bugs in Biological News

Scientists build 'roach motel' for nasty bugs of the bacterial variety

GAINESVILLE, Fla. The vacancy sign is on, but the lowlifes who check in never check out. Scientists at the University of Florida and the University of New Mexico have created tiny microscopic spheres that trap and kill harmful bacteria in a manner the scientists liken to "roach motels" snaring...

How nonstick bugs evade natural fly paper

There are few things more irritating than a fly buzzing around the house. South Africans have an unconventional solution to the problem. They hang up a bunch of Roridula gorgonias leaves. Attracted to the shiny adhesive droplets on the leaf's hairs, the hapless pest is soon trapped by the natura...

How non-stick bugs evade natural fly paper

There are few things more irritating than a fly buzzing around the house. South Africans have an unconventional solution to the problem. They hang up a bunch of Roridula gorgonias leaves. Attracted to the shiny adhesive droplets on the leaf's hairs, the hapless pest is soon trapped by the natura...

Heavy metals in the Peak District -- evidence from bugs in blanket bogs

Bacteria that consume heavy metals have been found in some of the most contaminated parts of the Peak District in the Southern Pennines and may be changing the pollutants into more toxic forms that could leak out into reservoirs, scientists will hear tomorrow (Monday 31 March 2008) at the Society ...

Unique gene regulation gives chilly bugs survival advantage at bottom of the world

The larvae of Antarctic midges never stop producing special proteins that minimize environmental stress, allowing them to withstand a range of intense environmental conditions in one of the world's harshest environments. Scientists found that adult midges (Belgica antarctica) lose their ability ...

Methane-belching bugs inspire a new theory of the origin of life on Earth

Two laboratories at Penn State set out to show how an obscure undersea microbe metabolizes carbon monoxide into methane and vinegar. What they found was not merely a previously unknown biochemical process--their discovery also became the inspiration for a fundamental new theory of the origin of li...

Biotech cotton 8: Bugs 0

Biotech cotton has beaten back pink bollworm eight years running, reports a team of scientists from The University of Arizona in Tucson. The surprising finding is good news for the environment. Arizona farmers who plant the biotech cotton known as Bt cotton use substantially less chemical insecti...

UF researchers kill resistant bugs one bandage at a time

University of Florida researchers have led the development of a new type of wound dressing that could keep dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria from spreading in hospitals, a problem that leads to thousands of deaths in the United States each year. This microbicidal coating - which can be chem...

Scientists find viruses can't stick to sea bugs in the dark

Blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, in the seas are as vital to the survival of life on earth as the oxygen producing plants are on land. But marine bacteria are attacked by viruses, which can seriously affect their life-sustaining abilities but mow a researcher at the University of Warwick has dis...

Animal and plant communication at the ESA Annual Meeting

...or exchanging information among living things. bugs pretending to be ants are protected against attack...y of Colorado wanted to know just what makes these bugs seemingly invisible to the watchdog ants. Whitehead hypothesized that the bugs might be acting in some way that the ants found ac...

Virus-resistant grapevines

...ll kinds of obstacles. Extremely hot or rainy periods can destroy entire crops, not to mention the wide variety of pests that can appear on the scene. bugs such as the vine louse or the rust mite, fungi such as mildew, or viruses such as the "Grapevine fanleaf virus" (GFLV for short) can give the vines a ...

Advance in understanding cellulose synthesis

...lulose and build cell walls." Plant cells have rigid walls that cannot easily change shape. There are many cell types, spiky trichomes to fend off bugs and sausage-shaped guard cells that regulate the plant's breathing pores, as examples. In a previous study using the model plant Arabidopsis , Ehrhar...

New cleaning protocol for future 'search for life' missions

...as developed and tested by scientists at the University of Leeds and NASA. It deals with the dilemma known as 'forward contamination' - ensuring that bugs from Earth don't hitch a ride across space and jeopardise the integrity of samples collected by rovers. The decontamination protocol involves a co...

