wing in Biological News

Dolphins get a lift from delta wing technology

We can only marvel at the way that dolphins, whales and porpoises scythe through water. Their finlike flippers seem perfectly adapted for maximum aquatic agility. However, no one had ever analysed how the animals' flippers interact with water; the hydrodynamic lift that they generate, the drag tha...

New study uncovers secrets behind butterfly wing patterns

Irvine, Calif., Oct. 25, 2007 -- The genes that make a fruit fly's eyes red also produce red wing patterns in the Heliconius butterfly found in South and Central America, finds a new study by a UC Irvine entomologist. Bob Reed, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, discovered...

Diabetes research takes wing thanks to long-lived fruit fly

The creation of an extraordinarily long-lived fruit fly by genetics researchers at the University of Rochester has led scientists down an unexpected new path in the fight against diabetes. The mutant fly is serving as a portal for understanding the factors that determine how nutrition and stress se...

On a wing and a prayer - Alaska researchers seek clues to bird flu

While Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" made many of us uneasy at the sight of amassing gulls years ago, today public health officials around the world are beginning to cast an equally uneasy eye toward migratory birds, especially in Alaska, following recent outbreaks of avian influenza in Southeast A...

Robo-bats with metal muscles may be next generation of remote control flyers

...t less than 6 grams, feels as light as a feather. The researchers are currently completing fabrication and assembly of the joints, muscular system and wing membrane for the robo-bat, which should allow it to fly with the same efficient flapping motion used by real bats. "The key concept here is the use...

Wings that waggle could cut aircraft emissions by 20 percent

...roject, said: "This has come as a bit of a surprise to all of us in the aerodynamics community. It was discovered, essentially, by waggling a piece of wing from side to side in a wind tunnel." "The truth is we're not exactly sure why this technology reduces drag but with the pressure of climate change...

CellThera and WPI advance in regeneration study

...llThera continues to grow and show progress. We look forward to tackling the challenges ahead." DARPA, which serves as the research and development wing of the U.S. Defense Department, awarded CellThera a one-year $570,000 contract, with an option to extend for a second year, to fund studies aimed at r...

Engineer devises ways to improve gas mileage

...ry jet actuators which are embedded in the surface of the body (an airplane wing for example), and essentially perform injection and suction of the fluid fr...," said Agarwal. He has demonstrated that the transonic drag of an airplane wing can be reduced by 12 to 15 percent with the incorporation of three-ounce ac...

Tuning in on cellular communication in the fruit fly

...ent of many tissue types in animals, including muscles, bones and the nervous system. In fruit flies, the pathway sends the signals that direct proper wing formation. Many links along the BMP pathway within a cell are well-characterized, but how the pathway works from one cell to another as the embryo ...

Gene's past could improve the future of rice

... feed the human population, and it needs to be done on less land and with less water. This could be the way to do that." Jackson worked with Rod A. wing of the University of Arizona and Mingsheng Chen of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, and they were the corresponding authors for the study. ...

Our microbes, ourselves

...hich provides a characteristic fingerprint for microbial identification. The analysis was conducted with the assistance of University of Arizona's Rod wing at the Bio5 Institute, using a novel sequencing technique known as 454-pyrosequencing, which allows a significantly larger number and greater diversit...

Florida professor creates endowment for insect scientists

... work may sometimes force us to 'grow up,' but we should not forget the childhood amazement we all experienced when we marveled over, for example, the wing venation of an insect. That perceptive and imaginative mind drove most us to our professions, and we need to go back to that foundation." The first...

Immune cells reveal fancy footwork

...eir adhesive feet. This is the reason why at this point the cell undergoes modifications and loses its feet. In this way the mature dendritic cell can wing its way to the T cells at full speed. Once alerted, the T cells can intervene and tackle the problem in the body's infected tissues. Van Helden no...

Jupiter's shrinking red spot

...tures, such as bat wings, are very complicated because both the structure and airflow change and adapt to each other in a highly nonlinear way. Bats' wing bones are even flexible, unlike those of birds, which gives the mammals added control but is an additional challenge for scientists trying to understa...

