Category Archives: Science News

Scientists Discover New Life In Antarctic Deep Sea:

Scientists have found hundreds of new marine creatures in the vast, dark deep-sea surrounding Antarctica. Carnivorous sponges, free-swimming worms, crustaceans, and molluscs living in the Weddell Sea provide new insights into the evolution of ocean life.

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Reproductive Speed Protects Large Animals From Being Hunted To Extinction:

The slower their reproductive cycle, the higher the risk of extinction for large grazing animals such as deer and antelope that are hunted by humans.

Bites From Mosquitoes Not Infected With Malaria May Protect Against Future Infection:

A new study suggests that bites from mosquitoes not infected with malaria may trigger an immune response limiting parasite development following bites from infected mosquitoes.

Molecular Biologists Convert Protein Sequences Into Classical Music:

UCLA molecular biologists have turned protein sequences into original compositions of classical music.

Light Pulses Can Adjust The Brain’s Clock For A Longer Day, Sufficient For Adaptation To The 24.65 Hour Day Found On Mars:

Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s (BWH) Division of Sleep Medicine and colleagues, have found that by giving individuals two 45 minute exposures to bright light pulses in the evening they could entrain (synchronize) a persons circadian system to function properly in days longer than the usual 24 hour light/dark cycle. The study was conducted for NASA’s National Space Biomedical Research Institute and the findings can be applied to the planned year-and-a-half visit to Mars, where the Martian day is 24.65 hours long. Without the ability to reset the internal clock to endure the longer day, an individual would feel as if they were in a perpetual state of jet lag.

Childhood Environment Influences Reproductive Function:

A study led by researchers at UCL (University College London) demonstrates that female reproductive function is influenced by childhood environment. This suggests there is a critical window of time from about 0-8 years of age that determines the rate at which girls physically mature and how high their reproductive hormone levels reach as adults.

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Sleepless For Science: Flies Show Link Between Sleep And Immune System:

Go a few nights without enough sleep and you’re more likely to get sick, but scientists have no real explanation for how sleep is related to the immune system. Now, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine are finding that fruit flies can point to the answers.

Professor Creates ‘Reverse Alarm Clock’ That Keeps Young Children Sleeping:

John Zimmerman, an associate professor in Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design and Human-Computer Interaction Institute, has developed an unconventional alarm clock every new parent needs — a clock to keep their children sleeping. Called the Reverse Alarm Clock, the product aims to keep young children from interrupting their parents’ sleep.

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Rare Sighting Of Threatened Bottlenose Dolphins In English Channel:

On a crossing of the English Channel aboard the P&O Cruise Ferry, the Pride of Bilbao on the 5th of May, a large group of approximately 30 Bottlenose Dolphin was sighted by Clive Martin, Director for the wildlife charity Marinelife and senior Wildlife Officer for the Biscay Dolphin Research Programme.

DNA Reveals Hooded Seals Have Wanderlust:

Researchers have discovered a new fact about hooded seals, a mysterious 200 to 400 kilogram mammal that spends all but a few days each year in the ocean.

Simpler Way To Counter Global Warming Explained: Lock Up Carbon In Soil And Use Bioenergy Exhaust Gases For Energy:

Writing in the journal Nature, a Cornell biogeochemist describes an economical and efficient way to help offset global warming: Pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by charring, or partially burning, trees, grasses or crop residues without the use of oxygen.

Venomous Brown Widow Spiders Making Themselves Known In Louisiana:

A dangerous spider is making itself known to Louisiana residents. The brown widow spider is becoming more common, according to entomologists with the LSU AgCenter.

Bat Flight Generates Complex Aerodynamic Tracks:

Bats generate a measurably distinct aerodynamic footprint to achieve lift and maneuverability, quite unlike birds and contrary to many of the assumptions that aerodynamicists have used to model animal flight, according to University of Southern California aerospace engineer Geoffrey Spedding.

