Category Archives: Science News

Threatened Vulture Wanders Far From Mongolia:

Dr. Rich Reading (Denver Zoo) reports that a young cinereous vulture tagged in Mongolia as part of his Earthwatch-supported research was spotted 1200 miles away, near Pusan, South Korea. The vulture was tagged last August. Two other vultures were subsequently sighted in other parts of South Korea and one was seen in Heibei Province, China. Scientists have suspected that birds from Mongolia sometimes winter in Korea, but believe that their research provides the first documented confirmation.

Termites Get The Vibe On What Tastes Good:

Researchers from CSIRO and UNSW@ADFA have shown that termites can tell what sort of material their food is made of, without having to actually touch it. The findings may lead to improvements in the control of feeding termites. By offering them a choice between normal wooden blocks and specially designed blocks made of wood and other materials, the researchers found that the termites always preferred the blocks containing the most wood – even though they could not touch or see the other materials.

Don’t Be Fooled By Certain ‘Health’ Foods:

If you’re one of the millions of Americans hoping to lose weight by buying fat-free, cholesterol-free, or all-natural products, you may be surprised. Experts say it’s those so-called “healthy” foods that often sabotage diets. “These are the foods we naturally look to as we try to lose extra pounds; however, they are the ones that we need to be careful about,” says Dee Rollins, PhD, R.D., dietitian with Baylor Regional Medical Center at Grapevine.

Monkey See, Monkey Do? Novel Study Sheds Light On Imitation Learning:

What is the very best way to learn a complex task? Is it practice, practice, practice, or is watching and thinking enough to let you imitate a physical activity, such as skiing or ballet? A new study from Brandeis University published this week in the Journal of Vision unravels some of the mysteries surrounding how we learn to do things like tie our shoes, feed ourselves, or perform dazzling dance steps.

New Study Indicates Tanning May Be Addictive:

Despite repeated health warnings about the dangers of tanning from sunlight and artificial light sources, there are still those whose mantra “bronzed is beautiful” remains unshaken. Dermatologists have long suspected that some people may be addicted to tanning – similar to addictions to drugs or alcohol – and refuse to alter their behaviors, even knowing they have an increased risk of developing skin cancer. Now, a new study of college co-eds indicates that some people may be addicted to ultraviolet (UV) light.

Crows Can Recognize The Calls Of Relatives:

Most of us would know our mother’s voice on the phone from the first syllable uttered. A recent Cornell study suggests that crows also can recognize the voices of their relatives. By recording and analyzing the alarm caws of American crows, Jessica Yorzinski ’05 found seven subtle acoustic differences in features that differed among individuals — differences that the crows could potentially use to recognize one another’s calls. She also found that female crows had higher-pitched calls than males. Yorzinski is now a graduate student at the University of California-Davis studying the mating choices of peacocks.

The Buzzing Of Bees Can Warn Of Nearby Poisons:

Everyone has heard of the canary in the coal mine, which sways or drops dead in the presence of poisonous gas, alerting miners to get out. Now a University of Montana research team has learned to understand the collective buzzing of bees in their hives, which can provide a similar biological alert system. But bees evidently provide a lot more information than canaries. The researchers, who work for a UM spin-off technology company called Bee Alert Technology Inc., have found that the insects buzz differently when exposed to various poisonous chemicals.

Your Mom Was Wrong: Horseplay Is An Important Part Of Development:

Playground roughhousing has long been a tradition of children and adolescents, much to the chagrin of several generations of parents who worry that their child will be hurt or worse, become accustomed to violence and aggression. But animal research may paint a different portrait of rough and tumble play; one that suggests that social and emotional development may rely heavily on such peer interaction. In an article published in the April issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, Sergio and Vivian Pellis of the University of Lethbridge reviewed multiple studies involving animals, and found a link between rough and tumble play and social competence.

