A Blog Around The Clock

There are 19 new papers on ONE that were published this week (thus breaking the 600 papers number). Here are a couple that caught my eye (apart from those I already blogged about or will soon):
Imitation as Faithful Copying of a Novel Technique in Marmoset Monkeys:

This evidence of imitation in non-human primates questions the dominant opinion that imitation is a human-specific ability. Furthermore, the high matching degree suggests that marmosets possess the neuronal mechanism to code the actions of others and to map them onto their own motor repertoire, rather than priming existing motor-templates.

Natural Selection on Female Life-History Traits in Relation to Socio-Economic Class in Pre-Industrial Human Populations:

We found the highest opportunity for total selection and the strongest selection on earlier age at first reproduction in women of the poorest wealth class, whereas selection favoured older age at reproductive cessation in mothers of the wealthier classes. We also found clear differences in female life-history traits across wealth classes: the poorest women had the lowest age-specific survival throughout their lives, they started reproduction later, delivered fewer offspring during their lifetime, ceased reproduction younger, had poorer offspring survival to adulthood and, hence, had lower fitness compared to the wealthier women. Our results show that the amount of wealth affected the selection pressure on female life-history in a pre-industrial human population.

Genetic Variation for Cardiac Dysfunction in Drosophila:

A screen of fifty inbred wild-type lines revealed a continuous spectrum of pacing-induced heart failure that generally increases in frequency with age. High-speed video analysis of the inbred lines with high rates of inducible heart failure indicates specific defects in cardiac function, including arrhythmias and contractile disorders (‘cardiomyopathies’). A combination of bulked segregant analysis and single feature polymorphism (SFP) detection localizes one of the cardiac susceptibility loci to the 97C interval on the fly genome.

Locating Pleistocene Refugia: Comparing Phylogeographic and Ecological Niche Model Predictions:

Ecological niche models (ENMs) provide a means of characterizing the spatial distribution of suitable conditions for species, and have recently been applied to the challenge of locating potential distributional areas at the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) when unfavorable climate conditions led to range contractions and fragmentation. Here, we compare and contrast ENM-based reconstructions of LGM refugial locations with those resulting from the more traditional molecular genetic and phylogeographic predictions. We examined 20 North American terrestrial vertebrate species from different regions and with different range sizes for which refugia have been identified based on phylogeographic analyses, using ENM tools to make parallel predictions. We then assessed the correspondence between the two approaches based on spatial overlap and areal extent of the predicted refugia. In 14 of the 20 species, the predictions from ENM and predictions based on phylogeographic studies were significantly spatially correlated, suggesting that the two approaches to development of refugial maps are converging on a similar result. Our results confirm that ENM scenario exploration can provide a useful complement to molecular studies, offering a less subjective, spatially explicit hypothesis of past geographic patterns of distribution.

The Importance of Poisoning vs. Road Traffic Injuries as a Cause of Death in Rural Sri Lanka:

Road traffic crashes are considered by the WHO to be the most important global cause of death from injury. However, this may not be true for large areas of rural Asia where road vehicles are uncommon. The issue is important, since emphasising the importance of road traffic crashes risks switching resources to urban areas, away from already underfunded rural regions. In this study, we compared the importance of road traffic crashes with other forms of injury in a poor rural region of South Asia.
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In poor rural regions of South Asia, fatal self-harm and pesticide self-poisoning in particular are significantly more important than road traffic injuries as a cause of death. It is possible that the data used by the WHO to calculate global injury estimates are biased towards urban areas with better data collection but little pesticide poisoning. More studies are required to inform a debate about the importance of different forms of injury and how avoidable deaths from any cause can be prevented. In the meantime, marked improvements in the effectiveness of therapy for pesticide poisoning, safer storage, reduced pesticide use, or reductions in pesticide toxicity are required urgently to reduce the number of deaths from self-poisoning in rural Asia.

Now, you know what to do: make annotations, post comments and rate the papers.

Songbirds Prefer The Latest Music: Golden Oldies Just Don’t Cut It With The Chicks:

When it’s time to mate, female white-crowned sparrows are looking for a male who sings the latest version of the love song, not some 1979 relic. And territorial males simply find the golden oldie much less threatening. Duke University graduate student Elizabeth Derryberry played two versions of the white-crowned sparrow song to the birds as part of her thesis research and found that a 1979 recording didn’t inspire them nearly as well as a 2003 recording of the very same song.

Birds Take Cues From Their Competitors:

The idea that animals other than humans can learn from one another and pass on local traditions has long been a matter of debate. Now, a new study reveals that some birds learn not only from each other, but also from their competitors. Through a novel field experiment, the researchers showed that female members of two migrant flycatcher species can acquire a novel preference for nesting sites on the basis of the apparent attraction of competing resident tits for nest boxes bearing an otherwise meaningless symbol.

Mimicry: Research Ends Debate Over Benefits Of Butterfly Defenses:

Scientists have furthered understanding of the relationship between predator and prey in an experiment designed to understand butterfly defence mechanisms. Researchers observed the behaviour of Great-tits foraging for artificial prey to understand more clearly how a species evolves to protect themselves from predators.

Continue reading →

Many Insomniacs Turn To Valerian And Melatonin To Help Them Sleep:

A study published in the July 1st issue of the journal SLEEP finds that large segments of the U.S. population use valerian or melatonin to treat their insomnia.
The study, authored by Donald L. Bliwise, PhD, of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, focused on the data collected from 31,044 individuals from the 2002 Alternative Health/Complementary and Alternative Medicine Supplement to the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS).
Dr. Bliwise discovered that, of the survey sample, 5.9 percent used valerian and 5.2 percent used melatonin. Relatively greater use occurred in individuals under the age of 60. The decision to use such substances was made in consultation with a health care provider less than half of the time.

Continue reading →

Life Elsewhere In Solar System Could Be Different From Life As We Know It:

The search for life elsewhere in the solar system and beyond should include efforts to detect what scientists sometimes refer to as “weird” life — that is, life with an alternative biochemistry to that of life on Earth — says a new report from the National Research Council. The committee that wrote the report found that the fundamental requirements for life as we generally know it — a liquid water biosolvent, carbon-based metabolism, molecular system capable of evolution, and the ability to exchange energy with the environment — are not the only ways to support phenomena recognized as life. “Our investigation made clear that life is possible in forms different than those on Earth,” said committee chair John Baross, professor of oceanography at the University of Washington, Seattle.

When Is A Worm Not A Worm? When It’s A Jellyfish…:

One of the world’s strangest creatures has found its long-lost kin. Oxford University scientists have discovered that an extremely rare gutless worm is related to sea anemones and jellyfish, rather than similar-looking animals, reports the journal Science. The finding could cause an evolutionary rethink.

Scientists Find Endangered Monkeys In Vietnam:

A team of scientists from WWF and Conservation International (CI) has discovered the world’s largest known population of grey-shanked doucs (Pygathrix cinerea), increasing chances that the Endangered monkey can be saved from extinction.

Color Is In The Eye Of The Beholder: New Study Examines Unusual Color Properties Of Pumpkin Seed Oil:

The unique makeup of the cells in our retina, as well as the specific physical properties of substances themselves, explain why we occasionally see things change color before our very eyes! Samo and Marko Kreft from the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia investigated this phenomenon using pumpkin seed oil as an example. They have just published their research online in Springer’s journal Naturwissenschaften.