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Sleep Deprivation Can Threaten Competent Decision-making:

Gambling is a risky activity that can potentially result in the loss of a significant amount of money. A study published in the journal SLEEP finds that sleep deprivation can adversely affect a person’s decision-making at a gambling table by elevating the expectation of gains and making light of one’s losses following risky decisions.

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Corals — More Complex Than You?:

The humble coral may possess as many genes – and possibly even more – than humans do. And remarkably, although it is very distant from humans in evolutionary terms, it has many of the immune system genes that protect people against disease. In fact, it is possible some of these were pioneered by corals.

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Famous Galapagos Tortoise, Lonesome George, May Not Be Alone:

“Lonesome George,” a giant Galapagos tortoise and conservation icon long thought to be the sole survivor of his species, may not be alone for much longer, according to a multinational team of researchers headed by investigators at Yale University. New research led by biologists Adalgisa Caccone and Jeffrey Powell in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale, with the strong support and cooperation of the Galápagos National Park and Charles Darwin Research Station, has identified a tortoise that is clearly a first generation hybrid between the native tortoises from the islands of Isabela and Pinta. That means, this new tortoise has half his genes in common with Lonesome George.

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Wing Morphing Of The Swift Could Inspire New Aircraft Designs:

A swift adapts the shape of its wings to the immediate task at hand: folding them back to chase insects, or stretching them out to sleep in flight. Ten Dutch and Swedish scientists, based in Wageningen, Groningen, Delft, Leiden, and Lund, have shown how ‘wing morphing’ makes swifts such versatile flyers. Their study, published as cover story in Nature on April 26, proves that swifts can improve flight performance by up to three-fold, numbers that make ‘wing morphing’ the next big thing in aircraft engineering.

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Dogs Copy Other Dogs’ Actions Selectively, The Way Humans Do:

A distinguishing feature of human intelligence is our ability to understand the goals and intentions of others. This ability develops gradually during infancy, and the extent to which it is present in other animals is an intriguing question. New research by Friederike Range and Ludwig Huber, of the University of Vienna, and Zsofia Viranyi, of the Eötvös University in Budapest, reveals striking similarities between humans and dogs in the way they imitate the actions of others. The phenomenon under investigation is known as “selective imitation” and implies that dogs–like human infants–do not simply copy an action they observe, but adjust the extent to which they imitate to the circumstances of the action.

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Horses Suffer From Obesity, Just Like Humans:

Horses are inheritably couch potatoes. An overeating, slothful horse leads to an obese horse. Unlike humans, however, horse owners often don’t see the dangers of an obese horse. Caretakers may see no harm in giving their horses rich foods, but obesity in horses is just as unhealthy as obesity in humans and can lead to fatal diseases.

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High Melatonin Content Can Help Delay Aging, Mouse Study Suggests:

A study carried out by researchers from the University of Granada’s Institute of Biotechnology shows that consuming melatonin neutralizes oxidative damage and delays the neurodegenerative process of aging. In this study researchers used normal and genetically-modified mice which were subjected to accelerated cell aging. Researchers believe their results can also be applied to humans.

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Earth’s First Rainforest Unearthed:

A spectacular fossilised forest has transformed our understanding of the ecology of the Earth’s first rainforests. It is 300 million years old.

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Similar Brain Chemicals Influence Aggression In Fruit Flies And Humans:

Serotonin is a major signaling chemical in the brain, and it has long been thought to be involved in aggressive behavior in a wide variety of animals as well as in humans. Another brain chemical signal, neuropeptide Y (known as neuropeptide F in invertebrates), is also known to affect an array of behaviors in many species, including territoriality in mice. A new study by Drs. Herman Dierick and Ralph Greenspan of The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego shows that these two chemicals also regulate aggression in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster.
In a series of studies that used drug treatments and genetic engineering we have produced flies that make increased or decreased amounts of serotonin, or whose nerve cells that use serotonin or neuropeptide F are silent or inactive. Our investigations showed that the more serotonin a fly makes, the more aggressive it will be towards other flies. Conversely, presence of neuropeptide F has an opposite modulatory effect on the flies’ behavior, reducing aggression. Serotonin and neuropeptide F are part of separate circuits in the brain, circuits which also differ to some extent between males and females. Male flies are much more aggressive.