Actually, no, he knows exactly where they went – and for a good reason:
Shooting Marbles At 16,000 Miles Per Hour:

NASA scientist Bill Cooke is shooting marbles and he’s playing “keepsies.” The prize won’t be another player’s marbles, but knowledge that will help keep astronauts safe when America returns to the Moon in the next decade. Cooke is firing quarter-inch diameter clear shooters – Pyrex glass, to be exact – at soil rather than at other marbles. And he has to use a new one on each round because every 16,000 mph (7 km/s) shot destroys his shooter.

Homing Pigeons Get Their Bearings From Their Beaks:

It has long been recognized that birds possess the ability to use the Earth’s magnetic field for their navigation, although just how this is done has not yet been clarified. However, the discovery of iron-containing structures in the beaks of homing pigeons in a new study1 by Gerta Fleissner and her colleagues at the University of Frankfurt offers a promising insight into this complex topic. The article will be published online mid-March in Springer’s journal Naturwissenschaften.

Social Life Of Honeybees Coordinated By A Single Gene:

Students of the evolution of social behavior got a big boost with the publication of the newly sequenced honeybee genome in October 2006. The honeybee (Apis mellifera) belongs to the rarified cadre of insects that pool resources, divide tasks, and communicate with each other in highly structured colonies. Understanding how this advanced state of organization evolved from a solitary lifestyle has been an enduring question in biology.

Continue reading →

Stealth Camouflage At Night:

Giant Australian cuttlefish employ night camouflage to adapt quickly to a variety of microhabitats on temperate rock reefs. New research sheds light on the animal’s remarkable visual system and nighttime predator/prey interactions. Cuttlefish are well-known masters of disguise who use highly developed camouflage tactics to blend in almost instantaneously with their surroundings. These relatives of octopuses and squid are part of a class of animals called cephalopods and are found in marine habitats worldwide. Cephalopods use camouflage to change their appearance with a speed and diversity unparalleled in the animal kingdom, however there is no documentation to date that they use their diverse camouflage repertoire at night.

Continue reading →

A Rarity Among Arachnids, Whip Spiders Have A Sociable Family Life:

Whip spiders, considered by many to be creepy-crawly, are giving new meaning to the term touchy-feely. In two species of whip spiders, or amblypygids, mothers caress their young with long feelers and siblings stick together in social groups until they reach sexual maturity. This is surprising behavior for these arachnids, long-thought to be purely aggressive and anti-social, according to a Cornell researcher.

New Species Of Snapper Discovered In Brazil:

A popular game fish mistaken by scientists for a dog snapper is actually a new species discovered among the reefs of the Abrolhos region of the South Atlantic Ocean.

Continue reading →

Male Reindeer Inflate Their Air Sac To Make Sexually Enticing Hoarse Rutting Calls:

A group of European scientists have determined that a male reindeer’s air sac, influencing vocal sound and neck contour, may contribute to his sexual prowess and reproductive success. The results of this research have recently been published in Journal of Anatomy.

Continue reading →

Species’ Sizes Affect Lives Of Cells In Mammals:

Cells from the smallest to the largest of mammals often seem to be “one size fits all.” Now a closer look reveals that whether a cell lives in an elephant, mouse or something in between can make a big difference in its life. Researchers from the University of Florida Genetics Institute, Harvard Medical School and other institutions developed mathematical models that they used to examine 18 cell types from mammals ranging from mice to elephants. They found two basic categories — cells that stay the same size but have drastically different energy needs that depend on the size of the mammal, or cells that grow larger in larger mammals and use energy at the same rate, no matter the mammal’s size.

Gene Transfer Between Species Is Surprisingly Common:

Bacteria are known to share genes, spreading drug resistance, for example. But how common is it in other organisms, including mammals like us? Two new studies show that most bacteria have genes or large groups of genes shared by other bacteria. Even among higher organisms, shared genes are the rule rather than the exception, UC Berkeley and LBNL researchers say.

Continue reading →

Social Tolerance Allows Bonobos To Outperform Chimpanzees On A Cooperative Task:

In experiments designed to deepen our understanding of how cooperative behavior evolves, researchers have found that bonobos, a particularly sociable relative of the chimpanzee, are more successful than chimpanzees at cooperating to retrieve food, even though chimpanzees exhibit strong cooperative hunting behavior in the wild.

