Science News
clock | June 22, 2009Computer Idle? Now You Can Donate Its Time To Find A Cure For Major Diseases:
Not using your computer at the moment? You can now donate your computer's idle time to cutting-edge biomedical research aimed at finding a cure for HIV, Parkinson's, arthritis, and breast cancer.
1.02 Billion People Hungry: One Sixth Of Humanity Undernourished, More Than Ever Before:
World hunger is projected to reach a historic high in 2009 with 1,020 million people going hungry every day, according to new estimates published by United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Brain Detects Happiness More…
clock | June 21, 2009Plant Communication: Sagebrush Engage In Self-recognition And Warn Of Danger:
To thine own self be true" may take on a new meaning--not with people or animal behavior but with plant behavior. Plants engage in self-recognition and can communicate danger to their "clones" or genetically identical cuttings planted nearby, says professor Richard Karban of the Department of Entomology, University of California, Davis, in groundbreaking research published in the current edition of Ecology Letters.
Mate Selection: Honesty In Advertising Pays Off:
Throughout the animal kingdom brilliant colors or…
clock | June 19, 2009
Hunters Are Depleting Lion And Cougar Populations, Study Finds:
Sport hunters are depleting lion and cougar populations as managers respond to demands to control predators that threaten livestock and humans, according to a study published in the June 17 issue of PLoS One. The study was led by Craig Packer, a University of Minnesota professor and authority on lion behavior, who worked with an international team of conservationists.
Mammoths Survived In Britain Until 14,000 Years Ago, New Discovery Suggests:
Research which finally proves that bones found in Shropshire, England provide the most…
clock | June 18, 2009Friday - the day to take a look at all seven PLoS journals and make my own personal picks. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Taking the Lag out of Jet Lag through Model-Based Schedule Design:
Traveling across several times zones can cause an individual to experience "jet lag," which…
j7uy5 | June 18, 2009This method, if it pans out, could not only be clean, it could make the
environment even cleaner.
Jonathan Trent, the lead research scientist on the Spaceship Earth
project at NASA Ames Research Center, has been working on a method to
produce oil from algae. Their Algal Biofuels Team appears to be
making progress.
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href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/features/2009/clean_energy_042209.html">NASA
Envisions "Clean Energy" From Algae Grown in Waste Water
NASA scientists have proposed an ingenious and remarkably
resourceful process to produce "clean…
clock | June 18, 2009Fossil Teeth Of Three-toed Browsing Horse Found In Panama Canal Earthworks:
Rushing to salvage fossils from the Panama Canal earthworks, Aldo Rincon, paleontology intern at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, unearthed a set of fossil teeth. Bruce J. MacFadden, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida in Gainesville, describes the fossil as Anchitherium clarencei, a three-toed browsing horse, in the May 2009 issue of the Journal of Paleontology.
Why Do We Choose Our Mates? Ask Charles Darwin, Prof Says:
Charles Darwin wrote…
clock | June 17, 2009There are 16 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Looking for Landmarks: The Role of Expert Review and Bibliometric Analysis in Evaluating Scientific Publication Outputs:
Objective: To compare expert assessment with bibliometric indicators as tools to…
clock | June 16, 2009There are 20 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
General Intelligence in Another Primate: Individual Differences across Cognitive Task Performance in a New World Monkey (Saguinus oedipus):
Individual differences in human cognitive abilities show…
clock | June 15, 2009
Poor Sleep Is Associated With Lower Relationship Satisfaction In Both Women And Men:
A bidirectional association exists between couples' sleep quality and the quality of their relationship, according to a research abstract that will be presented on Wednesday, June 10, at SLEEP 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.
Less Than Half Of Older Americans Get The Recommended 8 Hours Of Nightly Sleep:
Older Americans with depressive symptoms and poor mental health tend to get seven hours of sleep per night or less, according to a research abstract that will be…
clock | June 15, 2009There are 18 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Variable Food Begging Calls Are Harbingers of Vocal Learning:
Vocal learning has evolved in only a few groups of mammals and birds. The developmental and evolutionary origins of vocal learning remain…
clock | June 13, 2009Hmm, I usually do this on Fridays, but I was busy. So here is a Saturday sampler of papers from all seven PLoS journals published last week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click.