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I am sure that other science bloggers (on or off the Seed scienceblogs) will have to say more about all of these studies over the next few days:
To Understand The Big Picture, Give It Time – And Sleep:

Memorizing a series of facts is one thing, understanding the big picture is quite another. Now a new study demonstrates that relational memory — the ability to make logical “big picture” inferences from disparate pieces of information — is dependent on taking a break from studies and learning, and even more important, getting a good night’s sleep.

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New Genus Of Frogmouth Bird Discovered In Solomon Islands:

Your bird field guide may be out of date now that University of Florida scientists discovered a new genus of frogmouth bird on a South Pacific island. New genera of living birds are rare discoveries — fewer than one per year is announced globally. David Steadman and Andrew Kratter, ornithologists at the Florida Museum of Natural History, turned up the surprising new discovery on a collecting expedition in the Solomon Islands. Theirs is the first frogmouth from these islands to be caught by scientists in more than 100 years. They immediately recognized it was something different.

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Voracious Grasshoppers Puzzle Texas Entomologists:

They’re not afraid of heights, they’re voracious, and Dr. Spencer Behmer wants to know if you’ve seen them hanging out in oak trees or on your house. They’re post oak grasshoppers, and Behmer, a Texas Agricultural Experiment Station entomologist, wants to research their life cycle and behavior. If you haven’t heard of them, don’t feel alone. Until recently, most Texans hadn’t. “I didn’t see them for the first 25 years of my career,” said Dr. John Jackman, Texas Cooperative Extension entomologist. “I would have told you there weren’t any grasshoppers that chewed on trees.”

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Scientists Unravel Intricate Animal Behaviour Patterns:

There is a scene in the animated blockbuster “Finding Nemo” when a school of fish makes a rapid string of complicated patterns–an arrow, a portrait of young Nemo and other intricate designs. While the detailed shapes might be a bit outlandish for fish to form, the premise isn’t far off. But how does a school of fish or a flock of birds know how to move from one configuration to another and then reorganize as a unit, without knowing what the entire group is doing?
New research by University of Alberta scientists shows that one movement started by a single individual ripples through the entire group–a finding that helps unravel the mystery that has plagued scientists for years.

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Neurotic Men Die Sooner Than Their More Mellow Counterparts:

While mellowing with age has often been thought to have positive effects, a Purdue University researcher has shown that doing so could also help you live longer.

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NASA Engineer Helps Train Puppy For Future Leadership Role:

One of NASA’s newest workers is a top dog … literally. A golden retriever puppy named Aries goes to work every day at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. as part of the “Leader Dogs for the Blind” program. Her mentor is structural engineer Evan J. Horowitz.

Snake Venom As Therapeutic Treatment Of Cancer?:

This certainly sounds unusual, but Dr. Son and colleagues report on the effectiveness of the snake venom toxin (SVT) Vipera lebetina turanica in the inhibition of androgen-independent prostate cancer (AICAP) in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.

Disputing Coevolution In Herbivorous Insects: Do We Need A Paradigm Change?:

Coleoptera (beetles) are one of the most successful groups of organisms on Earth. Their success in evolutionary terms is recognised by their extreme adaptive diversity (occupying almost every possible ecological niche) and their longevity (fossils from the Palaeozoic, 280 million years ago). But most of all, their success is indisputable in their sheer species numbers: with over 350,000 named species and many more to be described, they constitute about one fourth of all species on the Planet! It is commonly accepted that phytophagous beetles and their host plants (mainly the likewise speciose angiosperms or flowering plants) have radiated in concert since the origin of both groups in the early Cretaceous. Indeed, this is a text-book example of coevolution and a straightforward interpretation of the forces driving evolution and the rise of new species.

