http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/biology-blog.html Biology blog from biology-blog.com, the place for information. Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT en-us http://www.biology-blog.com/images/blogs/biology-blog.jpg http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/biology-blog.html 114 99 http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/sugar-plays-key-role-in-cell-division.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/sugar-plays-key-role-in-cell-division.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT Using an elaborate sleuthing system they developed to probe how cells manage their own division, Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered that common but hard-to-see sugar switches are partly in control. Because these previously unrecognized sugar switches are so abundant and potential targets of manipulation by drugs, the discovery of their role has implications for new therapys for many diseases, including cancer, the researchers say........ ]]> http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/egyptian-fruit-bat-finds-a-target.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/egyptian-fruit-bat-finds-a-target.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT New research conducted at the University of Maryland's bat lab shows Egyptian fruit bats find a target by NOT aiming their guiding sonar directly at it. Instead, they alternately point the sound beam to either side of the target. The new findings by scientists from Maryland and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel suggest that this strategy optimizes the bats' ability to pinpoint the location of a target, but also makes it harder for them to detect a target in the first place........ ]]> http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/viagra-enhances-fetal-growth-in-female-sheep.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/viagra-enhances-fetal-growth-in-female-sheep.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT A joke among two Texas AgriLife Research researchers later turned into a fully-funded study found Viagra can aid fetal development in female sheep. Female sheep (ewes) are an agriculturally important species, which can serve as an excellent animal model for studying the physiology of human pregnancy, the scientists said........ ]]> http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/ancient-crocodile-likely-food-source-for-titanoboa.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/ancient-crocodile-likely-food-source-for-titanoboa.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT A 60-million-year-old relative of crocodiles described this week by University of Florida scientists in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology was likely a food source for Titanoboa, the largest snake the world has ever known. Working with researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, paleontologists from the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus found fossils of the new species of ancient crocodile in the Cerrejon Formation in northern Colombia. The site, one of the world's largest open-pit coal mines, also yielded skeletons of the giant, boa constrictor-like Titanoboa, which measured up to 45 feet long. This is the first reported study of a fossil crocodyliform from the same site........ ]]> http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/new-light-on-our-earliest-fossil-ancestry.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/new-light-on-our-earliest-fossil-ancestry.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT Decaying corpses are commonly the domain of forensic scientists, but palaeontologists have discovered that studying rotting fish sheds new light on our earliest ancestry. The researchers, from the Department of Geology at the University of Leicester, devised a new method for extracting information from 500 million year old fossils -they studied the way fish decompose to gain a clearer picture of how our ancient fish-like ancestors would have looked. Their results indicate that some of the earliest fossils from our part of the tree of life may have been more complex than has previously been thought........ ]]> http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/guilt-by-association.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/guilt-by-association.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT Researchers have created a new computational model that can be used to predict gene function of uncharacterized plant genes with unprecedented speed and accuracy. The network, dubbed AraNet, has over 19,600 genes associated to each other by over 1 million links and can increase the discovery rate of new genes affiliated with a given trait tenfold. It is a huge boost to fundamental plant biology and agricultural research........ ]]> http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/bees-recognize-human-faces.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/bees-recognize-human-faces.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT Going about their day-to-day business, bees have no need to be able to recognise human faces. Yet in 2005, when Adrian Dyer from Monash University trained the fascinating insects to associate pictures of human faces with tasty sugar snacks, they seemed to be able to do just that. But Martin Giurfa from the Universit de Toulouse, France, suspected that that the bees weren't learning to recognise people. 'Because the insects were rewarded with a drop of sugar when they chose human photographs, what they really saw were strange flowers. The important question was what strategy do they use to discriminate between faces,' explains Giurfa. Wondering whether the insects might be learning the relative arrangement (configuration) of features on a face, Giurfa contacted Dyer and suggested that they go about systematically testing which features a bee learned to recognise to keep them returning to Dyer's face photos. The team publish their discovery that bees can learn to recognise the arrangement of human facial features on 29 January 2010 in the Journal of Experimental Biology at http://jeb.biologists.org........ ]]> http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/figs-and-fig-wasps.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/figs-and-fig-wasps.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT Figs and fig wasps have evolved to help each other out: Fig wasps lay their eggs inside the fruit where the wasp larvae can safely develop, and in return, the wasps pollinate the figs. But what happens when a wasp lays its eggs but fails to pollinate the fig? The trees get even by dropping those figs to the ground, killing the baby wasps inside, reports a Cornell University and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute study reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B (published online Jan. 13)........ ]]> http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/deadly-fish-virus-now-found-in-all-great-lakes.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/deadly-fish-virus-now-found-in-all-great-lakes.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT A deadly fish virus that was first discovered in the Northeast in 2005 has been found for the first time in fish from Lake Superior, report Cornell researchers. That means that the virus has now been documented in all of the Great Lakes. The viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV), which causes fatal anemia and hemorrhaging in a number of fish species, poses no threat to humans, said Paul Bowser, professor of aquatic animal medicine at Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine........ ]]> http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/the-low-calorie-pet-foods.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/the-low-calorie-pet-foods.