September 3, 2007, 11:41 AM CT

Humpback Whales Clicking And Buzzing While Feeding

For the first time, scientists have recorded "megapclicks" - a series of clicks and buzzes from humpback whales apparently linked to nighttime feeding behaviors - in and around NOAA's Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.

As detailed in the most recent issue of the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, this study offers the first documentation that baleen whales produce this type of sound, normally linked to toothed whales and echolocation.

"We've known that humpback whales exhibit a variety of foraging behaviors and vocalizations, but these animals as well as other baleen whales were not known to produce broadband clicks in association with feeding," said David Wiley, sanctuary research coordinator and leader of the research team. "However, recent work with special acoustic tags has made us reexamine our prior assumptions, with this expansion of the acoustic repertoire of humpback whales".

The research team from the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, University of New Hampshire, and NOAA's National Marine Sanctuary Program used multi-sensor acoustic tags attached with suction cups to study whale behavior. The data provided a record of the whales' underwater movements, including heading, pitch, roll, and sounds made and heard. During the tagging studies, broadband clicks were recorded exclusively during nighttime hours. Sharp body rolls also occurred at the end of click bouts containing buzzes, suggesting feeding episodes......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

September 3, 2007, 11:30 AM CT

Inside the brain of a crayfish

Voyage to the bottom of the sea, or simply look along the bottom of a clear stream and you may spy lobsters or crayfish waving their antennae. Look closer, and you will see them feeling around with their legs and flicking their antennules - the small, paired sets of miniature feelers at the top of their heads between the long antennae. Both are used for sensing the environment. The long antennae are used for getting a physical feel of an area, such as the contours of a crevice. The smaller antennules are there to both help the creature smell for food or mates or dangerous predators and also to sense motion in the water that also could indicate the presence of food, a fling or danger. The legs also have receptors that detect chemical signatures, preferably those emanating from a nice hunk of dead fish.

"They constantly flick their antennules," says DeForest Mellon, a University of Virginia biology professor, as he watches a Southern swamp crayfish in a bucket doing just that. "It is doing two things that are processed simultaneously in the brain as he flicks: smelling the water, and also sensing motion in the water, which can indicate the presence of food or other things of interest. "I'm interested in understanding how these senses are combined and interpreted in the brain of these animals. My question is, how does the brain detect, integrate and use co-joined but dissimilar sensory inputs"" It's much like humans tasting food by a combination of senses that detect taste, aroma, texture and how good that dish of pasta looks. It's a complex process of brain processing that serves us well in a world of smells, textures, flavors and visual stimuli. It's not much different with crustaceans, though their brains are much simpler, which makes them a great study model, Mellon says......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

September 3, 2007, 10:53 AM CT

Farm animals face extinction

With the worlds first global inventory of farm animals showing a number of breeds of African, Asian, and Latin American livestock at risk of extinction, researchers from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) today called for the rapid establishment of genebanks to conserve the sperm and ovaries of key animals critical for the global populations future survival.

An over-reliance on just a few breeds of a handful of farm animal species, such as high-milk-yielding Holstein-Friesian cows, egg-laying White Leghorn chickens, and fast-growing Large White pigs, is causing the loss of an average of one livestock breed every month as per a recently released report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The black-and-white Holstein-Friesian dairy cow, for example, is now found in 128 countries and in all regions of the world. An astonishing 90 percent of cattle in industrialized countries come from only six very tightly defined breeds.

The report, The State of the Worlds Animal Genetic Resources, compiled by FAO, with contributions by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and other research groups, surveyed farm animals in 169 countries. Nearly 70 percent of the entire worlds remaining unique livestock breeds are found in developing countries, as per the report, which was presented to over 300 policy makers, scientists, breeders, and livestock keepers at the First International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources, held in Interlaken, Switzerland, from 3-7 September 2007......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

Sun, 02 Sep 2007 02:41:58 GMT

Empty Husk

When I was but a lad, I lived in St. Louis. But I had come from Kansas City, so the carload of us would make frequent holiday trips back to Missouri’s great western city to visit family and friends.

I’m sketchy on the details, but my mother told me we would take Highway 40 on the earliest of these trips, zipping along at the breakneck speed of 50 miles per hour (in a ‘57 Chevy, no less — though that car pre-dates me). It was wonderful, she told me. Two lanes — one in each direction! — and smooth. The weightless feeling you would momentarily get as you sailed over the top of the limitless hills was always an important part of the trip. Now, of course, you can travel the same route on Interstate 70 in half the time. In some places there are four lanes in each direction, and the road is flat and straight enuf that it is actually considered safe for a jumbo jet to land on in an emergency.

