A Blog Around The Clock

Embryonic Patterning Makes The Feathers Fly: Dots Versus Stripes In Chicken Feathers Controlled By Patterning Pathway :

At the American Society for Cell Biology’s 2006 conference, scientists will describe their latest research on patterning, on the molecular and systems level.

Midges Send Undeniable Message: Planet Is Warming :

Small insects that inhabit some of the most remote parts of the United States are sending a strong message about climate change.

Research Highlights How Farmers’ Agri-environment Schemes Could Do More For Wildlife:

New research offers an explanation for why numbers of many countryside bird species continue to decline, despite Government financial support for farmers to improve their habitat through agri-environment schemes.

Genetic Map Offers New Tool For Malaria Research:

An international research team has created a genome-wide map that charts the genetic variability of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum.

Study Questions The ‘Biodiversity Hotspot’ Approach To Wildlife Conservation:

In recent years, major international conservation groups have focused their limited resources on protecting a small number of “biodiversity hotspots”-threatened habitats that are home to many of the world’s rarest plants and animals.

Doctors’ Extended Duration Work Shifts Are Associated With Medical Errors And Adverse Events:

A study from the U.S. of doctors in their first postgraduate year (interns) has showed that working extended shifts is associated with increased reporting by the doctors of medical errors, adverse patient events and attentional failures.

Vibrating Odor Molecules? Rogue Theory May Help Explain Sense Of Smell:

A controversial theory that explains the molecular mechanism which gives our sense of smell razor-sharp precision has been given a boost thanks to a study by a team of UCL researchers at the London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN).

Why We ‘Never Forget A Face’:

New research from Vanderbilt University suggests that we can remember more faces than other objects and that faces “stick” the best in our short-term memory. The reason may be that our expertise in remembering faces allows us to package them better for memory.

Hysteria is real, study finds:

Hitherto unexplained cases of partial paralysis or numbness may have a physical cause after all, scientists say.

Why laughter is contagious:

You can catch it without asking for it, or even necessarily wanting it. Now, scientists say they have an idea of why.

Humor beats disease, researchers find:

Scientists are reporting what they call most direct evidence yet that ability to laugh saves lives.

New Insights Into The Origin Of Life On Earth:

In an advance toward understanding the origin of life on Earth, scientists have shown that parts of the Krebs cycle can run in reverse, producing biomolecules that could jump-start life with only sunlight and a mineral present in the primordial oceans.
The Krebs cycle is a series of chemical reactions of central importance in cells — part of a metabolic pathway that changes carbohydrates, fats and proteins into carbon dioxide and water to generate energy.
Scot T. Martin and Xiang V. Zhang explain that a reverse version of the cycle, which makes enzymes and other biomolecules from carbon dioxide, has been getting attention from scientists studying the origin of life. If the reverse cycle worked on a lifeless Earth, it could have produced the fundamental biochemicals needed for the development of more-advanced biological systems like RNA that could reproduce themselves.

Inheritance Outside DNA: Screening For Colon Cancer By Analyzing Our Non-DNA Epigenetic Inheritance:

At the 2006 American Society for Cell Biology conference, scientists will report an increase in tumor frequency in mice with mutations in a cancer-associated gene, called Apc.

Artificial Butterfly: Wing Scales Provide Template For Complex Photonic Structures :

By replicating the complex micron- and nanometer-scale photonic structures that help give butterfly wings their color, researchers have demonstrated a new technique that uses biotemplates for fabricating nanoscale structures that could serve as optical waveguides, optical splitters and other building blocks of photonic integrated circuits.

Small, Smaller, Smallest: The Plight Of The Vaquita:

Research published in the academic journal Mammal Review has uncovered the missing link in the depleting population of the vaquita. With a body less than 1.5 m long, the vaquita is the smallest living cetacean (the order Cetacea consists of whales, dolphins and porpoises). It also has one of the smallest ranges (c. 2235 km2) and one of the smallest populations (< 600 individuals based on a 1997 survey).

Engineer Make Muscle, Bone Cell Differentiation With Aid Of Ink-jet Printer:

A Pittsburgh-based research team has created and used an innovative ink-jet system to print “bio-ink” patterns that direct muscle-derived stem cells from adult mice to differentiate into both muscle cells and bone cells. The results, which could revolutionize the design of replacement body tissues, will be presented Sunday, Dec. 10 at the 46th annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in San Diego by Julie (Jadlowiec) Phillippi, a Carnegie Mellon University post-doctoral research fellow supported by the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative.

Evolution And The Workaround: Do Aggressive Cancers Pile Up Extra Chromosomes As Genomic ‘Backup’ Systems?:

Living things are resourceful, which is a comforting thought unless the living thing in question is a pathogen or a cancer cell. Noxious cells excel at developing drug resistance, outwitting immune systems, and evading cellular controls. They even show an unhealthy talent for surviving internal perturbations such as mutations that affect the function of vital genes, and they do this by evolving new mechanisms to perform old tasks. Somehow the bad guys find a workaround.

Calls For A New Food Safety Regulatory Agency Follow Spinach Tragedy:

The recent contamination of spinach with E. coli bacteria is fostering renewed calls for a single, independent federal food safety agency that would regulate animal and plant production in an integrated way.

