Plain in Biological News

TB -- hiding in plain sight

Stockholm, Sweden and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Current research suggests that Mycobacterium tuberculosis can evade the immune response. The related report by Rahman et al, "Compartmentalization of immune responses in human tuberculosis: few CD8+ effector T cells but elevated levels of FoxP3+ regulat...

Evolution in plain language

Boulder, CO and Madison, WI 10 SEPTEMBER 2008 The latest evidence about the theory of evolution and its importance of teaching it in classrooms are the subject of two public programs in early October, which are presented as part of a large scientific meeting that will draw upwards of 8,000 parti...

Great bustards to be released on Salisbury Plain

Researchers at the University of Bath and conservationists from the Great Bustard Group will be releasing 19 birds on Salisbury Plain on Thursday 25 September as part of an ongoing reintroduction project in the UK. The globally threatened Great Bustard is the heaviest flying bird in the world a...

August 2009 Geology and GSA Today media highlights

...stead, the region consisted of a great Arctic steppe, bound by mountains to the south and continental glaciers to the north, west, and east. This vast plain was a veritable Serengeti, host to megafauna like the steppe bison, woolly mammoth, Yukon horse, western camel, American mastodon, American lion, the ...

DOE-funded research projects win 46 R&D 100 Awards for 2009

...te years of sun damage in just a few weeks. (Jointly with Atlas Material Testing Technology and the Institute of Laser Optical Technology) Power plain UX Microbattery is a safe, rechargeable, deep-cycle, thin-film lithium microbattery. Ideal applications include remote wireless sensors, smart homes...

Scientists 'rebuild' giant moa using ancient DNA

...day in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B . "The surprising thing is that while many of the species had a similar, relatively plain brown plumage for camouflage, some had white-tipped feathers to create a speckled appearance," Mr Rawlence says. A co-author of the study, Dr Jami...

University of Liverpool awarded $3.3 million for genomics hub

...ch community." John Jeans, MRC Chief Operating Officer, said: "This investment is key to retaining and enhancing the UK's competitiveness. It makes plain the MRC's commitment to supporting high quality basic research and exemplifies the responsiveness of MRC strategic investment to the needs of the rese...

Gutsy germs succumb to baby broccoli

...the number of Helicobacter bacteria in the mice's stomachs decreased by almost a hundredfold it did not change in infected control animals that drank plain water. The researchers also noted a greater than 50 percent reduction in inflammation of the primary target of this bacterium the body of the stomach...

New light shed on marine luminescence

...in different species. In the remarkable deep sea Silver Hatchetfish ( Argyropelecus olfersii ) nitric oxide inhibits the light reaction, whilst in the plain Midshipman fish (Porichthys notatus) it has an opposite, stimulating effect. Biological light is not only useful to the organism itself as a biologic...

February 2009 Geology and GSA Today media highlights

...e was increased evaporation of moisture from the soil and plants in that direction. The carbon isotopic data indicate that animals living on the river plain to the southwest were foraging in more open vegetation compared with the river system to the northeast, which had moister soil conditions with more cl...

Scientists uncover new class of non-protein coding genes in mammals with key functions

... "The challenge in finding these lincRNAs is that they have been hiding in plain sight," said John Rinn, a Harvard Medical School assistant professor at Bet...Nature study, it is likely that there are many more lincRNA genes hiding in plain sight in the genome, as well as other RNA-encoding genes that are as import...

Nicotine activates more than just the brain's pleasure pathways

...deleted were unresponsive to several different tastes, including bitterness, but they could still sense the presence of nicotine. "The mice preferred plain water to the nicotine solution, suggesting that there would be a second taste pathway in play, besides the one that had been knocked out," Oliveira-Ma...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- Dec. 17, 2008

...e more than 16 billion pounds of coffee around the world each year. The used or "spent" grounds remaining from production of espresso, cappuccino, and plain old-fashioned cups of java, often wind up in the trash or find use as soil conditioner. The scientists estimated, however, that spent coffee grounds c...

