much in Biological News

Report updates guidelines on how much weight women should gain during pregnancy

WASHINGTON -- A growing amount of scientific evidence indicates that how much weight women gain during pregnancy and their starting weight at conception can affect their health and that of their babies, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council. The report...

ISU researcher identifies genetic pathway responsible for much of plant growth

AMES, Iowa -- Researchers at Iowa State University have discovered a previously unknown pathway in plant cells that regulates plant growth. Yanhai Yin, an assistant professor in genetics, development and cell biology, examined signaling mechanisms of a plant hormone called brassinosteroids. The ...

Fish may actually feel pain and react to it much like humans

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Fish don't make noises or contort their faces to show that it hurts when hooks are pulled from their mouths, but a Purdue University researcher believes they feel that pain all the same. Joseph Garner, an assistant professor of animal sciences, helped develop a test that...

Commercial ships spew half as much particulate pollution as world's cars

Globally, commercial ships emit almost half as much particulate pollution into the air as the total amount released by cars, according to a new study. Ship pollutants affect both the Earth's climate and the health of people living along coastlines. The study is the first to provide a global es...

Gaining too much weight during pregnancy nearly doubles risk of having a heavy baby

(PORTLAND, Ore.) October 31, 2008 A study by the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research of more than 40,000 women and their babies found that women who gained more than 40 pounds during their pregnancies were nearly twice as likely to have a heavy baby. Published in the November issue of O...

Alcohol consumption can cause too much cell death, fetal abnormalities

The initial signs of fetal alcohol syndrome are slight but classic: facial malformations such as a flat and high upper lip, small eye openings and a short nose. Researchers want to know if those facial clues can help them figure out how much alcohol it takes during what point in development to ...

Antarctic fossils paint a picture of a much warmer continent

National Science Foundation-funded scientists working in an ice-free region of Antarctica have discovered the last traces of tundra--in the form of fossilized plants and insects--on the interior of the southernmost continent before temperatures began a relentless drop millions of years ago. An ...

Mussels to determine how much contamination is in the ports

This release is available in Spanish . Studying living things can prove to be highly significant when evaluating contamination suffered by a specific environment. A research team from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), with Dr. Nestor Etxebarria as director, is involved in th...

Too much or too little weight gain poses risks to pregnant mothers, babies

CHAPEL HILL Women who gain more or less than recommended amounts of weight during pregnancy are likely to increase the risk of problems for both themselves and their child, according to a new report by the RTI International-University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Evidence-based Practice Cente...

Too much technology may be killing beneficial bacteria

COLUMBIA, Mo. Too much of a good thing could be harmful to the environment. For years, scientists have known about silvers ability to kill harmful bacteria and, recently, have used this knowledge to create consumer products containing silver nanoparticles. Now, a University of Missouri researcher ...

Ancient ecosystems organized much like our own

It was an Anomalocaris-eat-trilobite world, filled with species like nothing on today's Earth. But the ecology of Cambrian communities was remarkably modern, say researchers behind the first study to reconstruct detailed food webs for ancient ecosystems. Their paper, published this week in the ope...

How what and how much we eat (and drink) affects our risk of cancer

SAN DIEGO A healthy diet and lifestyle protect against a wide range of diseases, and new research presented at the American Association for Cancer Research 2008 Annual Meeting, April 12-16, shows that cancer is no exception. Researchers demonstrate how excessive alcohol drinking could lead to an ...

Button mushrooms contain as much anti-oxidants as expensive ones

The humble white button mushroom (Agaricus bisporus) has as much, and in some cases, more anti-oxidant properties than more expensive varieties. Although the button mushroom is the foremost cultivated edible mushroom in the world with thousands of tonnes being eaten every year, it is often thou...

Too much fructose could leave dieters sugar shocked

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Heres one tip for how to eat at the holidays: Dont take your cues from Santa. The sugary cookies and fat-laden fruitcakes the mythical North Pole resident eats are a no-no. But you dont have to go no-carb to stay fit at the holidays, either, University of Florida researchers ...

Using nanotechnology, UCLA researchers discover cancer cells 'feel' much softer than normal cells

A multidisciplinary team of UCLA scientists were able to differentiate metastatic cancer cells from normal cells in patient samples using leading-edge nanotechnology that measures the softness of the cells. The study, published Dec. 2, 2007 in the advance online edition of the journal Nature N...

How much fish have we got?

The Shifting Baselines Toolset is presented to the public and press on Wednesday 14 to Friday 16 this November 2007. When: Public symposium 1pm to 5:15pm, Wednesday 14th November Where: Owen Glenn Building, Wynyard Street, University of Auckland city campus. The meeting will be launched with...

Too much sugar turns off gene that controls the effects of sex steroids

(Vancouver November 8, 2007) Eating too much fructose and glucose can turn off the gene that regulates the levels of active testosterone and estrogen in the body, shows a new study in mice and human cell cultures thats published this month in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. This discover...

Dirty snow may warm Arctic as much as greenhouse gases

The global warming debate has focused on carbon dioxide emissions, but scientists at UC Irvine have determined that a lesser-known mechanism -- dirty snow -- can explain one-third or more of the Arctic warming primarily attributed to greenhouse gases. Snow becomes dirty when soot from tailpipes,...

World's largest flower evolved from family of much tinier blooms

The plant with the world's largest flower -- typically a full meter across, with a bud the size of a basketball -- evolved from a family of plants whose blossoms are nearly all tiny, botanists write this week in the journal Science. Their genetic analysis of rafflesia reveals that it is closely rel...

Too much of a good thing? Excess nutrients or water limit biodiversity

Too much of a good thing (nutrients or water) actually decreases the diversity of species in an ecosystem while it increases the productivity of a few species, according to a grassland experiment conducted by University of Minnesota researchers. The reduction in species diversity occurs because ...