Animal and biological science highlights: San Antonio Fluid Dynamics Conference, Nov. 23-25

...ted by the bat's flapping wings and details of the wing motion, which "allows us to link the effect (the g...that a vortex is generated at the tip of the bat's wing during the first third of its downstroke, then gro...g during the latter half of the upstroke (with the wing beat cycle defined by the tip position). The vorte...

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

...g off the moth. The signal showed distinct modulations that represented the wing beat frequency and body vibrations of the insect. "We are getting to he...eters before dying out. The talk, "Ultrasonic characterization of insect wing reflectivity and wing-beat motion at 200 kHz" by David Swanson, Tom Baker, ...

Entomological Society of America names 2008 award winners

...lution of several behavioral and biogeographical characters within Libelluloidea. Jessica also studies convergent evolution, particularly in dragonfly wing venation patterns, which are influenced by flight behaviour. She is collaborating on several species level odonate systematics studies (e.g., Stylogom...

Researchers discover that growing up too fast may mean dying young in honey bees

...r this transition, a foraging bee (which weighs only 80 mg, or roughly equivalent to a breath mint) will on average fly 8 km (5 miles), contract their wing muscles approximately 4,000,000 times, and reduce approximately 60 ml of pure oxygen in its thorax (the body segment housing the flight muscles). Age ...

Scientists demonstrate the sharpest measurement of ice crystals in clouds

...te on ground-based cloud simulation chambers or to operate in the fuselage of research aircraft; the other, an aerodynamic version that fits under the wing of the aircraft and measures the cloud particles directly as the aircraft flies through the cloud. Neither instrument attempts to make a full image of...

The good, the bad and the smelly: USGS at the 2008 Coral Reef Symposium

...sensor package deployable from boats of moderate size. Deep ATRIS is a lightweight, computer-controlled, towed vehicle that is 1.3 m long with a 63-cm wing span, and an operating tow-depth limit of 27 m, extendable to 90 m. Transect lengths of 56 km can be surveyed in 6 hours. Deep ATRIS can carry a wide ...

Birds migrate together at night in dispersed flocks, new study indicates

...r time. It also provided data used to calculate the frequency of a target's wing beats. Since the radar could also track flying insects and other arthropods, the wing beat data would be important for distinguishing birds from bugs. In coll...

Want to fly? Don't copy the birds and the bees

...igorous waving, or perhaps exuberant rattling of a cocktail shaker - this takes a fair amount of power to overcome inertia. So, the idea is that both wing shape and how wings are used can be understood better if the effort of flapping is remembered, which explains why vultures don't look like gliders, an...

Bee disease a mystery

...t the transmission of a common bee virus. Deformed wing virus (DWV) is passed between adult bees and to th...ng the need for further investigation. Deformed wing virus has been linked to the collapse of honey bee...is virus and Kashmir bee virus as well as deformed wing virus," said Professor Teresa Santillan-Galicia fr...

Migrating songbirds learn survival tips on the fly

...self-protecting behaviour is "mobbing": The birds approach a potential predator, rapidly changing position around its location and performing restless wing and tail movements while emitting loud, broad-frequency calls. These calls are easily recognizable and act as signals of threat. Because migrating...

Into the wild

...es, lynx, wolverine, sable, reindeer and moose. Kamchatka is also the breeding ground for Steller's sea eagle, one of the largest eagle species with a wing span up to two metres. Dr Eichhorn, of the University's School of Biology, said: It's going to be a fantastic experience from an exploratory perspe...

Fruit fly avoidance mechanism could lead to new ways to control pain in humans

...it, wander off and burrow into the earth where they avoid food as if it were poison. Only then can the larvae grow and hatch into flies that will take wing to lay their own eggs. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Georgia has discovered for the first time that the important developmental...

A study reveals how cells communicate to activate the cell division machinery

...ferentiation). The interesting feature is that these two pathways are highly conserved in humans and when mutations arise tumors appear. The fruit fly wing is a vital experimental model to find future biomedical applications. Marco Miln goes on to say, this finding could provide clues about how to repress...

