andrew Watson suggests that the odds of finding new life on other Earth-like planets are low, given the time it has taken for beings such as humans to evo...

Pregnant patients lose out in breast cancer treatment; a new approach is needed

Berlin, Germany: Pregnant breast cancer patients can be treated as closely as possible to existing guidelines for non-pregnant patients, with few ill effects, a scientist told the 6th European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC-6) today (Wednesday 16 April). Dr. Sibylle Loibl, Assistant Profess...

Who's bad? Chimps figure it out by observation

Chimpanzees make judgments about the actions and dispositions of strangers by observing others behavior and interactions in different situations. Specifically, chimpanzees show an ability to recognize certain behavioral traits and make assumptions about the presence or absence of these traits in s...

Insects take a bigger bite out of plants in a higher CO2 world

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rising at an alarming rate, and new research indicates that soybean plant defenses go down as CO2 goes up. Elevated CO2 impairs a key component of the plants defenses against leaf-eating insects, according to the report. The University of Illinois study app...

Clovis-age overkill didn't take out California's flightless sea duck

Clovis-age natives, often noted for overhunting during their brief dominance in a primitive North America, deserve clemency in the case of California's flightless sea duck. New evidence says it took thousands of years for the duck to die out. A team of six scientists, including Jon M. Erlandson...

UCR-led research team uses tiny wasp to wipe out major agricultural pest in Tahiti

RIVERSIDE, Calif. A research team led by Mark Hoddle , a biological control specialist at UC Riverside, has nearly eradicated the glassy-winged sharpshooter , a major agricultural pest, from the island of Tahiti and several other French Polynesian islands in the South Pacific Ocean. To achieve ...

Evolving complexity out of 'junk DNA'

The study, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, claims to have solved this scientific riddle by analysing the genomics of primitive living fishes such as sharks and lampreys and their spineless relatives, such as the sea squirts. Vertebrates - animals such a...

1 person out of every 1,000 has synaesthesia, in which an individual can smell a sound

This release is available in Spanish . The research field has grown from grapheme-colour synaesthesia to include other forms of synaesthesia in which flavours are evoked by music or words (lexical-gustatory synaesthesia), space structures by time units, colours by music, etc. Experts on Exp...