A Blog Around The Clock

Groups And Grumps: Study Identifies ‘Sociality’ Neurons:

A University of California, San Diego study has for the first time identified brain cells that influence whether birds of a feather will, or will not, flock together. The research demonstrates that vasotocin neurons in the medial extended amygdala — which are present in most animals, including humans — respond differently to social cues in birds that live in colonies compared to their more solitary cousins.

Evolutionary Oddity: Erectile Tissue Helps Flamingos Eat:

With their spindly legs, long necks and bright plumage, flamingos are a curiosity of nature. Now a new discovery by a team of Ohio University researchers reveals an anatomical oddity that helps flamingos eat: erectile tissue.

Study Challenges Belief That Tree Frogs Depress Metabolic Rate After ‘Waxing’ Themselves:

Researchers from the University of Florida explore wiping behaviours in a tree frog that waxes itself, and test whether these frogs become dormant to conserve energy during dehydration. Many amphibians have skin that offers little resistance to evaporative water loss. To compensate, these and some other arboreal frogs secrete lipids and then use an elaborate series of wiping motions to rub the waxy secretions over their entire bodies.

Remember This: Receptors Govern How Brain Cells Communicate:

An hour from now, will you remember reading this? It all depends on proteins in your brain called NMDA receptors, which allow your neurons to communicate with each other. University of Pittsburgh researchers have discovered how different types of NMDA receptors perform varied functions. Their findings are published in the current issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

Fruit Flies Tricked Into Thinking That Silkworm Moths Are Potential Mates:

It’s all about “the birds and the bees.” And now, “the silkworm moths and the fruit flies.” A chemical ecologist and a genetics researcher at the University of California, Davis, have joined forces to trick fruit flies into thinking that silkworm moths are potential mates. Groundbreaking research in the labs of chemical ecologist Walter Leal and genetics researcher Deborah Kimbrell shows that genetically engineered fruit flies responded to the silkworm moth scent of a female.

Women On Hormone Therapy Regain Emotion Response:

Older women on hormone therapy are more sensitive to negative events, confirming speculation that age-related estrogen loss affects the brain’s ability to process emotion, an Oregon Health & Science University study shows. Researchers found that hormone therapy appears to reverse the age-related loss of arousal to negative emotional events experienced by the elderly. It also points to specific changes in the brain’s arousal system, in the regions that process emotion, and intensification of negative emotions.

Trotting With Emus To Walk With Dinosaurs:

One way to make sense of 165-million-year-old dino tracks may be to hang out with emus, say paleontologists studying thousands of dinosaur footprints at the Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite in northern Wyoming. Because they are about the same size, walk on two legs and have similar feet, emus turn out to be the best modern version of the enigmatic reptiles that once trotted along a long-lost coastline in the Middle Jurassic.

Grape Seed Extract Halts Cell Cycle, Checking Growth Of Colorectal Tumors In Mice:

Chemicals found in grape seeds significantly inhibited growth of colorectal tumors in both cell cultures and in mice, according to researchers who have already demonstrated the extract’s anti-cancer effects in other tumor types.

Hive Mentality: Researchers Create Buzz Over Social Behavior Genetics:

Though you may not be able to teach an old dog new tricks, Arizona State University researchers have found that evolution may have taught old genes new tricks in the development of social behavior in honeybees. The genetic basis of social behavior is being deciphered through the efforts of ASU researchers and their work with the honeybee, Apis mellifera.

Social Amoebas’ Family Tree Reveals Evolutionary Clues:

The full family tree of the species known as social amoebas has been plotted for the first time — a breakthrough which will provide important clues to the evolution of life on earth.

Flight of the Bumblebee: Flower Choice Matters:

Bees play a vital role in the pollination of native wildflowers, and UWM researchers are studying how invasive species interfere with seed production in these native plants.

New Web-based System Leads To Better, More Timely Data:

After two years of work, an innovative project using web-based technologies to speed researcher access to a large body of new scientific data has demonstrated that not only access to but also the quality of the data has improved markedly. The data-entry process for the web-enabled ThermoML thermodynamics global data exchange catches and corrects data errors in roughly ten percent of journal articles entered in the system.