Continue reading →

Lizards May Help Unlock Secrets of Evolution:

Hundreds of species of anoles roam the Caribbean Islands and parts of North and South America, a highly diverse and colorful small lizard that scientists have studied in hopes of unlocking the secrets of evolution. Kirsten E. Nicholson, a Central Michigan University assistant biology professor, has just published a paper in PLoS ONE on her four-year study of Caribbean anoles that may provide a building block for future evolutionary studies.

Continue reading →

Despite Their Heft, Many Dinosaurs Had Surprisingly Tiny Genomes:

They might be giants, but many dinosaurs apparently had genomes no larger than that of a modern hummingbird. So say scientists who’ve linked bone cell and genome size among living species and then used that new understanding to gauge the genome sizes of 31 species of extinct dinosaurs and birds, whose bone cells can be measured from the fossil record.

Human Pubic Lice Acquired From Gorillas Gives Evolutionary Clues:

Humans acquired pubic lice from gorillas several million years ago, but this seemingly seedy connection does not mean that monkey business went on with the great apes, a new University of Florida study finds.

Continue reading →

‘Mafia’ Behavior In Cowbirds? Study First To Document Evidence:

Cowbirds have long been known to lay eggs in the nests of other birds, which then raise the cowbirds’ young as their own. Sneaky, perhaps, but not Scarface. Now, however, a University of Florida study finds that cowbirds actually ransack and destroy the nests of warblers that don’t buy into the ruse and raise their young.

Man’s Best Friend Lends Insight Into Human Evolution:

Flexibly drawing inferences about the intentions of other individuals in order to cooperate in complex tasks is a basic part of everyday life that we humans take for granted. But, according to evolutionary psychologist Brian Hare at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, this ability is present in other species as well.

Irish Potato Famine Disease Came From South America:

Scientists at North Carolina State University have discovered that the fungus-like pathogen that caused the 1840s Irish potato famine originally came from the Andes of South America. By comparing the sequences of both the nuclear and the cellular powerhouse, mitochondria, of nearly 100 pathogen samples from South America, Central America, North America and Europe, Dr. Jean Beagle Ristaino, professor of plant pathology at NC State, and a small team of researchers created “gene genealogies” that point the finger at an Andean point of origin for the pathogen, which is known as Phytophthora infestans.

‘Wingman’ — How Buddies Help Alpha Males Get The Girl:

Why do some individuals sacrifice their own self-interest to help others? The evolution and maintenance of cooperative behavior is a classic puzzle in evolutionary biology. In some animal societies, cooperation occurs in close-knit family groups and kin selection explains apparently selfless behavior. Not so for the lance-tailed manakin. Males of this little tropical bird cooperate in spectacular courtship displays with unrelated partners, and the benefits of lending a helping wing may only come years down the line.

Red Pepper: Hot Stuff For Fighting Fat?:

Food scientists in Taiwan are reporting new evidence from laboratory experiments that capsaicin — the natural compound that gives red pepper that spicy hot kick — can reduce the growth of fat cells. The study is scheduled for the March 21 issue of the ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication.

Continue reading →

Scientist Discovers New Horned Dinosaur Genus:

A scientist at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History has announced the discovery of a new horned dinosaur, named Albertaceratops nesmoi, approximately 20 feet long and weighing nearly one half ton, or the weight of a pickup truck. The newly identified plant-eating dinosaur lived nearly 78 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous Period in what is now southernmost Alberta, Canada. Its identification marks the discovery of a new genus and species and sheds exciting new light on the evolutionary history of the Ceratopsidae dinosaur family. Only one other horned dinosaur has been discovered in Canada since the 1950s.

Continue reading →

20 New Species Of Sharks, Rays, Discovered In Indonesia:

The five-year survey of catches at local fish markets provided the first detailed description of Indonesia’s shark and ray fauna – information which is critical to their management in Indonesia and Australia.