But back to the photo above. This is a photo for Kim. Somehow, it was fashionable a couple of weeks ago for bloggers to post photos of these empty husks and say the photo was for Kim. As usual, I’m late to the party. This was one of the first photos I took with my new camera. It was late in the day and the light was already fading, so I didn’t do so well with the close up. (Kim has admonished me never to use digital macro, but I’m not sure why.)

The memory of those old family road trips and this empty husk photo converged in the crowded spaces of my mind, and that’s why I’ve written this somewhat self-indulgent post. Scattered along the route between Kansas City and St. Louis are old, mostly abandoned roadside motels — I think they were originally called cabin camps in their earliest incarnations. Some of these have found new lives as antique shops, and one is even a tres upscale winery. If you look closely you can sometimes still see a few faded, old billboards advertising these defunct motels, which were touted as destinations themselves rather than merely overnight stopping places on the long trek between the two great cities.

But most of the old motels were simply abandoned, and most of those have been bulldozed into rubble. I remember one, though: the Daniel Boone Motel. It was not that far outside of St. Louis. Today you would barely have made it up to cruising speed before you passed the site of this motel, but in its day, that must have been a long distance to have traveled if the prospect of lodging was already available. This was in the county where Nathan Boone, Daniel Boone’s son, had built his family home, so marketing that bit of heritage made sense.

But even in my day, the Daniel Boone Motel was abandoned. It’s windows were broken out. The parking lot soon became a dumping ground for people’s trash. The sign showing a coonskin-capped Boone fading more each time we sailed past. Even my young mind could see the world changing and leaving this roadside motel behind. I thought then that it was like the empty husk of a bug shell.

And so today, whenever I see these bug husks, I still think of that long-gone motel, sitting forlorn beside a road that has grown too fast and straight for it.

Missouri calendar:

• Male white-tailed der rub velvet off antlers; watch for their “rubs” on small trees.
• Total lunar eclipse around 5:30 a.m.

Posted by: Roundrockjournal      Read more     Source

August 31, 2007, 5:14 AM CT

How drones find queens

The mating ritual of the honey bee is a mysterious affair, occurring at dizzying heights in zones identifiable only to a queen and the horde of drones that court her. Now a research team led by the University of Illinois has identified an odorant receptor that allows male drones to find a queen in flight. The receptor, on the male antennae, can detect an available queen up to 60 meters away.

This is the first time an odorant receptor has been associated with a specific pheromone in honey bees. The findings are reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The "queen substance," or "queen retinue pheromone," was first identified decades ago, but researchers have only recently begun to understand its structure and role in the hive. The pheromone is a primary source of the queen's authority. It is made up of eight components, one of which, 9-oxo-2-decenoic acid (9-ODA), attracts the drones during mating flights. It also draws workers to the queen and retards their reproductive growth.

Principal investigator Hugh Robertson, a professor of entomology, said the research team pursued the receptor for the queen retinue pheromone because it was the "lowest hanging fruit" of the known honey bee odorant receptors. Robertson was among the research group that last year published the entire honey bee genome, a feat that allowed his lab to identify 170 odorant receptors in honey bees......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

August 31, 2007, 4:56 AM CT

Small animal imaging facility is big boon

When powerful magnets line up the bodys protons before radiofrequency waves can grab their attention away, its called spin physics.

When signals generated by the movement are mathematically transformed into dramatic images of hearts, lungs and other organs its called a magnetic resonance image.

Protons normally would be pointing in many different directions, says Dr. Tom Hu, director of the Small Animal Imaging Program at the Medical College of Georgia. But if you put an object in the MRI, the magnet will line up the protons and what that does is generate the original, steady state. Then, by applying different radio frequencies, pretty much like what you do with a car antenna, you can pursue radio frequencies to perturb the system and you pretty much listen to it.

When Dr. Hu, a biochemist and biophysicist, tunes in he sees how calcium moves in and out of heart cells as the heart contracts and relaxes and how that movement doesnt work so well in heart failure, a condition resulting in oversized hearts with difficulty beating.

Hes looking at whether the metallic manganese ion, which can travel in the same circles as calcium, can enhance the signal and subsequent images he gets of how calcium cant get back into cells after a heart attack. Once its disturbed, the cells die and the myocardium dies and you have scar formation, says Dr. Hu whose ultimate goals include better ways to diagnose and treat heart failure, an increasingly common problem in the United States where improved cardiac treatment means many people are living with their heart disease. Not only can you look at a living organ, you can also study the molecular aspects of this like the calcium ion, says Dr. Hu who came to MCG in 2005 to start the Small Imaging Program in support of research initiatives, such as his, that have clinical promise......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

August 29, 2007, 9:48 PM CT

Researchers find new taste in fruit flies

That fruit fly hovering over your kitchen counter may be attracted to more than the bananas that are going brown; it may also want a sip of your carbonated water. Fruit flies detect and are attracted to the taste of carbon dioxide dissolved in water, such as water found on rotting fruits containing yeast, concludes a study appearing in the August 30 issue of the journal Nature. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, who conducted the study, suggest that the ability to taste carbon dioxide may help a fruit fly scout for food that is nutritious over that which is too ripe and potentially toxic. The research is partly funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), one of the National Institutes of Health.