Global Warming And Your Health:

Global warming could do more to hurt your health than simply threaten summertime heat stroke, says a public health physician. Although heat-related illnesses and deaths will increase with the temperatures, climate change is expected to also attack human health with dirtier air and water, more flood-related accidents and injuries, threats to food supplies, hundreds of millions of environmental refugees, and stress on and possible collapse of many ecosystems that now purify air and water.

Let’s Divide: How Daughter Cells Get Their Share Of Genetic Material:

When cells divide, control mechanisms ensure that the genetic material, in other words the chromosomes, is correctly distributed to the daughter cells. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin have now explained the molecular principles of these control processes.

Brain Research Supports Drug Development From Jellyfish Protein:

With the research support from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a Wisconsin biotech company has found that a compound from a protein found in jellyfish is neuroprotective and may be effective in treating neurodegenerative diseases.

Michigan State Researcher Traces The Evolution Of Honey Bee Gender:

A first-of-its-kind evolutionary strategy discovered among invertebrate organisms — or honey bees — shows how a complex genetic mechanism determines gender and maximizes gene transmission to the next generation of several bee species.

Insights Into Honey Bee Sex Gene Could Bring Sweet Success In Breeding:

What makes a bee a he or a she? Three years ago, scientists pinpointed a gene called csd that determines gender in honey bees, and now a research team led by University of Michigan evolutionary biologist Jianzhi “George” Zhang has unraveled details of how the gene evolved. The new insights could prove useful in designing strategies for breeding honey bees, which are major pollinators of economically important crops–and notoriously tricky to breed.

Key Gene Controlling Eye Lens Development Identified:

Investigators at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have discovered in mouse models that a gene called Six3 is one of the earliest critical regulators controlling lens development in the eye of the mammalian embryo.

Keep Your Eyes On The Puck: Hockey Goalies With The Quiet Eye Have A Better Chance Of Making Big Saves:

Researchers at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Kinesiology may have found the secret to dazzling goaltending, after they discovered the exact spot a goalie needs to watch to be successful.

Honey Bee Chemoreceptors Found For Smell And Taste:

Honey bees have a much better sense of smell than fruit flies or mosquitoes, but a much worse sense of taste, according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Out Of Africa: Scientists Uncover History Of Honey Bee:

“Every honey bee alive today had a common ancestor in Africa” is one conclusion drawn by a team of scientists that probed the origin of the species and the movements of introduced populations, including African “killer” bees in the New World.

New Genetic Analysis Forces Re-draw Of Insect Family Tree:

The family tree covering almost half the animal species on the planet has been re-drawn following a genetic analysis which has revealed new relationships between four major groups of insects.

Cougar Predation Key To Ecosystem Health:

The general disappearance of cougars from a portion of Zion National Park in the past 70 years has allowed deer populations to dramatically increase, leading to severe ecological damage, loss of cottonwood trees, eroding streambanks and declining biodiversity. Researchers are calling it a “trophic cascade” of environmental degradation.

Professor Analyzes Nuclear Receptors In Bee Genome:

Susan Fahrbach, a Wake Forest University biologist, is among the more than 170 researchers who helped decode the honey bee genome. She contributed to the article on the bee genome sequence that appears in the October 26 issue of Nature. Her piece of the puzzle — analyzing the nuclear hormone receptors found in the bee genome — also appears in the current issue of Insect Molecular Biology.

Secrets Revealed In Sequencing Of Honey Bee Genome:

What do fruit flies, mosquitoes, silk moths and honey bees have in common? First, they are all insects. Second, they have all had their genomes sequenced, a feat that will make it much easier to discern both similarities and differences.

Moderate Drinking May Boost Memory, Study Suggests:

In the long run, a drink or two a day may be good for the brain. Researchers found that moderate amounts of alcohol — amounts equivalent to a couple of drinks a day for a human — improved the memories of laboratory rats. Such a finding may have implications for serious neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.