The birds of Spain, in a digital ornithological encyclopedia

...roject, making use of the latest computer technologies. Its authors, among them various reputed ornithologists, have strived to present their facts in plain language, accessible to the non-specialist reader, without sacrificing scientific accuracy. By this means, it is hoped, La enciclopedia de las aves d...

The dark chocolate version of Father Christmas is most filling

...hey could eat as much pizza as they liked was 15 per cent lower when they had eaten dark chocolate beforehand. The participants also stated that the plain chocolate made them feel less like eating sweet, salty or fatty foods. So apart from providing us with the healthier fatty acids and many antioxid...

Caltech geobiologists discover unique 'magnetic death star' fossil

...pears and spindles, unlike anything previously seen, among sediment layers deposited during an ancient global-warming event along the Atlantic coastal plain of the United States. The researchers, led by geobiologists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and McGill University, describe ...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- Aug. 27, 2008

...fresh white bread with a common mold species and stored the bread in either plain wax paper or cinnamon-based wax paper for several days. After just three da...ust 6 percent cinnamon oil inhibited 96 percent of mold growth, whereas the plain wax paper did not prevent mold growth, the researchers say. The cinnamon-ba...

No more big stink: scent lures mosquitoes, but humans can't smell it

...c filariasis. Oviposition or gravid female traps draw blood-fed mosquitoes ready to lay their eggs, but the chemical- and water-infused traps just plain stink, Leal said. The smell is highly offensive to those monitoring the traps and to people living near them. That prompted the UC Davis research...

August 2008 Geology and GSA Today media highlights

.... Pages 623-626. The basalt-covered Snake River plain and the geysers of Yellowstone National Park (Wyom...es and contemporary deformation in the Snake River plain and surrounding Basin and Range from GPS and seism...quakes. New observations show that the Snake River plain is not stretching as fast as the Basin and Range (...

A dash of lime -- a new twist that may cut CO2 levels back to pre-industrial levels

...n limestone, making it feasible for calcination to take place on site. Kruger says: 'There are many such places for example, Australia's Nullarbor plain would be a prime location for this process, as it has 10 000km3 of limestone and soaks up roughly 20MJ/m2 of solar irradiation every day.' The proc...

'Barren' seafloor teeming with microbial life

... Once considered a barren plain with the odd hydrothermal vent, the seafloor appears to be teeming with microbial life, according to a paper being published May 29 in Nature. A 60...

Bacteria 'feed' on earth's ocean-bottom crust

...e journal Nature. The findings pose intriguing questions about ocean chemistry and the co-evolution of Earth and life. Once considered a barren plain dotted with hydrothermal vents, the seafloor's rocky regions appear to be teeming with microbial life, say scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographi...

Scripps Research Institute awarded patent for remarkable chemical technology

...ally met with skepticism by a chemistry community that was more accustomed to research focused on increasingly complex chemical reactions. "It was plain laughed at in the beginning," says Valery Fokin, an associate professor and Sharpless colleague. But, over time, the utility of the chemistry invo...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- May 14, 2008

...ecraft is equipped with four sensor-laden beakers to test sub-surface soil samples dug by the crafts robotic arm. The landers destination is a flat plain near Mars north pole, where NASAs Mars Odyssey orbiter recently detected evidence of subsurface water and ice. At the very least, scientists hope to f...

Green tea compounds beat OSA-related brain deficits

...ays. One group received drinking water treated with GTP; the other received plain drinking water. They were then tested for markers of inflammation and ...ter performed significantly better in a water maze than the rats that drank plain water. GTP-treated rats exposed to IH displayed significantly greater spati...

A gentle touch for better control, a quantum mechanical con, and milestone PRL papers

...y exerting less authority rather than more. A child who fidgets uncontrollably in a confining booster seat, for example, may be perfectly content on a plain old chair. A team of physicists at the Universitat de Barcelona has found that the same is true in controlling the movement of particles suspended in ...

'Smart' greenhouse research partnership unveiled

...ty unveiled the two greenhouses that will be used in the first phase of the project. One contains liquid crystal panels and the other, a control, has plain glass. A demonstration revealed how the panes switch to manage the amount of sunlight that enters the greenhouse. This initiative speaks to our ...