Fruit flies contain similar versions of a number of human genes, which is why we study them for a variety of health issues, including taste, says James F. Battey, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., director of the NIDCD. This research raises the question of whether people also may have the ability to taste carbon dioxide and perhaps other chemicals in food. If this were found to be true, our sense of taste could be even more complex than we realize. Currently, researchers recognize five tastes in humans: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami, or savory. Before todays findings, fruit flies were known to be able to taste sweet, bitter, and salty......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

August 28, 2007, 9:21 PM CT

'Mighty mice' made mightier

The Johns Hopkins scientist who first showed that the absence of the protein myostatin leads to oversized muscles in mice and men has now found a second protein, follistatin, whose overproduction in mice lacking myostatin doubles the muscle-building effect.

Results of Se-Jin Lees new study, appearing on August 29 in the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE, show that while mice that lack the gene that makes myostatin have roughly twice the amount of body muscle as normal, mice without myostatin that also overproduce follistatin have about four times as much muscle as normal mice.

Lee, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of molecular biology and genetics, says that this added muscle increase could significantly boost research efforts to beef up livestock or promote muscle growth in patients with muscular dystrophy and other wasting diseases.

Specifically, Lee first discovered that follistatin was capable of blocking myostatin activity in muscle cells grown under lab conditions. When he gave it to normal mice, the rodents bulked up, just as would happen if the myostatin gene in these animals was turned off.

He then genetically engineered a mouse that both lacked myostatin and made extra follistatin. If follistatin was increasing muscle growth solely by blocking myostatin, then Lee surmised that follistatin would have no added effect in the absence of myostatin......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

August 28, 2007, 9:03 PM CT

Low oxygen in coastal waters impairs fish reproduction

TexasLow oxygen levels in coastal waters interfere with fish reproduction by disrupting the fishes hormones, a marine scientist from The University of Texas at Austin Marine Science Institute has found.

Incidents of seasonal low levels of oxygen, known as hypoxia, have increased dramatically in coastal waters throughout the world over the past few decades, largely as a result of increased run-off from human agricultural and industrial activities. Hypoxias long-term impact on marine animal populations is unknown.

Dr. Peter Thomas observed that both male and female fish collected from seasonally hypoxic waters in Floridas Pensacola Bay estuaries had little ovarian and testicular growth, low egg and sperm production, and low levels of reproductive hormones during a time a year when they would normally be increasing in preparation for reproduction.

This study provides the first clear evidence that a wild population of estuarine fish has experienced reproductive impairment through hypoxia, said Thomas, professor of marine science. We rarely find such a dramatic reproductive impairment in both male and female fish collected from degraded environments, such as those contaminated with pollutants.

Thomas research was published online this week in Proceedings of the Royal Society B......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

August 25, 2007, 7:21 AM CT

Monkeys use 'baby talk' to interact with infants

In order to determine if other primates also use special vocalizations while interacting with infants, scientists studied a group of free-ranging rhesus macaques, which live on an island off the coast of Puerto Rico. They studied the vocalizations exchanged between adult females and observed that grunts and girneys increased dramatically when a baby was present. They also observed that when a baby wandered away from its mother, the other females looked at the baby and vocalized, suggesting that the call was intended for the baby.

Adult females become highly aroused while observing the infants of other group members, explains lead author of the article, Jessica Whitham, a recent Ph.D. graduate of the University of Chicago, who investigated this topic as a doctoral student at the University and currently works at Brookfield Zoo near Chicago. While intently watching infants, females excitedly wag their tails and emit long strings of grunts and girneys.

The calls appear to be used to elicit infants attention and encourage their behavior. They also have the effect of increasing social tolerance in the mother and facilitating the interactions between females with babies in general. Thus, the attraction to other females infants results in a relatively relaxed context of interaction where the main focus of attention is the baby, Maestripieri and colleagues write in the article, Intended Receivers and Functional Significance of Grunt and Girney Vocalizations in Free-Ranging Rhesus Macaques reported in the current issue of the journal Ethology. In addition to Whitham and Maestripieri, Dr. Melissa Gerald, a researcher at the University of Puerto Rico, was also a co-author......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source