Regenerative Medicine Advance: Frog Tadpole Artificially Induced To Re-grow Its Tail:

Scientists at Forsyth may have moved one step closer to regenerating human spinal cord tissue by artificially inducing a frog tadpole to re-grow its tail at a stage in its development when it is normally impossible. Using a variety of methods including a kind of gene therapy, the scientists altered the electrical properties of cells thus inducing regeneration. This discovery may provide clues about how bioelectricity can be used to help humans regenerate.

Diminished Sense Of Moral Outrage Key To Holding View That World Is Fair And Just, Study Shows:

People who see the world as essentially fair can just maintain this perception through a diminished sense of moral outrage, according to a study by researchers in New York University’s Department of Psychology. The findings appear in the March issue of the journal Psychological Science, which is published by the Association for Psychological Science.

Sleep Deprivation Affects Moral Judgment, Study Finds:

Research has shown that bad sleep can adversely affect a person’s physical health and emotional well-being. However, the amount of sleep one gets can also influence his or her decision-making. A study published in the March 1st issue of the journal SLEEP finds that sleep deprivation impairs the ability to integrate emotion and cognition to guide moral judgments.

Children With Sleep Disorders Can Impair Parents’ Functioning:

Parents of children with sleep problems are more likely to have sleep-related problems themselves, including more daytime sleepiness, according to a new study by researchers at the Bradley Hasbro Children’s Research Center and Brown Medical School.

City Ants Take The Heat:

While Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, has generated greater awareness of global warming, most people remain unaware of the more rapid warming that has occurred within major cities. In fact, large cities can be more than 10 degrees hotter than their surroundings. These metropolitan hot spots, which scientists refer to as urban heat islands, can stress the animals and plants that make their home alongside humans. Until recently, biologists had focused so much on the effects of global climate change, that they had overlooked the effects of urban warming.

More…..

Continue reading →

Researchers Discover Key To Body’s Ability To Detect Subtle Temperature Changes:

Scientists have long known the molecular mechanisms behind most of the body’s sensing capabilities. Vision, for example, is made possible in part by rhodopsin, a pigment molecule that is extremely sensitive to light. It is involved in turning photons into electrical signals that can be decoded by the brain into visual information. But how the human body is able to sense a one-degree change in temperature has remained a mystery.

More…..

Continue reading →

Why Even Close Associates Sometimes Have Trouble Communicating:

Particularly among close associates, sharing even a little new information can slow down communication. Some of people’s biggest problems with communication come in sharing new information with people they know well, newly published research at the University of Chicago shows.

More…..

Continue reading →

Wow! It seems that all the exciting sience news today are coming from my school:
Researchers Find Genes Involved In Nicotine Resistance In Fruit Flies:

North Carolina State University researchers have gleaned insight into the genes involved in resistance to nicotine in the lab rat of many gene studies – Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly. The research team led by Dr. Greg Gibson, William Neal Reynolds Professor of Genetics, and his graduate student, Gisele Passador-Gurgel, found that regulation of levels of a certain enzyme – ornithine amino transferase – plays an important role in establishing how long flies can tolerate nicotine. Gibson says that the amount of enzyme seems to do two things – it influences flies’ ability to strip away toxins, and it helps establish how much the drug stimulates them.
———-snip———-
An interesting sidelight in the study was the observation that flies from North Carolina are more resistant to nicotine than flies from California. The researchers found that 30 percent of the North Carolina flies lived longer after exposure to nicotine – thus were more resistant to nicotine – than all but one California fly.
Gibson isn’t sure why, although he has a few theories. North Carolina flies may garner resistance from living near tobacco fields. California flies may have genetically lost their ability to resist nicotine. Many pesticides are nicotine-based, too, so the flies could have evolved some response to insecticides.