Extreme Life, Marine Style, Highlights 2006 Ocean Census:

A host of record-breaking discoveries and revelations that stretch the extreme frontiers of marine knowledge were achieved by the Census of Marine Life in 2006, highlights of which were released today.

Volcanic Blast Likely Killed And Preserved Juvenile Fossil Plesiosaur Found In Antarctica:

Amid 70-mile-an-hour winds and freezing Antarctic conditions, an American-Argentine research team has recovered the well-preserved fossil skeleton of a juvenile plesiosaur–a marine reptile that swam the waters of the Southern Ocean roughly 70 million years ago.

Queen Bee Promiscuity Boosts Hive Health:

Though promiscuity may be risky behavior for humans, it’s healthy for honeybees: Queen honeybees who indulge in sexual surfeits with multiple drones produce more disease-resistant colonies than monogamous monarchs.

Smokers Who Cut Back On Cigarettes May Negate Benefit Through ‘Compensatory Smoking’:

Researchers observed that the more that heavy smokers reduced their smoking, the more likely they were to increase their exposure to toxicants per cigarette presumably because they took more frequent puffs or inhaled deeper or longer on each cigarette, a process referred to as “compensatory smoking.” As a result, smokers who decreased their smoking to as little as one to three cigarettes per day experienced a four- to eight-fold increased exposure to toxins per cigarette as compared with light smokers.

Bonuses Boost Performance 10 Times More Than Merit Raises:

Giving a 1 percent raise boosts employee job performance by roughly 2 percent, but offering that same money in the form of a bonus that is strongly linked to a job well done can improve job performance by almost 20 percent, finds a new Cornell study on the relationship between pay and performance.

Why Applying Insulin To Wounds Significantly Enhances Healing:

At the American Society for Cell Biology’s 2006 conference, researchers will report that applying insulin directly to skin wounds significantly enhanced the healing process.

Regional Nuclear War Could Devastate Global Climate:

Even a small-scale, regional nuclear war could produce as many direct fatalities as all of World War II and disrupt the global climate for a decade or more, with environmental effects that could be devastating for everyone on Earth, university researchers have found.

Fuels Made From Prairie Biomass Reduce Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide:

Highly diverse mixtures of native prairie plant species have emerged as a leader in the quest to identify the best source of biomass for producing sustainable, bio-based fuel to replace petroleum.

From Hot Springs To Rice Farms, Scientists Reveal New Insights Into The Secret Lives Of Archaea:

In the world of microbes, as in politics, some groups just can’t seem to shake the label ”extremist.”

Another Boost For Stem Cell Research:

In the wake of the Australian Senate’s decision to pass the human embryo cloning legislation, another Australian research breakthrough is likely to strengthen the case for embryonic stem cell research.

Microfluidic Device Used For Multigene Analysis Of Individual Environmental Bacteria:

When it comes to digestive ability, termites have few rivals due to the gut activities that allow them to literally digest a two-by-four. But they do not digest wood by themselves–they are dependent on the 200 or so diverse microbial species that call termite guts home and are found nowhere else in nature. Despite several successful attempts, the majority of these beneficial organisms have never been cultivated in the laboratory. This has made it difficult to determine precisely which species perform the numerous, varied functions relevant to converting woody plant biomass into a material that can be directly used as food and energy by their insect hosts.

Sleep Problems — Real And Perceived — Get In The Way Of Alcoholism Recovery:

The first few months of recovery from an alcohol problem are hard enough. But they’re often made worse by serious sleep problems, caused by the loss of alcohol’s sedative effects, and the long-term sleep-disrupting impact that alcohol dependence can have on the brain.

Solving Darwin’s Dilemma: Oxygen May Be The Clue To First Appearance Of Large Animals :

The sudden appearance of large animal fossils more than 500 million years ago — a problem that perplexed even Charles Darwin and is commonly known as “Darwin’s Dilemma” — may be due to a huge increase of oxygen in the world’s oceans, says Queen’s paleontologist Guy Narbonne, an expert in the early evolution of animals and their ecosystems.

Geobiologists Solve ‘Catch-22 Problem’ Concerning The Rise Of Atmospheric Oxygen:

Two and a half billion years ago, when our evolutionary ancestors were little more than a twinkle in a bacterium’s plasma membrane, the process known as photosynthesis suddenly gained the ability to release molecular oxygen into Earth’s atmosphere, causing one of the largest environmental changes in the history of our planet. The organisms assumed responsible were the cyanobacteria, which are known to have evolved the ability to turn water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight into oxygen and sugar, and are still around today as the blue-green algae and the chloroplasts in all green plants.

Riddle Of The Great Pyramids Of Giza: Professor Finds Some Building Blocks Were Concrete:

In partially solving a mystery that has baffled archeologists for centuries, a Drexel University professor has determined that the Great Pyramids of Giza were constructed with a combination of not only carved stones but the first blocks of limestone-based concrete cast by any civilization.

Brain Wave Changes In Adolescence Signal Reorganization Of The Brain:

Brain wave changes in adolescence are related to age, not sexual maturation, and may be associated with one of the brain’s major reorganization projects: synaptic pruning, a new study finds.