A Blog Around The Clock

Today’s crop of science news is particularly fascinating and I wish I had time to devote a whole post to each item. Hopefully, some of my SciBlings or other science bloggers will write something more about these new studies:
Contrary To Common Wisdom, Scientist Discovers Some Mammals Can Smell Objects Under Water:

For some time, Kenneth Catania had noticed that the star-nosed moles he studies blow a lot of bubbles as they swim around underwater. But it wasn’t until recently that he really paid attention to this behavior and, when he did, he discovered that the moles were blowing bubbles in order to smell underwater objects. “This came as a total surprise because the common wisdom is that mammals can’t smell underwater,’ says the assistant professor of biology. “When mammals adapt to living in water, their sense of smell usually degenerates. The primary example of this are the cetaceans — whales and dolphins — many of which have lost their sense of smell.”

Snuggling Skunks: Is It Better To Brave Winter Alone Or In A Group?:

A fascinating new study in the January/February 2007 issue of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology looks at the benefits of huddling vs. solitude, comparing strategies used by striped skunks to get through long, cold winters in northern climates. While most male skunks den underground alone during the winter, a group of female skunks will often snuggle together with one male in communal dens.
Yeen Ten Hwang (University of Western Ontario) and coauthors found that skunks that choose to go it alone reach torpor — the state during which an animal reduces its metabolism and lowers its temperature to save energy and conserve water — almost ten times more every day. Indeed, the researchers were surprised to find that male skunks who huddle with females do not enter torpor at all, perhaps staying physically alert to defend the den.

Dinosaurs: Stones Did Not Help With Digestion:

The giant dinosaurs had a problem. Many of them had narrow, pointed teeth, which were more suited to tearing off plants rather than chewing them. But how did they then grind their food? Until recently many researchers have assumed that they were helped by stones which they swallowed. In their muscular stomach these then acted as a kind of ‘gastric mill’. But this assumption does not seem to be correct, as scientists at the universities of Bonn and Tübingen have now proved.

Durable Critters Providing Insight For Human Egg Preservation:

A tiny, six-legged critter that suspends all biological activity when the going gets tough may hold answers to a better way to cryopreserve human eggs, researchers say. Tardigrades, also called water bears, can survive Himalayan heights or ocean depths as long as they have moisture. When they don’t, they produce a sugar, trehalose, slowly dehydrate and essentially cease functioning until the rain comes, says Dr. Ali Eroglu, reproductive biologist and cryobiologist at the Medical College of Georgia.

Go To Church And Breathe Easier:

“Pulmonary function is an important indicator of respiratory and overall health, yet little is known about the psychosocial factors that might predict pulmonary function. At the same time, religious activity is emerging as a potential health promoting factor, especially among the elderly. We wanted to determine whether there was a connection between the two,” Maselko said.

Too Mellow For Our Predatory World: Flight Behaviour Of Marine Iguanas:

Marine iguanas on the Galápagos Islands live without predators – at least this was the case up until 150 years ago. Since then they have been confronted with cats and dogs on some islands of the Archipelago. For scientists, they are therefore a suitable model of study in order to discover if such generally tame animals are capable of adapting their behaviour and endocrine stress response to novel predation threats. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, the University of Ulm Tufts University and Princeton University were able to show that the stress response induced by corticosterone (CORT) is absent in predator-naïve animals but can be fully restored with experience. However, as the researchers found out, the flight distance of the reptiles does not sufficiently increase, which limits their ability to successfully escape from newly introduced predators

Fish Species Plays Surprise Role In Aiding Coral Reef Recovery:

In a study that marks progress in understanding the basis of coral reef recovery, researchers have revealed the critical importance of a rare batfish, Platax pinnatus, in promoting the return to health of a disturbed coral reef overgrown with algae.

Study Gives Clues About How Deadly Bacterium Gains Foothold:

How a potentially deadly bacterium that could be used as a bioterrorist tool eludes being killed by the human immune system is now better understood.

Malaria Vaccine Prompts Victims’ Immune System To Eliminate Parasite From Mosquitoes:

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have developed an experimental vaccine that could, theoretically, eliminate malaria from entire geographic regions, by eradicating the malaria parasite from an area’s mosquitoes. The vaccine, so far tested only in mice, would prompt the immune system of a person who receives it to eliminate the parasite from the digestive tract of a malaria-carrying mosquito, after the mosquito has fed upon the blood of the vaccinated individual. The vaccine would not prevent or limit malarial disease in the person who received it.

Fossil Discovery Turns Scientific Theory On Its Head :

An international team led by University of Adelaide palaeontologist Trevor Worthy has discovered a unique, primitive type of land mammal that lived at least 16 million years ago on New Zealand.

This Party Doesn’t Start Until The Hosts Arrive: Parasite Invasions May Depend On Host Invasions:

Disease-causing organisms can be present in some areas where their hosts are not. If their hosts arrive, novel disease outbreaks may result.