Absinthe uncorked: The 'Green Fairy' was boozy -- but not psychedelic

...gas, Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso to enhance their creativity a team of scientists from Europe and the United States have concluded the culprit was plain and simple: A high alcohol content, rather than thujone, the compound widely believed responsible for absinthes effects. Although consumed diluted...

Dartmouth researchers alarmed by levels of mercury and arsenic in Chinese freshwater ecosystem

...led by biologists at Dartmouth, has found potentially dangerous levels of mercury and arsenic in Lake Baiyangdian, the largest lake in the North China plain and a source of both food and drinking water for the people who live around it. The researchers studied three separate locations in Lake Baiyangdi...

Present-day species of piranha result from a marine incursion into the Amazon Basin

...othesis and showed that the piranha populations present in the Amazon flood plain but situated 100 metres above sea-level have been in existence for no more ...ly have dispersed downstream, finding their way back to the Amazons lowland plain which would have served as a gathering ground for biodiversity. What now re...

New national map shows relative risk for zebra and quagga mussel invasion

...oregions. There were a few exceptions, mostly in highly variable regions such as the Northern Lakes and Forests ecoregion, the Mississippi Alluvial plain region, and Appalachian ecoregion. One must take into account the entire ecology for the species. The case of the zebra mussels in Arkansas Riv...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- Nov. 7, 2007

... centimeter from the implant site. They also identified a promising CPT-PET compound that could deliver 11 times more medication to the tumor than the plain drug alone. For patients, those advantages could substantially improve chances for successful treatment, the researchers indicate. ARTICLE #1 FOR I...

Human clones: New U.N. analysis lays out world's choices

...uman reproductive cloning could profoundly impact humanity," says UN Under-Secretary-General Konrad Osterwalder, Rector of UNU. "This report offers a plain language analysis of the opportunities, challenges and options before us a firm and thoughtful base from which the international community can revisi...

Environmental setting of human migrations in the circum-Pacific Region

... was still 100 m below modern levels, creating conditions amenable for a second pulse of human migration into North America across an ice-free coastal plain now covered by the Bering Sea. The stabilization of climate and sea level in the early Holocene (8,000-6,000 years BP) supported the expansion of ...

New research shows sharks use their noses and bodies to locate smells

...versity Marine Program (BUMP) Masters student and study co-author, created two parallel, turbulent odor plumes – one using squid scent and the other a plain seawater control. Minimally turbulent ‘oozing’ sources of squid odor and seawater control were physically separated from sources of major turbulence b...

Deep in the ocean, a clam that acts like a plant

.... Life on Earth may have got its start with microbes living on such chemical reactions, before the evolution of photosynthesis. "And they’re just plain interesting," Eisen added. If you were thinking that giant clams sound tasty, think again. The hydrogen sulfide gives them a strong smell of rott...

Fruit fly gene research may shed light on human disease processes

... light on these same features in humans." Besides potentially shedding light on human genetic maladies, Erickson and Avila say their work is just plain interesting. "After all," says Erickson, "fruit flies share the same life cycle as butterflies ?they're just not as pretty." ...

Shrinking ponds signal warmer, dryer Alaska

...terior Alaska, the authors also selected a study area in the Arctic Coastal plain where the temperatures are much colder, the growing season much shorter, an...st of the change occurring since the 1970s. The ponds in the Arctic Coastal plain showed negligible change. ...

Paramecia adapt their swimming to changing gravitational force

...-powered electromagnet at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Fla. The organisms are less susceptible to a magnetic field than plain water is, so the magnetic field generated inside the vial "pulls" harder on the water than on the cells. If the field is pulling down, the cells float...

It's in the genes: Study opens door to new treatment of the blues

...oward them. The defeated mice also displayed little interest in sexual interaction and showed decreased preference for palatable sugary drinks over plain water. A month later, the rodents' interest in sex and sweets had returned, but the social avoidance remained. The researchers found that long-term...