Symposia selected for Entomological Society of America meeting

... Insect Resistance Management: Science, Scope, and Solutions Korean Young Entomologists (KYE) Look What Ken Yeargan Started! Minute Pirate bugs (Orius spp.) a Potential Biocontrol Tool in IPM of Fruit, Ornamental, and Vegetable Pests North American Neuropterists Meeting Overseas Chinese ...

Sugar on bacteria surface serves as base for a web of resistance

...eraction. When multiple bacterial cells join together with the help of such a structure, they form what is called a biofilm, a persistent community of bugs that is able to resist the effects of a human immune response, as well as antibiotic drugs. In the case of the bacterium being studied, Pseudomonas...

How Toxoplasma gondii gets noticed

...e many other parasites, T. gondii resides within specialized vesicles inside infected host cells, but the process by which peptides from the trapped bugs are processed by infected cells and presented to killer T cells is mysterious. Here, Romina Goldszmid and her colleagues at the National Institut...

New infant formula safety advice could prevent infant suffering

...een associated with infant meningitis, enteritis and septicaemia, so prevention of infant's consumption is vital in maintaining their safety. These bugs will grow at 25C or 37C, but less so when the formula is made up using apple or grape juice than when made up using water or milk. "This is valuabl...

Stroke patients soon may have fun, high-tech tool

...ign will require patients to put on goggles while sitting at a table. A few bugs would fly around nearby. The patients' mission is to smash all of the virtu...d, they would earn a point. As patients improve their range of motion, more bugs would appear at greater distances, forcing patients to work harder and incr...

Acoustical Meeting, Nov. 10-14, 2008 in Miami, Florida

... Insect flight has previously been studied with slow motion video and strobe lights, but a new non-invasive technique could reveal much more about how bugs fly. This ultrasound-based system was designed primarily as a way of identifying agricultural pests, but it might also be used one day to listen in on...

Nanotechnology boosts war on superbugs

...ajor global health problem and is driving the development of new technologies to investigate antibiotics and how they work. "The cell wall of these bugs is weakened by the antibiotic, ultimately killing the bacteria," she continued. "Our research on cantilever sensors suggests that the cell wall is dis...

Case Western Reserve University project ties soil conservation and river management together

... address stewardship of our rivers," said Whiting. For instance, fine sediment carried into rivers can cloud the water and can choke out freshwater bugs and fish that require cleaner water. Fine sediment deposited on the stream bottom can smother eggs laid by fish including salmon and walleye. To pres...

TB bacterium uses its sugar coat to sweeten its chances of living in lungs

...a eventually multiply so much that the infected cells burst and release the bugs into the lungs, leading to active infection. Schlesinger's lab has disc...rent areas of the world interact with humans in a special way, and if these bugs then travel to a different part of the world and an abnormal encounter occu...

Hidden infections crucial to understanding, controlling disease outbreaks

...h the bug. But it takes 100 billion bacteria to cause severe illness when ingested with water; 100 million when taken in with food (which protects the bugs from stomach acid). As a result, in areas like Bengal where exposure is high, lots of people are walking around infected, but not ill. "The consequ...

Photosynthesizing bacteria with a day-night cycle contain rare chromosome

...mportant finding was that the unexpected linear chromosome was more than just a pretty face. It contained the only copy of a key protein that lets the bugs produce lactate, called lactate dehydrogenase, during fermentation. DNA sequencing revealed the linear chromosome to be 430 kilobases long and cont...

Rattlesnake-type poisons used by superbug bacteria to beat our defenses

...caused by bacteria can advance at an astonishing rate and tests have associated these types of disease with free-floating bacteria. Such free-floating bugs often secrete tissue-damaging poisons and enzymes to break down our cells, contributing to the way the disease develops, so it is natural to blame the...

Biochemists manipulate fruit flavor enzymes

...ruits and vegetables. Green leaf volatiles and jasmonates emitted by plants also serve to ward off predators. "Mind you plants can't run away from bugs and other pests. They need to deal with them. One of the things they do is to release volatile substances into the air so as to attract predators of t...

Novel fungus helps beetles to digest hard wood

...hey fed ponderosa pine wood to the Pacific dampwood termite, an insect that typically eats only dead wood. Chemical analyses of feces from the two bugs indicated that they are able to alter the chemical structure of lignin by selectively adding or removing certain groups of molecules from the polymer....