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT Dog and cat owners buying weight-control diets for their overweight pets are faced with a confusing two hundred percent variation in calorie density, recommended intake, and wide range cost of low-calorie pet foods, as per a research studyby the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University........ ]]> http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/environmental-threats-to-blue-crabs.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/environmental-threats-to-blue-crabs.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT The Atlantic blue crab, Callinectes sapidus, long prized as a savory meal at a summer party or seafood restaurant, is a multi-million dollar source of income for those who harvest, process and market the crustacean along the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Unfortunately, the blue crab population has been declining in recent years under the assault of viruses, bacteria and man-made contaminants. The signs of the attack often are subtle, so scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the College of Charleston (CofC) are at work trying to identify the clues that will finger specific, yet elusive, culprits........ ]]> http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/bat-researchers-no-longer-flying-blind.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/bat-researchers-no-longer-flying-blind.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT Scientists at The University of Western Ontario (Western) led an international and multi-disciplinary study that sheds new light on the way that bats echolocate. With echolocation, animals emit sounds and then listen to the reflected echoes of those sounds to form images of their surroundings in their brains........ ]]> http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/risky-business-for-toads-under-threat-from-fungus.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/risky-business-for-toads-under-threat-from-fungus.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT Midwife toads that live in the mountains are highly likely to die from a serious fungal infection, called chytridiomycosis, whereas their infected relatives in the lowlands are not, as per new research published recently in Ecology Letters The authors of the study, from Imperial College London, the Zoological Society of London and the BiodivERsA project RACE, say their findings suggest conservationists appears to be able to limit the impact of the disease in the mountains by ensuring tourists do not transfer it between lakes........ ]]> http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/an-overview-of-safe-and-effective.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/an-overview-of-safe-and-effective.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT The colon is an important part of our internal organ system. It does the critical work of absorbing water and nutrients as well as eliminating waste matter. Regular adults can carry anywhere between 5 to 45 pounds of waste in their colon. This waste matter should be removed so that normal bowel processes can continue unhindered. If for any reason the colon is unable to eliminate waste matter then it can lead to a number of medical complications like hemorrhoids, constipation and ulceration colitis. This is one should get one's colon cleaned periodically........ ]]> http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/withstanding-invasion.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/withstanding-invasion.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT An international research team has studied the distribution of plant species in mountainous environments. The study shows that mountain plant communities are not especially resistant to invasion by exotic species. The researchers also warn that these appears to become more aggressive as global warming gets a grip........ ]]> http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/sexual-reproduction-versus-asexual-reproduction.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/sexual-reproduction-versus-asexual-reproduction.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT Living organisms have good reason for engaging in sexual, rather than asexual, reproduction as per Maurine Neiman, assistant professor of biology in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and researcher in the Roy J. Carver Center for Genomics. In an article published in a recent issue of the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, she and her colleagues, including John M. Logsdon Jr., associate professor of biology, examined the theory that sexual reproduction, while requiring more time and energy than asexual reproduction, is also much more common among living organisms and, therefore, must be very beneficial........ ]]> http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/zebrafish-helps-drug-development.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/zebrafish-helps-drug-development.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT By combining the tools of medicinal chemistry and zebrafish biology, a team of Vanderbilt researchers has identified compounds that may offer therapeutic leads for bone-related diseases and cancer. The findings, reported in ACS Chemical Biology, support using zebrafish as a novel platform for drug development........ ]]> http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/plant-pollinator-relationship.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/plant-pollinator-relationship.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT Figs and the wasps that pollinate them present one of biologists' favorite examples of a beneficial relationship between two different species. In exchange for the pollination service provided by the wasp, the fig fruit provides room and board for the wasp's developing young. However, wasps do not always pollinate the fig. Fig trees "punish" these "cheaters" by dropping unpollinated fruit, killing the wasp's offspring inside, report scientists working at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute........ ]]> http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/impact-of-eucalyptus-plantations.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/impact-of-eucalyptus-plantations.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT A team from the Department of Plant Biology and Ecology at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) are focusing their research on the study of the ecology of rivers. The person in charge is Mr Jesús Pozo. For more than twenty years this team has been trying to identify links between the ecology and functioning of rivers and the surrounding terrestrial environment because, when all is said and done, rivers are like the excretory apparatus of the continents, just like the kidney is to the human body. River water often reflect the state of health of the external environment........ ]]> http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/why-leopards-cant-change-their-spots.html http://www.biology-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/why-leopards-cant-change-their-spots.html Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:08:05 GMT The leopard cannot change its spots, nor can the tiger change its stripes, but a new research report reported in the January 2009 issue of the journal GENETICS tells us something about how cats end up with their spots and stripes. It demonstrates for the first time that at least three different genes are involved in the emergence of stripes, spots, and other markings on domestic cats. Scientists have also determined the genomic location of two of these genes, which will allow for further studies that could shine scientific light on various human skin disorders........ ]]>