New research shows why too much memory may be a bad thing

New research from Columbia University Medical Center may explain why people who are able to easily and accurately recall historical dates or long-ago events, may have a harder time with word recall or remembering the day’s current events. They may have too much memory ?making it harder to filter ou...

Female guppies risk their lives to avoid too much male attention

Sexual harassment is a burden that females of many species face, and some may go to extreme lengths to avoid it. In a new paper from the June issue of the American Naturalist, Darren Croft (University of Wales) and a research team from the University of Leeds suggest that female guppies, a popul...

The diversity of marine life in the Gulf of Maine region is much greater than previously thought

The Gulf of Maine Program of the Census of Marine Life, with the Huntsman Marine Science Center of St. Andrews, New Brunswick, announced today the first count of known marine species in the Gulf of Maine region -- more than 50% larger than previous estimates. The count is 3,317 species and incl...

Deep-rooted plants have much greater impact on climate than experts thought

Trees, particularly those with deep roots, contribute to the Earth's climate much more than scientists thought, according to a new study by biologists and climatologists from the University of California, Berkeley. While scientists studying global climate change recognize the importance of vegeta...

Too much sugar not good for coral reefs

The race is on to buy up inexpensive land along coastlines for vacation homes and tourist hotels. But increased development can mean more nutrient rich runoff that threatens the very coral reefs attracting tourists in the first place. David Kline at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute an...

Alleged 40,000-year-old human footprints in Mexico much, much older than thought

Alleged footprints of early Americans found in volcanic rock in Mexico are either extremely old - more than 1 million years older than other evidence of human presence in the Western Hemisphere - or not footprints at all, according to a new analysis published this week in Nature. The study was co...

Amazon trees much older than assumed, raising questions on global climate impact of region

Trees in the Amazon tropical forests are old. Really old, in fact, which comes as a surprise to a team of American and Brazilian researchers studying tree growth in the world's largest tropical region. Using radiocarbon dating methods, the team, which includes UC Irvine's Susan Trumbore, found th...

Mouse genome much more complex than expected

Over 100 scientists worldwide publish joint study in Science More than 100 scientists from Australia, Asia, Europe and the US have been probing the genome of the mouse in a joint study lasting several years. Their results in some aspects have completely overturned geneticists' traditional assump...

Study shows humans have ability to track odors, much like bloodhounds

Though humans may never match the tracking ability of dogs, we apparently have the ability to sniff out and locate odors, according to a new study by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley. Student volunteers presented with odors to one nostril or the other could reliably discern ...

Too much water may be as dangerous as too little during long-distance athletic events

Drinking water during a long-distance race may do serious harm rather than keep you safe from injury if you're drinking too much, according to a cardiologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Runners or any long-distance athletes who drink too much water during a race could put themselves at jeo...

Why do insects stop 'breathing'? To avoid damage from too much oxygen, say researchers

A new study investigating the respiratory system of insects may have solved a mystery that has intrigued physiologists for decades: why insects routinely stop breathing for minutes at a time. Challenging previous theories, researchers at UC Irvine and Humboldt University propose that insects suc...

Carbon nanoparticles toxic to adult fruit flies but benign to young

...oparticles corresponding with their commercial uses carbon black (a powder much like printer toner), C60 (spherical molecules known as carbon buckyballs, n...gs to legs, which may have impeded their movement or weighted them down too much to climb. In others, the nanoparticles clogged their breathing holes, or sp...

NIH stimulus funding supports Emory biomedical scientists

...can help doctors decide who could benefit from a pacemaker. Deshazer uses magnetic resonance imaging and a specialized computer program to analyze how much blood is flowing through a patient's heart from moment to moment. ...

Climbing to new heights in the forest canopy

...ng them the greatest likelihood of encountering a support. Exactly what allows the plants to circumnutate is still poorly-understood and is a topic of much ongoing research involving biophysics. After contacting a support, the stem of twining plants winds and forms a helix around the supporting structure....

'Green' energy from algae

...their only advantage: "Compared to land plants, algae produce five times as much biomass per hectare and contain 30 to 40% oil usable for energy production"...ould not be optimum. Posten points out that the Sahara offers just twice as much sun as Central Europe. But there, the reactor contents would have to be coo...

Women often opt to surgically remove their breasts, ovaries to reduce cancer risk

...RCA1 gene carriers 52 percent had the surgery compared with 28 percent of the women who were BRCA2 gene carriers. "We found that older women were much less likely to have a mastectomy, but were more likely to have their ovaries removed," said Evans. Most of the women, specifically those aged 35 t...

Venomous sea snakes play heads or tails with their predators

...w horseshoe marking on the tip of the head and the tail. The yellow was deeper than the colours on the rest of the body and the black colorations were much longer than the dark bands on the rest of the body, highlighting the similarity between the head and the tail. The reason for this mixture of beh...

Pinhead-size worms + robot = new antibiotics

...rugs that are toxic, or that fight bacteria in the same ways as existing antibiotics that are loosing effectiveness against drug-resistant bacteria. A much better test would involve screening of potential new antibiotics in living animals infected with bacteria to see the effects on the entire body of the...

Scary ancient spiders revealed in 3-D models, thanks to new imaging technique

...of the fossil's physical features. The researchers believe their new technique could be used to re-explore previously analysed fossils to provide a much clearer picture of how ancient extinct species survived on early Earth. ...

delSECUR CORPORATION Announces Agreement to Purchase the Intellectual Property Assets of the Corporation

...without further delay. It is time to bring the del-Id technology to the next level and to test its capabilities. With this new alliance we are much closer to that goal." delSECUR, a public company (Pink Sheets: DLSC) with its head office in S. Burlington, VT., is a technology development c...