Over Half The World’s Magnolia Species Face Extinction In Their Native Forests:

A mapping exercise by experts from Bournemouth University’s School of Conservation Sciences has revealed that over half of the world’s magnolia species face extinction in their native forest habitats.

More Flight Than Fancy?:

Scientists from the universities of Exeter and Cambridge have turned a textbook example of sexual selection on its head and shown that females may be more astute at choosing a mate than previously thought. New research, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and published online on 5 April in Current Biology, shows that differences in the lengths of the long tail feathers possessed by male barn swallows are more about aerodynamics than being attractive. Female barn swallows favour mates with longer tails and the prominent male tail ‘streamers’ that extend beyond the tail were cited by Darwin as evidence of sexual selection. Now for the first time, scientists have tested this assumption and found that these ‘ornaments’ are in fact linked to natural selection. Females are selecting mates with longer, more aerodynamic tails, rather than on the basis of attractive, but meaningless ornaments.

New Primate Species Found In 42 Million-year-old Texas Fossils:

Something old is now something new, thanks to Lamar University researcher Jim Westgate and colleagues. The scientists’ research has led to the discovery of a new genus and species of primate, one long vanished from the earth but preserved in the fossil record.

Losing Bees, Butterflies And Other Pollinators:

Humans are reducing numbers of pollinators like bees and butterflies by destroying habitats, spraying pesticides and emitting pollution. Now, a University of Kansas researcher and a world-famous crop artist are behind a nationwide campaign to publicize the peril faced by species that transfer pollen between flowers. “This is serious,” said Orley “Chip” Taylor, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at KU. “We’re losing six thousand acres of habitat a day to development, 365 days a year. One out of every three bites you eat is traceable to pollinators’ activity. But if you start losing pollinators, you start losing plants.”

Tyrannosaurus Rex And Mastodon Protein Fragments Discovered, Sequenced:

Scientists have confirmed the existence of protein in soft tissue recovered from the fossil bones of a 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex) and a half-million-year-old mastodon. Their results may change the way people think about fossil preservation and present a new method for studying diseases in which identification of proteins is important, such as cancer.

Here’s a local angle to the same story.

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Misclassified For Centuries, Medicinal Leeches Found To Be 3 Distinct Species:

Genetic research has revealed that commercially available medicinal leeches used around the world in biomedical research and postoperative care have been misclassified for centuries. Until now, the leeches were assumed to be the species Hirudo medicinalis, but new research reveals they are actually a closely related but genetically distinct species, Hirudo verbana. The study also shows that wild European medicinal leeches are at least three distinct species, not one. “This raises the tantalizing prospect of three times the number of anticoagulants, and three times as many biomedically important developments in areas like protease inhibitors,” said Mark Siddall of the American Museum of Natural History, who led the research team. “However, it will also require a better effort to conserve these much-maligned animals, in a way that takes into account their impressive diversity.”

Humans And Plants Share Common Regulatory Pathway:

In findings that some might find reminiscent of science fiction, scientists at the Scripps Research Institute have shown for the first time that humans and plants share a common pathogen recognition pathway as part of their innate immune systems. The data could help shed fresh light on how pathogen recognition proteins function and the role they play in certain chronic inflammatory diseases.

U.S. Recommends Delisting Of West Indian Manatee As Endangered Species:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced the completion and availability of its five-year status review of the West Indian manatee, a federally-listed species protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). This review includes both the Florida and Antillean subspecies of manatee. After reviewing all of the best scientific and commercially available information and data, Service biologists concluded that the West Indian manatee no longer fits the ESA definition of endangered and made a recommendation to reclassify the West Indian manatee to threatened.

