Science News
clock | May 15, 2009Basking Sharks: Disappearing Act Of World's Second Largest Fish Explained:
Researchers have discovered where basking sharks - the world's second largest fish - hide out for half of every year, according to a report published online on May 7th in Current Biology. The discovery revises scientists' understanding of the iconic species and highlights just how little we still know about even the largest of marine animals, the researchers said.
How Bees Hold Onto Flowers: 'Velcro'-like Structures On Flower Petals Help Bees Stick:
When bees collect nectar, how do they hold onto the flower? Cambridge…
clock | May 14, 2009I'd like to start today with Big Congratulations to the amazing PLoS IT/Web team for finishing the complex and long task of migrating all seven PLoS Journals onto the TOPAZ/Ambra platform. This week, the last of the seven journals, PLoS Biology, was successfully moved. This means that you can now rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks to articles in PLoS Biology just like you could do it on the other six titles that were migrated over the last couple of years. While I don't know exactly what is in the planning, I am sure that the team will continue to make regular…
clock | May 13, 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, 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 Abdominal Circulatory Pump:
Blood in the splanchnic vasculature can be transferred to the extremities. We quantified such blood shifts in normal subjects by measuring trunk volume by optoelectronic…
clock | May 13, 2009
Teenagers Are Becoming Increasingly Logical, Swedish Study Finds:
A research project at the University of Gothenburg has been testing large groups of 13-year-olds in Sweden since the early 1960s using the same intelligence test. The tests have taken place at approximately five year intervals and consist of an inductive-logic test, a verbal test and a spatial test.
Landmark Study Reveals Significant Genetic Variation Between Mexico's Population And World's Other Known Genetic Subgroups:
Could genetic differences explain why some people and not others have died of H1N1 Influenza A? That is…
clock | May 12, 2009There are 22 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, 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:
Ants Sow the Seeds of Global Diversification in Flowering Plants:
The extraordinary diversification of angiosperm plants in the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods has produced an estimated 250,000-300,000 living…
clock | May 11, 2009Greenland's Constant Summer Sunlight Linked To Summer Suicide Spike:
Suicide rates in Greenland increase during the summer, peaking in June. Researchers speculate that insomnia caused by incessant daylight may be to blame. Karin Sparring Björkstén from the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, led a team of researchers who studied the seasonal variation of suicides in all of Greenland from 1968-2002. They found that there was a concentration of suicides in the summer months, and that this seasonal effect was especially pronounced in the North of the country - an area where the sun doesn't set…
clock | May 9, 2009Massage After Exercise Myth Busted:
A Queen's University research team has blown open the myth that massage after exercise improves circulation to the muscle and assists in the removal of lactic acid and other waste products.
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Kinesiology MSc candidate Vicky Wiltshire and Dr. Tschakovsky set out to discover if this untested hypothesis was true, and their results show that massage actually impairs blood flow to the muscle after exercise, and that it therefore also impairs the removal of lactic acid from muscle after exercise.
Spontaneous Activity Found In The Idling Brain:…
clock | May 8, 2009There are 11 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, 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:
To Be or Not to Be a Flatworm: The Acoel Controversy:
Since first described, acoels were considered members of the flatworms (Platyhelminthes). However, no clear synapomorphies among the three large flatworm taxa -…
clock | May 7, 2009Unprecedented Data On Circadian Rhythms Revealed:
Fluctuations in light intensity allow restoring the regularity of circadian rhythms. This is the main conclusion of the work carried out by Javier Buceta, group leader of The.Si.M.Bio.Sys. Group(Theoretical and In Silico Modelling of Biological Systems) from the Co.S.Mo Lab -based at the Barcelona Science Park- and Antoni DÃez-Noguera, dean at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Barcelona and group leader of Chronobiology at the Department of Physiology of the said faculty.
Scientists Surprised By Unexpected Emergence Of Periodical…
clock | May 7, 2009How Social Insects Recognize Dead Nestmates:
When an ant dies in an ant nest or near one, its body is quickly picked up by living ants and removed from the colony, thus limiting the risk of colony infection by pathogens from the corpse. The predominant understanding among entomologists - scientists who study insects - was that dead ants release chemicals created by decomposition (such as fatty acids) that signal their death to the colony's living ants.