Air Rich With Bacteria, Study Finds:

Want biodiversity? Look no further than the air around you. It could be teeming with more than 1,800 types of bacteria, according to a first-of-its-kind census of airborne microbes recently conducted by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

Climate Change Has Surprising Effect On Endangered Naked Carp:

Forthcoming in the January/February 2007 issue of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, a groundbreaking study reveals an unanticipated way freshwater fish may respond to water diversion and climate change. Endangered naked carp migrate annually between freshwater rivers, where they spawn, and a lake in Western China, where they feed and grow. However, Lake Qinghai is drying up and becoming increasingly more saline–leading to surprising adjustments to the carps’ metabolic rate.
Naked carp take seven to ten years to reach reproductive size. Although historically abundant, overfishing and destruction of spawning habitat through dam-building caused the species to become endangered during the 1990s. Diversion of water for agriculture from the lake has been compounded by climate change, leading to a decline in water level in the lake of 10–12 cm per year during the past fifty years (see accompanying image).
However, Chris M. Wood (McMaster University) and coauthors found that naked carp respond to the increased salinity of the lake water in a surprising way–by taking a “metabolic holiday.” In the first forty-eight hours after transitioning from the freshwater river system to lake water, the carps’ oxygen consumption falls –eventually reaching just 60 percent of that in river fish.
Both gill and kidney functions also decline. The sodium/potassium pump (Na+/K+-ATPase), which is a protein critical for cellular function, operated at only 30 percent of its capacity in lake-water fish compared to river-water fish. Ammonia-N secretion by the kidneys declines by a surprising 70 percent, and urine flow decreases drastically to less than 5 percent of its rate in the freshwater river water.

Sniffers Show That Humans Can Track Scents, And That Two Nostrils Are Better Than One:

University of California, Berkeley, graduate student Allen Liu last Friday donned coveralls, a blindfold, earplugs and gloves, then got down on all fours and sniffed out a 33-foot chocolate trail through the grass. This was no fraternity initiation, but part of an experiment to find out whether mammals compare information coming from their two nostrils in order to aid scent-tracking performance, much like they compare information from their ears in order to locate a sound.

Developing Our Brightest Minds:

Who will be the next Albert Einstein? The next Stephen Hawking? A new report from Vanderbilt University reveals the complex mix of factors that create these intellectual leaders: cognitive abilities, educational opportunities, investigative interests and old-fashioned hard work.

Phototherapy For Neonatal Jaundice Associated With Increased Risk Of Skin Moles In Childhood:

Children who received light therapy (phototherapy) for jaundice as infants appear to have an increased risk of developing skin moles in childhood, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Some types of moles are risk factors for developing the skin cancer melanoma.

Parthenogenetic embryonic stem cells

Shoulder Ligament A Linchpin In The Evolution Of Flight:

Brown and Harvard scientists have learned that a single ligament at the shoulder joint stabilizes the wings of birds during flight. In an advanced online publication of Nature, they explain how this tough bit of tissue evolved to become a linchpin for today’s fliers.

Internal Compass Of Immune Cell Discovered:

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have discovered how neutrophils — specialized white blood cells that play key roles in inflammation and in the body’s immune defense against bacteria — navigate to sites of infection and inflammation. These findings could potentially lead to new treatments for serious infections and inflammatory diseases in patients.

Pesticides Need Sunscreen To Beat The Heat:

A pesticide with a new in-built sunscreen could reduce costs to farmers and the environment. Special capsules shield the pesticide from sunshine, which normally causes rapid degradation.

A Green Way To Slag Off Bunnies:

Using slag on wheat plants deters rabbits from eating, and consequently damaging the plant. Calcium silicate gives the leaves a bitter taste, putting the bunnies off their food.

For Pacific White Shrimp, Gender Matters When Competing For Food:

A new study in Journal of the World Aquaculture Society suggests that, while larger shrimp consistently win over smaller shrimp of the same gender when competing for food, male shrimp will almost always beat female shrimp – even though adult males of the species are typically much smaller than the adult females of the same age.

Steering Toward The Much-discussed Lab-on-a-chip:

Scientists are reporting discovery of technology that may simplify construction of those much-discussed Micro Total Analysis Systems (micro-TASs) — “labs-on-a-chip” with whole medical and scientific laboratories shrunk to the size of computer chips.

Small Furry Mammal Was Capable Of Gliding Flight Possibly Before Birds:

An American Museum of Natural History paleontologist and his colleagues have named a new order of mammals based on their description of a fossil of a bat- or squirrel-sized Mesozoic mammal, called Volaticotherium antiquus (meaning “ancient gliding beast”), which was capable of gliding flight.

New Male-specific Gene In Algae Unveils An Origin Of Male And Female:

By studying the genetics of two closely related species of green algae that practice different forms of sexual reproduction, researchers have shed light on one route by which evolution gave rise to reproduction though the joining of distinct sperm and egg cells. The findings, which indicate that a gene underlying a more primitive system of reproduction was likely co-opted during evolution to participate in sex-specific sperm development, are reported by Hisayoshi Nozaki and colleagues at the University of Tokyo, Rikkyo (St. Paul’s) University, and Osaka University.

Squid-inspired Design Could Mean Better Handling Of Underwater Vehicles:

Inspired by the sleek and efficient propulsion of squid, jellyfish and other cephalopods, a University of Colorado at Boulder researcher has designed a new generation of compact vortex generators that could make it easier for scientists to maneuver and dock underwater vehicles at low speeds and with greater precision.

Mmmmm, jellyfish are not cephalopods…ScienceDaily can do better than this!

Two Central Mysteries In Genome Inheritance Solved:

The dance of the chromosomes during cell division, first described in the late 1800s and familiar to all high-school students from movies shown in biology classes, has long fascinated biologists. However, the molecular nature of a key component of cell division, the “chromosome-spindle” connection, which is critical for the inheritance of genetic information as cells divide, has remained elusive.

Many Children Discontinuing Use Of ADHD Medication:

Social stigma and feeling lifeless and/or alienated from one’s peers are some of the reasons why children and adolescents stop taking prescription stimulant medications used to treat attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a new study published in the Journal for Specialists in Pediatric Nursing.

Study Finds Gender Differences Related To Eating And Body Image:

In the new study of observed eating behavior in a social setting, young men and women who perceived their bodies as being less than “ideal” ate differing amounts of food after they were shown images of “ideal-bodied” people of their own gender.