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Evolution Of Symbiosis:

The aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum depends on a bacterial symbiont, Buchnera aphidicola, for amino acids it can’t get from plants. The aphid, in turn, provides the bacterium with energy and carbon as well as shelter inside specialized cells. Such interdependent relationships are not unusual in the natural world. What is unusual, report Helen Dunbar, Nancy Moran, and colleagues in a new study published this week in the open access journal PLoS Biology, is that a single point mutation in Buchnera’s genome can have consequences for its aphid partner that are sometimes detrimental, and sometimes beneficial.

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Some Bottlenose Dolphins Don’t Coerce Females To Mate:

Mating strategies are straightforward in bottlenose dolphins, or are they? Much of the work carried on male-female relationships in that species to date show that males tend to coerce females who are left with little choice about with whom to mate. This explains the complex relationships we observe in male bottlenose dolphins, which are only paralleled by human social strategies: the formation of alliances and alliances of alliances, also called coalitions. These alliances and coalitions are then used to out-compete other male bands to access females.

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Flies Don’t Buzz About Aimlessly:

Have you ever stopped to wonder how a fruit fly is able to locate and blissfully drown in your wine glass on a warm summer evening, especially since its flight path seems to be so erratic? Mark Frye at the University of California and Andy Reynolds at Rothamsted Research in the United Kingdom have been pondering this very question. Fruit flies explore their environment using a series of straight flight paths punctuated by rapid 90° body-saccades. Some of these manoeuvres avoid obstacles in their path. But many others seem to appear spontaneously. Are the spontaneous flight paths really random, do they serve any real purpose?

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Behavioral Ecology: Late Breeding Female Birds Surprisingly Had More Offspring:

Starting to breed late in life is a bad idea if you want to maximise the number of offspring that you produce – or so the theory goes. But doubt has now been cast on this hypothesis – one of the biggest assumptions in behavioural ecology – by researchers from the universities of Bristol and Cape Town and published today in Current Biology.

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Want To Monitor Climate Change? P-p-p-pick Up A Penguin!:

We are used to hearing about the effects of climate change in terms of unusual animal behaviour, such as altering patterns of fish and bird migration. However, scientists at the University of Birmingham are trying out an alternative bio-indicator — the king penguin — to investigate whether they can be used to monitor the effects of climate change.

Scientists Directly Control Brain Cell Activity With Light:

Every thought, feeling and action originates from the electrical signals emitted by diverse brain cells enmeshed in a tangle of circuits. At this fundamental level, scientists struggle to explain the mind. Worse yet, they have lacked tools to understand what’s going wrong in patients with ailments such as depression or Parkinson’s disease. New Stanford-led research published in the April 5 issue of Nature describes a technique to directly control brain cell activity with light. It is a novel means for experimenting with neural circuits and could eventually lead to therapies for some disorders.

In Young Mice, Gregariousness Seems To Reside In The Genes:

Beyond the lineage of primates, according to scientific gospel, social behavior is dictated primarily by competition for resources such as food, territory and reproduction. That may well be true for many adult animals, but in a groundbreaking study researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found evidence that social interactions among young mice result from basic motivations to be with one another. What’s more, the researchers say, the extent of a young mouse’s gregariousness is influenced by its genetic background.

Reindeer And Snowflakes: NASA Helps During International Polar Year:

Two things that come to mind during wintertime are snowflakes and reindeer. Now, NASA is providing technology to help study both of those in various ways during a kick off of the International Polar Year in Norway. The International Polar Year (IPY) involves over 60,000 researchers whose purpose is to increase knowledge about the Arctic and the Antarctic. Although there have been two prior IPY events in 1882-83 and 1932-33, as well as the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58, the current event is the first to include a focus on changes in the societies of the Arctic indigenous peoples.