'Hobbits' Couldn't Hustle: Feet Of Homo Floresiensis Were Primitive But Not Pathological:
A detailed analysis of the feet of Homo floresiensis…
clock | May 6, 2009There are 12 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, 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:
Adult-Generated Hippocampal Neurons Allow the Flexible Use of Spatially Precise Learning Strategies:
Despite enormous progress in the past few years the specific contribution of newly born granule cells to the…
clock | May 3, 2009Dolphins Maintain Round-the-clock Visual Vigilance:
Dolphins have a clever trick for overcoming sleep deprivation. Sam Ridgway from the US Navy Marine Mammal Program explains that they are able to send half of their brains to sleep while the other half remains conscious. What is more, the mammals seem to be able to remain continually vigilant for sounds for days on end. All of this made Ridgway and his colleagues from San Diego and Tel Aviv wonder whether the dolphins' unrelenting auditory vigilance tired them and took a toll on the animals' other senses?
Dietary Fats Trigger Long-term Memory…
clock | May 3, 2009I am pretty much on record that I would not pay for anything online (to be precise, to pay for content - I certainly use the Web for shopping). But with some caveats. I have been known to hit a PayPal button of people who provide content and information I find valuable. And I would presumably pay, though not being happy about it, if the information behind the pay wall is a) unique (i.e., not found anywhere else by any other means) and b) indispensable for my work (i.e., I would feel handicapped without it).
But I am not subscribed to, or paying for, anything right now and haven't been in…
clock | May 2, 2009Some Vocal-mimicking Animals, Particularly Parrots, Can Move To A Musical Beat:
Researchers at Harvard University have found that humans aren't the only ones who can groove to a beat -- some other species can dance, too. The capability was previously believed to be specific to humans. The research team found that only species that can mimic sound seem to be able to keep a beat, implying an evolutionary link between the two capacities.
Dinosaur-Bird Link: Ancient Proteins Preserved In Soft Tissue From 80 Million-Year-Old Hadrosaur:
Ancient protein dating back 80 million years to the Cretaceous…
clock | April 30, 2009Remembrance Of Things Past Influences How Female Field Crickets Select Mates:
UC Riverside biologists researching the behavior of field crickets have found for the first time that female crickets remember attractive males based on the latter's song, and use this information when choosing mates. The researchers found that female crickets compare the information about the attractiveness of available males around them with other incoming signals when selecting attractive males for mating.
Evolution In A Test Tube: Scientists Make Molecules That Evolve And Compete, Mimicking Behavior Of Darwin's…
clock | April 29, 2009There are 24 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, 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:
Can Ethograms Be Automatically Generated Using Body Acceleration Data from Free-Ranging Birds?:
An ethogram is a catalogue of discrete behaviors typically employed by a species. Traditionally animal behavior has been…
clock | April 28, 2009There are 27 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, 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:
Pure Ultrasonic Communication in an Endemic Bornean Frog:
Huia cavitympanum, an endemic Bornean frog, is the first amphibian species known to emit exclusively ultrasonic (i.e., >20 kHz) vocal signals. To test the…
clock | April 27, 2009Biological Basis For The Eight-hour Workday?:
The circadian clock coordinates physiological and behavioral processes on a 24-hour rhythm, allowing animals to anticipate changes in their environment and prepare accordingly. Scientists already know that some genes are controlled by the clock and are turned on only one time during each 24-hour cycle.
Now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies found that some genes are switched on once every 12 or 8 hours, indicating that shorter cycles of the circadian rhythm are also…
clock | April 27, 2009Identifying Hyenas By Their Giggle:
To human ears, the laughs of individual hyenas in a pack all sound the same: high-pitched and staccato, eerie and maniacal. But every hyena makes a different call that encodes information about its age and status in the pack, according to behavioral neurologists from the University of California, Berkeley and the Université de Saint-Etienne, France. They have developed a way to identify a hyena by picking out specific features of its giggle.
How House-hunting Ants Choose The Best Home:
Dr Elva Robinson and colleagues in the University's School of…
clock | April 24, 2009
Plants Absorb More Carbon Dioxide Under Polluted Hazy Skies:
Plants absorbed carbon dioxide more efficiently under the polluted skies of recent decades than they would have done in a cleaner atmosphere, according to new findings published this week in Nature.
Why You May Lose That Loving Feeling After Tying The Knot:
Dating couples whose dreams include marriage would do well to step back and reflect upon the type of support they'll need from their partners when they cross the threshold, a new Northwestern University study suggests.
A Warm TV Can Drive Away Feelings Of Loneliness And…