‘Buckyballs’ Penetrate Deeper, Faster When Skin Is Flexed, Study Shows:

Researchers at North Carolina State University have discovered that repetitive flexing movements increase the speed and depth at which tiny particles are absorbed through the skin, a finding that could have major implications in medical, consumer and industrial fields. Dr. Nancy Monteiro-Riviere, professor of investigative dermatology and toxicology at NC State’s College of Veterinary Medicine, and graduate student Jillian Rouse, working with Dr. Andrew R. Barron, professor of chemistry and materials science at Rice University, made the discovery by exposing the tiny particles – the soccer-ball shaped materials known as fullerenes or buckyballs which are much smaller than the head of a pin – to pig skin.

Researchers Develop Resin Beads That Capture Mad Cow Disease Agent From Blood:

For the first time, experimental results indicate that it is possible to use a resin filter to remove harmful prion proteins from the blood of an infected animal, a finding that has major implications for the removal of infectious prion proteins – the agents associated with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, mad cow disease, scrapie and other prion diseases in animals – during blood transfusions.Dr. Ruben Carbonell, Frank Hawkins Kenan Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and director of the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology and Science at North Carolina State University, and scientists from the University of Maryland at Baltimore’s VA Medical Center, the American Red Cross and ProMetic BioSciences, a biotechnology company, developed small resin beads with molecules that are able to bind to harmful prion proteins. The beads serve as an adsorption filter, capturing the bad proteins and allowing other blood components to be effectively cleansed of the prion-disease-causing agents.

Male, Female Or Both? Study Shows Chemicals, Temperature Can Confuse Crustaceans:

Reports of blue crabs exhibiting both male and female sex characteristics in the Chesapeake Bay and other water systems raise a red flag about the environment in which the crabs live, says Dr. Gerald A. LeBlanc, professor of environmental and molecular toxicology at North Carolina State University.

Do You Hear What I See? Research Finds Visually Stimulated Activity In Brain’s Hearing Processing Centers:

New research pinpoints specific areas in sound processing centers in the brains of macaque monkeys that shows enhanced activity when the animals watch a video. This study confirms a number of recent findings but contradicts classical thinking, in which hearing, taste, touch, sight, and smell are each processed in distinct areas of the brain and only later integrated.

Continue reading →

Boosting Brain Power — With Chocolate:

Eating chocolate could help to sharpen up the mind and give a short-term boost to cognitive skills, a University of Nottingham expert has found. A study led by Professor Ian Macdonald found that consumption of a cocoa drink rich in flavanols — a key ingredient of dark chocolate — boosts blood flow to key areas of the brain for two to three hours.

Environment And Exercise May Affect Research Results, Study Shows:

A recently completed study at The University of Arizona may have implications for the thousands of scientists worldwide who use “knockout” mice in their research. In the study, Knockout Mice: Is it Just Genetics? Effects of Enriched Housing on Fibulin-4+/- Mice, lead researcher Ann Baldwin, PhD, suggests that environmental factors may play a large part in research findings that investigators assume are due simply to genetic differences. Further, the study research indicates that appropriate environments may counteract the effects of some genetic deficiencies.

More…..

Continue reading →

New Research Finds People And Pigeons See Eye To Eye:

Pigeons and humans use similar visual cues to identify objects, a finding that could have promising implications in the development of novel technologies, according to new research conducted by a University of New Hampshire professor. Brett Gibson, an assistant professor of psychology who studies animal behavior, details his latest research in the journal article, “Non-accidental properties underlie shape recognition in mammalian and non-mammalian vision,” published in Current Biology. Gibson and his colleagues found that humans and pigeons, which have different visual systems, have evolved to use similar techniques and information to recognize objects.

Continue reading →

Storing Digital Data In Living Organisms:

DNA, perhaps the oldest data storage medium, could become the newest as scientists report progress toward using DNA to store text, images, music and other digital data inside the genomes of living organisms. In a report scheduled for the April 9 issue of ACS’ Biotechnology Progress, a bi-monthly journal, Masaru Tomita and colleagues in Japan point out that DNA has been attracting attention as perhaps the ultimate in permanent data storage.

More…..

Continue reading →

Light-sensitive Protein Found In Many Marine Bacteria:

New light has been shed on proteorhodopsin, the light-sensitive protein found in many marine bacteria. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley have demonstrated that when the ability to respire oxygen is impaired, bacterium equipped with proteorhodopsin will switch to solar power to carry out vital life processes.