It's a unisex brain with specific signals that trigger 'male' behavior

...ponsible for sex differences in behavior. The researchers showed that a courting song and dance routine that only male flies naturally perform one wing is lifted and wiggled to make a humming song can also be triggered in female flies by artificially stimulating particular brain cells that are presen...

Researchers reveal structure of protein that repairs damage to cancer cells

...ene activation in the past. He oversees a research team of approximately 20 students and postdoctoral scientists, which occupies nearly half of one wing on the third floor of the Gordon Center for Integrative Science. The team collects most of its data at the Department of Energys Advanced Photon Sourc...

Geologist decries floodplain development

...and for the wrong reasons. Criss says that levees cause water to rise instead of spreading out and that the cumulative effect of levees and wing dykes on the large rivers north of St. Louis is beginning to manifest itself in flooding. Criss says the claim that a levee will withstand ...

Epigenetic regulation by the MMB/dREAM complex

...FP-Polo reporter gene construct, the researchers were able to monitor Polo gene expression at the level of a single-cell in Drosophila larval imaginal wing discs. They found that flies deficient in both Myb and E2F2 or both Myb and Mip130 displayed variegated patterns of GFP-Polo expression in the same ti...

Birds, bats and insects hold secrets for aerospace engineers

...l as capabilities of integrating aerodynamics with wing and body shapes, which change all the time," Shyy ...ngs to deform, he explained. In turn, the deformed wing tells the air that the wing shape is different than it appears in still air. I...

Fine print: New technique allows fast printing of microscopic electronics

...w said the technique also could be used in creating large sensors that collect information over a wide area, such as a sensor printed onto an airplane wing to detect metal fatigue. For Korkut, publishing the results in the premier physics journal marks a gratifying conclusion to years of painstaking wo...

DOE JGI releases soybean genome assembly to enable worldwide bioenergy research efforts

...ty, William Beavis of the National Center for Genome Resources (NCGR) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Iowa State, Gregory May (NCGR), Will Nelson and Rod wing of the University of Arizona, with Randy Shoemaker, anchored the map and conducted quality control. The team devoted to genetic mapping and physica...

UF's new owl butterfly species naming rights auctioned for $40,800

...om similar species in its genus by having a unique wing shape and in having slightly translucent, tawny wing scales, allowing the underside pattern to be seen ... in the world due to their large size and striking wing eyespots. The new species has a wingspan of about ...

UF to auction naming rights for new butterfly species online

...ter collections manager. Owl butterflies are some of the most familiar and best-known butterflies in the world due to their large size and striking wing eyespots. The new owl species belongs to the Opsiphanes group. It has a wingspan of about 4 inches and a beautiful orange color, and lives in the Sono...

New Delft material concept for aircraft wings could save billions

... than the carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) constructions that have recently been used in aircraft wings such as the Boeing 787. By using CentrAl wing constructions, the weight can be reduced by another 20 per cent compared to CFRP constructions. Furthermore, using CentrAl results in considerably low...

Magnetic snakes control fluids, gravity-defying droplets, and solving a dragonfly mystery

... Russell Physical Review Letters (forthcoming) Dragonflies adjust their wing motion while hovering to conserve energy, according to a Cornell University...hanics. The revelation contradicts previous speculation that the change in wing motion served to enhance vertical lift. The Cornell physicists came to ...

Undergraduate research shows leaderless honeybee organizing

...in to send a second signal that researchers call “worker piping” at a fevered pitch. Piping, which consists of bees making contact and vibrating their wing muscles rapidly, appears to be a general instruction to fly. The researchers document that the workers stop using the vibration signal when the q...

Is there a pilot in the insect?

...e their vision for piloting, just like human pilots. The electric signals from their facetted eyes travel through specialized neurons to stimulate the wing muscles, which let the insects correct their flight and avoid crashes. Could these same neurons be used in a sort of "automatic pilot"? This is what N...