Sleep Quantity Affects Morning Testosterone Levels In Older Men

The testosterone levels of healthy men decline as they get older. As sleep quality and quantity typically decrease with age, objectively measured differences in the amount of sleep a healthy older man gets can affect his level of testosterone in the morning, according to a study published in the April 1st issue of the journal SLEEP.
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“The results of the study raise the possibility that older men who obtain less actual sleep during the night have lower blood testosterone levels in the morning,” said Penev. “Although the findings suggest that how long a person sleeps may be an indicator of age-related changes in important hormone signals in the body, future studies are needed to determine the importance of these relationships for the health of older adults.”

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The Eyes Have It! How Box Jellyfish Avoid Banging Into Things:

Box jellyfish are much more active swimmers than other jellyfish — they exhibit strong directional swimming, are able to perform rapid 180 degree turns, and can deftly move in between objects. So how do they manage to manoeuvre the obstacle course that is in the sea bed?

Bats Get The Munchies Too!:

Many of us will be familiar with cravings for sweet food, after having overindulged in alcohol the night before. It appears that Egyptian fruit bats also crave particular types of sugar to reduce the effects of ethanol toxicity. Francisco Sanchez from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel) presented data demonstrating this on Sunday 1st of April at the Society for Experimental Biology’s Annual Meeting in Glasgow.

Forest Elephants At Risk From The Illegal Ivory Trade:

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) placed the African elephant on its most critically endangered list, Appendix I, in 1989. The ban led to more aggressive anti-poaching campaigns and increased investment in wildlife protection, and set African elephants on the road to recovery.

Bony Vertebrate Evolution: Elephant Sharks Closer To Humans Than Teleost Fish:

The cartilaginous elephant shark has a basal phylogenetic position useful for understanding jawed vertebrate evolution. Survey sequencing of its genome identified four Hox clusters, suggesting that, unlike for teleost fishes, no additional whole-genome duplication has occurred.

Insects Cultivate ‘Antibiotic-producing Bacteria’ In Their Antennae:

Bacteria live in, on and around us and other organisms with sometimes very beneficial results. For the first time scientists have shown that one species of insect deliberately cultivates bacteria in its antennae in order to protect their larvae from fungal attack. This highly specialised interaction between an insect species and bacteria protects the insect’s offspring against microorganisms which might infect it during its cocoon stage.

Natural Anti-freeze — How Arthropods Survive The Cold:

Given the choice, many of us would opt for warmer climes during the bleak midwinter. However, most of us cannot afford to move abroad for a few months, so instead we pile on extra layers of clothing to keep warm. Arthropods face much the same dilemma, as they cannot migrate long distances to avoid low winter temperatures — so why are they not killed off by the cold?

Overfishing Large Sharks Impacts Entire Marine Ecosystem, Shrinks Shellfish Supply:

Fewer big sharks in the oceans mean that bay scallops and other shellfish may be harder to find at the market, according to an article in the March 30 issue of the journal Science, tying two unlikely links in the food web to the same fate.

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Ewwwww! UCLA Anthropologist Studies Evolution’s Disgusting Side:

Behind every wave of disgust that comes your way may be a biological imperative much greater than the urge to lose your lunch, according to a growing body of research by a UCLA anthropologist.

The Delayed Rise Of Present-day Mammals:

It took 10 to 15 million years after the dinosaurs were wiped out before modern mammals – including our ancient human ancestors – were able to diversify and rise to their present-day prominence across the globe, a landmark new study has found. The surprise finding overturns the widely held belief that the ancestors of modern mammals were able to quickly evolve and spread to fill many of the empty niches left behind following the mass extinctions of dinosaurs and many other large animals when a huge asteroid crashed into the Earth about 65 million years ago.

A High Beef Diet During Pregnancy Linked To Lower Sperm Counts In Sons:

A mother’s high beef consumption while pregnant was associated with lower sperm counts in her son, according to a study led by researchers at the University of Rochester.

Transplanting Organs From Animals To Humans: What Are The Barriers?:

Given the huge shortage of donor organs, researchers have been trying to find ways to transplant animal organs across different species (known as “xenotransplantation”), with the eventual aim of transplanting animal organs into humans. The major stumbling block, says Dr Muhammad Mohiuddin (US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute) in a paper in PLoS Medicine, is that the immune system in the animal receiving the organ tends to reject the transplant.