More….

Continue reading →

Robotic Cameras Join Search For ‘Holy Grail Of Bird-watching’:

In the bayous of eastern Arkansas, amidst ancient trees both living and dead that provide nourishment to creatures of the swamp, hangs a high-tech sentinel patiently waiting to capture video of an elusive bird once thought to be extinct. Developed by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and Texas A&M University, the high-resolution intelligent robotic video system installed in the Bayou DeView area of the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas is part of a major effort to locate the ivory-billed woodpecker in its historic habitat, the bottomland forests of the southeast United States.

Scientific Literacy: How Do Americans Stack Up?:

Having a basic knowledge of scientific principles is no longer a luxury but, in today’s complex world, a necessity. And, according to a Michigan State University researcher, while Americans are holding their own, they are not even close to where they should be.

More…..

Continue reading →

I’m sure PZ is inundated with e-mails from readers asking for a real evo-devo explanation, but in the meantime read the news report and see the picture:

‘Regressive Evolution’ In Cavefish: Natural Selection Or Genetic Drift:

“Regressive evolution,” or the reduction of traits over time, is the result of either natural selection or genetic drift, according to a study on cavefish by researchers at New York University’s Department of Biology, the University of California at Berkeley’s Department of Integrative Biology, and the Harvard Medical School. Previously, scientists could not determine which forces contributed to regressive evolution in cave-adapted species, and many doubt the role of natural selection in this process. Darwin himself, who famously questioned the role of natural selection in eye loss in cave fishes, said, “As it is difficult to imagine that eyes, although useless, could be in any way injurious to animals living in darkness, I attribute their loss wholly to disuse.”

Antarctic Warming To Reduce Animals At Base Of Ecosystem, Shift Some Penguin Populations Southward:

The warming most global climate models predict will do more harm than simply raise the sea levels that most observers fear. It will make drastic changes in fragile ecosystems throughout the world, especially in the Antarctic. A warming trend during the last few decades in the Antarctic Peninsula has already forced penguin populations to migrate south and perhaps diminished the abundance of krill that are at the base of the massive food chain at the bottom of the world.

Fatal Attraction: Elephants And Marula Fruit:

Being female can be a risky business, especially if you are a Marula tree in Africa receiving the attention of elephants. The tasty, nutritious and vitamin C-rich Marula fruits are much sought after by both man and animals. It is a stable “wild food” and base for the popular Amarula liquor. But Marula has separate male and female trees so fruiting females attract browsing elephants, which cause damage to branches and bark.

Lots more cool stuff under the fold….

Continue reading →

Bats Prey On Nocturnally Migrating Songbirds:

It was until now believed that nocturnally migrating songbirds, while venturing into the unfamiliar night sky for accomplishing their long, challenging trans-continental migrations, could at least release anti-predator vigilance thanks to the concealment of darkness. A new study by Spanish and Swiss scientists — published this week in PLoS ONE — shows that migration at night is not without predation risk for passerines.

Continue reading →

Female Antarctic Seals Give Cold Shoulder To Local Males:

Female Antarctic fur seals will travel across a colony to actively seek males which are genetically diverse and unrelated, rather than mate with local dominant males. These findings, published in this week’s Nature, suggest that female choice may be more widespread in nature than previously believed and that such strategies enable species to maintain genetic diversity.

Continue reading →

Scientists Clone Mice From Adult Skin Stem Cells:

For cells that hold so much promise, stem cells’ potential has so far gone largely untapped. But new research from Rockefeller University and Howard Hughes Medical Institute scientists now shows that adult stem cells taken from skin can be used to clone mice using a procedure called nuclear transfer. The findings are reported in the Feb. 12 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Continue reading →

Go ahead, rip into them. I know you want to…
No Missing Link? Evolutionary Changes Occur Suddenly, Professor Says:

Jeffrey H. Schwartz, University of Pittsburgh professor of anthropology in the School of Arts and Sciences, is working to debunk a major tenet of Darwinian evolution. Schwartz believes that evolutionary changes occur suddenly as opposed to the Darwinian model of evolution, which is characterized by gradual and constant change. Among other scientific observations, gaps in the fossil record could bolster Schwartz’s theory because, for Schwartz, there is no “missing link.”

