A Blog Around The Clock

Discovery May Help Predict When Toxoplasma Can Be Deadly :

Toxoplasma is arguably the most successful animal parasite on earth: It infects hundreds of species of warm-blooded animals, most notably half of humanity. Its unusual ability to overcome the numerous challenges of infecting and reproducing inside such a wide range of creatures has long intrigued scientists, and now researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified two of the proteins critical to its ability to thrive.

One Gene 90 Percent Responsible For Making Common Parasite Dangerous:

More than a decade of searching for factors that make the common parasite Toxoplasma gondii dangerous to humans has pinned 90 percent of the blame on just one of the parasite’s approximately 6,000 genes.

Microbe Fixes Nitrogen At A Blistering 92 C, May Offer Clues To Evolution Of Nitrogen Fixation:

A heat-loving archaeon capable of fixing nitrogen at a surprisingly hot 92 degrees Celsius, or 198 Fahrenheit, may represent Earth’s earliest lineages of organisms capable of nitrogen fixation, perhaps even preceding the kinds of bacteria today’s plants and animals rely on to fix nitrogen.

Wild Tigers Need Cat Food:

A landmark study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) says tigers living in one of India’s best-run national parks lose nearly a quarter of their population each year from poaching and natural mortality, yet their numbers remain stable due to a combination of high reproductive rates and abundant prey. The study, which appears in the journal Ecology, underscores the need of maintaining protected areas with high prey densities in an overall tiger conservation strategy, along with anti-poaching efforts and eliminating trade in tiger body parts.

For Crickets, Parasitic Flies Can Stop The Music:

Male crickets draw not only females with their songs but also parasitic flies. The uninvited guests then deposit larvae that burrow into their amorous hosts, grow for about a week and then tear their way out in “Alien” fashion, killing the cricket as they emerge.
Now, University of Florida zoologists have found that the danger posed by the flies has apparently affected when crickets sing. In experiments with Southeastern U.S. field crickets, known scientifically as Gryllus rubens, they discovered that considerably fewer male crickets sing in the autumn when the parasitic flies are abundant. They also found that female crickets are reluctant to approach singing males in the fall, perhaps unknowingly avoiding becoming the target of the flies themselves.

Intelligent Children More Likely To Become Vegetarian:

Recent evidence suggests that vegetarianism may be linked to lower cholesterol levels and a reduced risk of obesity and heart disease. This might help to explain why children who score higher on intelligence tests tend to have a lower risk of coronary heart disease in later life.

Options Improving For Patients With Acromegaly And Gigantism, Says Endocrinology Expert:

Scientific, technological and medical advances made in the past two decades are leading to more definitive diagnoses, earlier and more effective treatment options and better outcomes for patients suffering from a condition called acromegaly, according to an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine and authored by a specialist in endocrinology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Two Studies On Bee Evolution Reveal Surprises:

The discovery of a 100-million-year old bee embedded in amber — perhaps the oldest bee ever found — “pushes the bee fossil record back about 35 million years,” according to Bryan Danforth, Cornell associate professor of entomology.

Tiny Bones Rewrite Textbooks: First New Zealand Land Mammal Fossil:

Small but remarkable fossils found in New Zealand will prompt a major rewrite of prehistory textbooks, showing for the first time that the so-called “land of birds” was once home to mammals as well.
The tiny fossilised bones – part of a jaw and hip – belonged to a unique, mouse-sized land animal unlike any other mammal known and were unearthed from the rich St Bathans fossil bed, in the Otago region of South Island.
But the real shock to scientists was that it was there at all: until now, decades of searching had shown no hint that the furry, warm-blooded animals that thrived and prospered so widely in other lands had ever trodden on New Zealand soil.
The fact that even one land mammal had lived there, at least 16 million years ago, has put paid to the theory that New Zealand’s rich bird fauna had evolved there because they had no competition from land mammals.

Worms Produce Surprise Insight Into Human Fever:

Give or take a few dozen trillions, a human adult has about 70 trillion cells. An adult Caenorhabditis elegans roundworm has exactly 959 cells.
Yet we have an awful lot in common, says Alejandro Aballay of Duke University, who has been exploring two “highly conserved” cell-signaling pathways for innate immunity shared by worms and humans. For one, we have a lot of common enemies, particularly soil-borne pathogens. C. elegans, of course, lives in the soil. Human populations merely ingest soil by the ton in our food, on our hands, and suspended in our drinking water.

Oysters Can Take Heat And Heavy Metals, But Not Both:

Pollution is bad for the sea life and so is global warming, but aquatic organisms can be resilient. However, even organisms tough enough to survive one major onslaught may find that a double whammy is more than their molecular biology can take.

Feet, Rather Than Fists, The Most Dangerous Bodily Weapon To Use In Assaults:

The researchers base their findings on an assessment of nearly 25,000 people treated in emergency care in and around Cardiff, Wales between 1999 and 2005. All had sustained injuries during acts of violence.

Online Journal Combines Teaching Math And Studying How Students Learn:

When instructors at Bronx-area community colleges applied for a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to study how students think about fundamental concepts of calculus, they hoped to gain a better understanding of how college students learn mathematics. During the 4-year project, the teacher-researchers integrated ongoing research theories with classroom teaching. As a result, their project has evolved into a tool for helping students reason their way through complex calculus.

Novel Brain Areas Associated With The Recognition Of Gender, Ethnicity And The Identity Of Faces:

Researchers in Southern California have isolated brain regions that respond selectively to the cues of gender, ethnicity and identity in faces. Using a novel adaptation technique, they found evidence for neurons that are selectively tuned for gender, ethnicity and identity cues in an area not previously thought to be associated with face processing. Led by researchers at the University of Southern California (USC), the work is a collaboration between USC, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). The findings appear Dec. 11 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Gas On Your Mind: Snail’s Brain Provides Insights Into Human Learning :

Scientists at the University of Leicester are to gain a greater insight into the workings of the human mind — through the study of a snail’s brain.
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Dr Straub commented: “The gas nitric oxide has two faces. It can be highly toxic and kill. However, it is also found naturally in the brain where it is used by nerve cells to communicate with each other. So, whilst it can be poisonous, the body also uses it beneficially as an internal signal.”
“During brain development, nitric oxide can promote the growth of nerve cells and the formation of connections between nerve cells. Learning also triggers the formation of new connections between nerve cells and in many cases requires nitric oxide.”
Despite the recognition of the importance of nitric oxide for the formation of nerve cell connections, scientists know little about the mechanisms. The Leicester BBSRC-funded project will study directly the relationship between the effects of nitric oxide on the growth of nerve cells and the formation of nerve cell connections.

Mandarin Language Is Music To The Brain:

It’s been shown that the left side of the brain processes language and the right side processes music; but what about a language like Mandarin Chinese, which is musical in nature with wide tonal ranges?

Number Of Siblings Predicts Risk Of Brain Tumors:

How many brothers and sisters you have, especially younger ones, could predict your chances of developing a brain tumor, according to a study published in the December 12, 2006, issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
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According to Altieri, the finding that brain tumor rates were higher among people with younger siblings, and not older siblings, suggests infections or re-infections in late childhood may play an important role in causing the disease, while exposure to infections in infancy, birth to five months old, may be beneficial.

Laugh And The Whole World Laughs With You: Why The Brain Just Can’t Help Itself:

Cricket commentator Jonathan Agnew’s description of Ian Botham’s freak dismissal, falling over his own stumps — “He couldn’t quite get his leg over” — was all it took to send himself and the late Brian Johnston into paroxysms of laughter. Laughter is truly contagious, and now, scientists studying how our brain responds to emotive sounds believe they understand why.