Migratory Birds: Innocent Scapegoats For The Dispersal Of The H5N1 Virus:

A review to be published shortly in the British Ornithologists’ Union’s journal, Ibis, critically examines the arguments concerning the role of migratory birds in the global dispersal of the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus H5N1. Ecologists of the Station Biologique de la Tour du Valat and of the GEMI-CNRS in the Camargue (France), Michel Gauthier-Clerc, Camille Lebarbenchon and Frédéric Thomas conclude that human commercial activities, particularly those associated with poultry, are the major factors that have determined its global dispersal.

Common Fungicide Causes Long-term Changes In Rats’ Mating Behavior:

Female rats avoid males whose great-grandfathers were exposed to a common fruit crop fungicide, preferring instead males whose ancestors were uncontaminated, researchers from The University of Texas at Austin have discovered. Their research shows that environmental contamination could affect the evolution of wildlife through changes in mating behavior.

Dark Chocolate, Nicotine Patches Examined For Impact On Heart Function:

Genetics and family history play a large role in a person’s risk for heart disease, but factors in diet, lifestyle and the environment are also thought to influence susceptibility to the disease. A number of studies presented recently at the American College of Cardiology’s 56th Annual Scientific Session look at how health-related behaviors can influence a person’s risk for cardiovascular disease.

Chimpanzee Facial Expressions Are Helping Researchers Understand Human Communication:

Behavioral researchers led by Lisa Parr, PhD, director of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center Cognitive Testing Facility and Chimpanzee Core, have found understanding chimpanzee facial expressions requires more attention to detail than researchers initially thought. Correctly interpreting the subtleties within chimpanzees’ facial expressions may be key to understanding the evolution of human emotional communication.

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Salamanders Suffer Delayed Effects Of Common Herbicide:

Pollution from a common herbicide might be causing die-offs in stream salamanders, according to biologists who say findings from their long-term study raise concerns over the role of atrazine in global amphibian declines.

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Studying Snail Slime Substitutes:

A team of engineers have set a small robot climbing walls in order to compare how natural and artificial snail slimes work. A snail’s slime acts as both a glue and a lubricant, allowing the snail to crawl up walls and across ceilings without falling off. The snail pushes until the structure of the glue breaks, at which point it glides forward. When the snail stops, the glue structure reforms – sticking the snail safely to the ceiling.

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Bird Sex Is Something Else:

We’ve all heard about the birds and the bees. But apparently when it comes to birds, they have an unusual take on his and hers — and the difference is genetic. Species with differentiated sex chromosomes (X and Y in humans, for example) get around the fact that males and females get different-sized portions of sex chromosome genes with a balancing act geneticists call dosage compensation. But research published today in the Journal of Biology shows that birds are extraordinary, because some bird genomes can live with an apparent overdose of sex-related genes.

Why Are Male Antlers And Horns So Large?:

Why are male ungulate antlers and horns so large? Darwin, when proposing his theory of evolution and sexual selection, suggested that the size of male ungulate antlers and horns may reflect male individual quality, and thereby be used by conspecifics as an honest signal of male sexual vigor, health, strength, hierarchical status, or ability to fight.

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Is Bigger Better? Breast Surgery Linked To Boost In Self-esteem And Sexuality:

Women who undergo breast enlargement often see a sizable boost in self-esteem and positive feelings about their sexuality, a University of Florida nurse researcher reports.

Study Focuses On Wandering Minds:

Do your thoughts stray from your work or studies? Do you catch yourself making to-do lists when your attention should be elsewhere? Welcome to the club. College students reported mind-wandering almost one-third of the time in their daily lives, according to a new study led by faculty and graduate students at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The study will be published in the July issue of Psychological Science.

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