Continue reading →

Influence Of The Menstrual Cycle On The Female Brain:

What influence does the variation in estrogen level have on the activation of the female brain? Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Jean-Claude Dreher, a researcher at the Cognitive Neuroscience Center (CNRS/Université Lyon 1), in collaboration with an American team from the National Institute of Mental Health (Bethesda, Maryland) directed by Karen Berman, has identified, for the first time, the neural networks involved in processing reward-related functions modulated by female gonadal steroid hormones. This result, which was published online on January 29, 2007 on the PNAS website, is an important step in better comprehension of certain psychiatric and neurological pathologies.
The human brain has a recompense system that predicts different types of reward (food, money, drugs…). The normal functioning of this system plays a fundamental role in many cognitive processes such as motivation and learning. This reward system, composed of dopaminergic neurons(1) situated in the mesencephalon (a very deep region of the brain) and their projection sites(2), is crucial for neural coding of rewards. Its dysfunction can result in disorders such as addictions and is also implicated in various psychiatric and neurological pathologies, such as Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenic disorders. Many studies on animals prove that the dopaminergic(3) system is sensitive to gonadal steroid hormones (estrogen, progesterone). For example, female rats self-administer cocaine (a drug that acts on the dopamine system) in higher doses after estrogens have been administered to them. The influence of gonadal steroid hormones on the activation of the reward system remained to be studied in humans. A better knowledge of this influence should make for better understanding of the differences between men and women, particularly as observed in the prevalence of certain psychiatric pathologies and in vulnerability to drugs, (for which the dopaminergic system plays an important role.) It is known, for example, that the female response to cocaine is greater in the follicular phase of the menstrual cycle(4) than in the luteal phase(5). Moreover, schizophrenia tends to appear later in women than in men.

I’d appreciate it if someone could send me a PDF of the actual paper.
More….

Continue reading →

Children’s Sleep Problems Can Lead To School Problems:

It is obvious that young children who have difficulties sleeping are likely to have problems in school. A new study shows that African-American children and children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds fare worse than their counterparts when their sleep is disrupted. The study offers one of the first demonstrations that the relationship between children’s performance and sleep may differ among children of different backgrounds. Conducted by researchers at Auburn University and Notre Dame University, it is published in the January/February 2007 issue of the journal Child Development.

More….

Continue reading →

A cornucopia of interesting science today. As always, check if the press release matches the actual paper…
Adaptation To Global Climate Change Is An Essential Response To A Warming Planet:

Temperatures are rising on Earth, which is heating up the debate over global warming and the future of our planet, but what may be needed most to combat global warming is a greater focus on adapting to our changing planet, says a team of science policy experts writing in this week’s Nature magazine. While many consider it taboo, adaptation to global climate change needs to be recognized as just as important as “mitigation,” or cutting back, of greenhouse gases humans pump into Earth’s atmosphere. The science policy experts, writing in the Feb. 8, 2007 issue of Nature, say adapting to the changing climate by building resilient societies and fostering sustainable development would go further in securing a future for humans on a warming planet than just cutting gas emissions.

Continue reading →

Human Proteins Evolving Slowly Thanks To Multitasking Genes:

Many human proteins are not as good as they might be because the gene sequences that code for them have a double role which slows down the rate at which they evolve, according to new research published in PLoS Biology. By tweaking these dual role regions, scientists could develop gene therapy techniques that produce proteins that are even better than those found in nature, and could one day be used to help people recover from genetic disorders.

More….