Melanopsin as a Sleep Modulator: Circadian Gating of the Direct Effects of Light on Sleep and Altered Sleep Homeostasis in Opn4â/â Mice:
Light affects sleep in two ways: indirectly through…
clock | June 13, 2009Female Water Striders Expose Their Genitalia Only After Males 'Sing':
Chang Seok Han and Piotr Jablonski at Seoul National University, Korea have found that by evolving a morphological shield to protect their genitalia from males' forceful copulatory attempts, females of an Asian species of water strider seem to "win" the evolutionary arms race between the sexes. Instead, females only expose their genitalia for copulation after males produce a courtship "song" by tapping the water surface.
African Bird Species Could Struggle To Relocate To Survive Global Warming:
African bird species could…
clock | June 12, 2009There are 15 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
The Timing of the Shrew: Continuous Melatonin Treatment Maintains Youthful Rhythmic Activity in Aging Crocidura russula:
Laboratory conditions nullify the extrinsic factors that determine the wild expected…
clock | June 11, 2009There are 16 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
A Standard System to Study Vertebrate Embryos:
Staged embryonic series are important as reference for different kinds of biological studies. I summarise problems that occur when using 'staging tables' of '…
clock | June 11, 2009Circadian Rhythm: How Cells Tell Time:
The fuzzy pale mold that lines the glass tubes in Dr. Yi Liu's lab doesn't look much like a clock. But this fungus has an internal, cell-based timekeeper nearly as sophisticated as a human's, allowing UT Southwestern Medical Center physiologists to study easily the biochemistry and genetics of body clocks, or circadian rhythms. In a new study appearing online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Liu and his co-workers have found that this mold, which uses a protein called FRQ as the main gear of its clock, marks time by a…
clock | June 10, 2009There are 17 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
PER3 Polymorphism Predicts Cumulative Sleep Homeostatic but Not Neurobehavioral Changes to Chronic Partial Sleep Deprivation:
The variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) polymorphism 5-repeat allele of the…
clock | June 10, 2009Genetic Region For Tame Animals Discovered: Horse Whisperers, Lion Tamers Not Needed:
In what could be a breakthrough in animal breeding, a team of scientists from Germany, Russia and Sweden have discovered a set of genetic regions responsible for animal tameness. This discovery, published in the June 2009 issue of the journal Genetics, should help animal breeders, farmers, zoologists, and anyone else who handles and raises animals to more fully understand what makes some animals interact with humans better than do others. It may also lead to more precise breeding strategies designed to pass…
clock | June 9, 2009Today, we unveil a brand new PLoS ONE Collection - the Prokaryotic Genome Collection. The Collection was edited by Niyaz Ahmed, who wrote an introductory Overview.
In other news, there are 17 new articles published last night and another 17 new articles published tonight in PLoS ONE. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go…
clock | June 8, 2009Bird Migrations Set To Increase: Added Distance Is 'Considerable Threat' To Some Species:
Bird migrations are likely to get longer according to the first ever study of the potential impacts of climate change on the breeding and winter ranges of migrant birds. The length of some migrations could increase by as much as 400 km. "The predicted future temperature changes and the associated changes in habitat could have serious consequences for many species", said lead-author Nathalie Doswald of Durham University (UK).
Prehistoric Whale Discovered On The West Coast Of Sweden:
The skeleton of a…
j7uy5 | June 7, 2009In 2008, we
href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7574684.stm">were
informed that a kind of cloud formation had been named: the mammatus
formation, so-called because it resembles a breast. Sort
of. Whatever.
href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7574684.stm">
A new development is more serious. The
href="http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/">Cloud Appreciation Society
has suggested that the name asperatus be given to clouds that
portray a particular kind of turbulence.
Flickr photo by Vince Perritano, Creative Commons license
Other, more dramatic…