Nothing stops an expert in the art of living

..., which dine on the trapped insects. Yet the mirid bugs successfully evade their host's sticky clutches. C...decided to take a look at the apparently non-stick bugs to see how they elude R. gorgonias' grasp. ( Journ...Voigt and Gorb decided to test how non-stick mirid bugs really are. Wrapping a bug in a leaf the team were...

Antarctic fossils paint a picture of a much warmer continent

..., Marchant and Ashworth discovered the last bit of life on the Antarctic continent. It was hanging on by its fingernails--just a few simple plants and bugs in a small pond, everything else around them frozen over--and then, wham!, they went too. And it must have happened quickly because these fossils are ...

Caltech researchers find dual-use sexual attraction and population-control chemicals in nematodes

...d be to create chemical attractants derived from pheromones, similar to the pheromone-based substances that now are used to lure fruit flies and other bugs into traps. Alternatively, Sternberg says, compounds could be developed "that interfere with the chemical signaling involved in the reproductive proce...

Thinking ahead: Bacteria anticipate coming changes in their environment

.... Remarkably, within a few hundred generations the bugs partially adapted to this new regime, and no longe... proteins. An evolving population of these virtual bugs competes for limited resources within a changing e...time. To help them along, the researchers gave the bugs cues before feeding them, but the cues had to appe...

UNH researchers test sediment-scrubbing technology in NH river

...they performed in the lab," says Melton. "What will happen to them in this intertidal zone with boats, waves, birds, and weather? How will they impact bugs and other aquatic life in the sediment?" The mats are six feet square and one inch thick. They consist of a mixture of reactive materials sandwiche...

Scientists announce top 10 new species, issue SOS

... imitating art is a Dim rhinoceros beetle Megaceras briansaltini which, according to the author, looks like the Dim character from the Disney film A bugs Life. The international committee of taxon experts who made the selection of the top 10 from the thousands of species described in calendar year 20...

MIT crafts bacteria-resistant films

...e immune system can defend against that infection, said Thompson. Another possible application for the films is to promote growth of so-called good bugs by tuning the mechanical stiffness of the material on which these bacteria are cultured. These films could stimulate growth of bacteria needed for sci...

UV lotion lights the way to cleaner facilities

...of so-called superbugs in hospitals. Hospital patients are thought to catch bugs like vancomycin resistant Enterococci (VRE), methicillin resistant Staphylo...ficile because they are not eradicated from the hospital environment. These bugs may be transferred between patients through cross-contamination in the bath...

MRSA in hospital intensive care -- what's growing where?

... Researchers are finding out which bugs grow in intensive care units to develop a novel sampling regime that would indicate the threat of MRSA and other superbugs in the environment, scienti...

Ants and avalanches: Insects on coffee plants follow widespread natural tendency

...fee scale, they also get an inadvertent assist from the ants. In the course of shooing off parasitic wasps that attack scale, the ants also scare away bugs that parasitize beetle larvae. "So we have a situation where the beetle is the main predator of the scale insects, which are pests on the coffee, ...

Genes linked with lupus are revealed, giving hope for new treatments

...ch forms part of the body's immune response. Complement is a series of proteins in the blood which is designed to stick to the surface of bacteria and bugs in order to enable them to be attacked by the immune system. The discovery of variations in the ITGAM gene in people with Lupus supports the idea ...

New screening strategy for detection of chagas disease in children

...ess journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Trypanosoma cruzi, the single-cell parasite that causes Chagas disease, is transmitted by triatomine bugs that infest houses in poor communities. The disease, which infects an estimated 11 million people in Latin America, kills more people than any other p...

If you don't want to fall ill this Christmas, then share a festive kiss but don't shake hands

...n alcohol handrub in situations where there is high risk, such as after handling raw meat or poultry, or when there is an outbreak of colds or stomach bugs in the family home or workplace, or if someone in the family is more vulnerable to infection. They suggest carrying an alcohol rub or sanitiser at all...