Continue reading →

Lots of cool stuff today:
Nature Could Have Used Different Protein Building Blocks, Chemists Show:

Chemists at Yale have done what Mother Nature chose not to — make a protein-like molecule out of non-natural building blocks, according to a report featured early online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Nature uses alpha-amino acid building blocks to assemble the proteins that make life as we know it possible. Chemists at Yale now report evidence that nature could have used a different building block — beta-amino acids — and show that peptides assembled from beta-amino acids can fold into structures much like natural protein.

Continue reading →

Endangered Shortnose Sturgeon Saved In Hudson River:

For the first time in U.S., and probably global, history a fish identified as endangered has been shown to have recovered — and in the Hudson River, which flows through one of the world’s largest population centers, New York City.

Multiple Dimensions Shape Our Perception Of Mind, Harvard Study Suggests:

Through an online survey of more than 2,000 people, psychologists at Harvard University have found that we perceive the minds of others along two distinct dimensions: agency, an individual’s ability for self-control, morality and planning; and experience, the capacity to feel sensations such as hunger, fear and pain.

Rats On A Road Trip Reveal Pollution-heart Disease Risk:

Rats that rode in a truck on the New York State Thruway between Rochester and Buffalo and were exposed to the same highway pollution that motorists encounter, showed a drop in heart rate and effects on the autonomic nervous system, according to a study published this month in the journal Inhalation Toxicology.

Researchers On The Path To Building Bone:

UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) researchers have developed a method to increase bone density in mice, a development that might have future benefit for humans in the treatment of osteoporosis and bone fracture. The research, published in the Jan. 29 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, involves manipulation of the Pten gene, which contributes to the process by which cells die, known as apoptosis.

Food-mood Connection: The Sad Are Twice As Likely To Eat Comfort Food:

People feeling sad tend to eat more of less-healthy comfort foods than when they feel happy, finds a new study co-authored by a Cornell food marketing expert. However, when nutritional information is available, those same sad people curb their hedonistic consumption. But happier people don’t.

Huge Settlement Unearthed At Stonehenge Complex:

Excavations supported by National Geographic at Durrington Walls in the Stonehenge World Heritage site have revealed an enormous ancient settlement that once housed hundreds of people. Archaeologists believe the houses were constructed and occupied by the builders of nearby Stonehenge, the legendary monument on England’s Salisbury Plain.

Dig Deeper To Find Martian Life:

Probes designed to find life on Mars do not drill deep enough to find the living cells that scientists believe may exist well below the surface of Mars, according to research led by UCL (University College London). Although current drills may find essential tell-tale signs that life once existed on Mars, cellular life could not survive the radiation levels for long enough any closer to the surface of Mars than a few metres deep — beyond the reach of even state-of-the-art drills.

Evidence For Human-caused Global Warming Is Now ‘Unequivocal’:

The first major global assessment of climate change science in six years has concluded that changes in the atmosphere, the oceans and glaciers and ice caps show unequivocally that the world is warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that major advances in climate modelling and the collection and analysis of data now give scientists “very high confidence” (at least a 9 out of 10 chance of being correct) in their understanding of how human activities are causing the world to warm. This level of confidence is much greater than what could be achieved in 2001 when the IPCC issued its last major report.

Lots of good stuff today – hard to pick favourites:
Human Preference For Other Species Could Determine Whether They Survive:

As humans exert ever-greater influence on the Earth, their preferences will play a substantial role in determining which other species survive. New research shows that, in some cases, those preferences could be governed by factors as subtle as small color highlights a creature displays. In the case of penguins, mostly black-and-white flightless birds that live predominantly in the Southern Hemisphere, those most popular with humans appear to be the ones that display markings of warm colors such as red, orange or intense yellow, said David Stokes, a conservation biologist at the University of Washington, Bothell.

More, under the fold….

Continue reading →

Nonvenomous Asian Snakes ‘Borrow’ Defensive Poison From Toxic Toads:

Most snakes are born with poisonous bites they use for defense. But what can non-poisonous snakes do to ward off predators? What if they could borrow a dose of poison by eating toxic toads, then recycling the toxins? That’s exactly what happens in the relationship between an Asian snake and a species of toad, according to a team of researchers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS).

More….

Continue reading →