News Articles

Bacteria that we carry in our bodies may help decide who we marry, according to a new study that analyzes the gut of...a small fruit fly. A group of molecular biologists recently demonstrated that the symbiotic bacteria inside a fruit fly greatly influence its choice of mates.  They propose that the basic unit of natural selection is not the individual living organism, plant or animal, but rather a larger biological milieu called a holobiont. This milieu can include plant or animal life as well as their symbiotic partners. In the case of animals, these partners tend to be microorganisms like intestinal bacteria.

We instinctively know how to keep ourselves safe and so do other animals, according to neuroscientists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.   University of Washington researcher Jeansok Kim demonstrates that rats weigh their odds of safely retrieving food pellets placed at varying distances from a perceived predator.Stay or forage might seem obvious but rats need to get out and find food and how do they decide whether it's safe to leave the nest was the focus of Kim and co-author June-Seek Choi, a visiting professor in the UW psychology department from Korea University.  They studied how the amygdala, an important brain area for perceiving and reacting to fear, was involved in the rats' decisions to risk their safety for food. 

It seems that Abigail and Jacob will be at the top of Santa's gift-list this Christmas morning. A school rewards site says that children with these names are most likely to behave well. 
 Little girls called Beth and little boys named Josh will not be so fortunate; children with those names appear less prone to good behavior (so more prone to naughtiness?  Look for an evolutionary psychology study coming soon!)  

Astrobiology researchers say a new discovery may have expanded the definition of life.   Conducting tests in the harsh environment of Mono Lake in California, they have discovered the first known microorganism on Earth able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic, substituting arsenic for phosphorus in its cell components. Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur are the six basic building blocks of all known forms of life on Earth. Phosphorus is part of the chemical backbone of DNA and RNA, the structures that carry genetic instructions for life, and is considered an essential element for all living cells.

The largest fish species in the ocean, the whale shark, is spectacular for lots of reasons, not the least is that their motion is an astonishing feat of mathematics and energy conservation. In new research,  marine scientists reveal how these massive sharks use geometry to enhance their natural negative buoyancy and stay afloat.For most animals movement is crucial for survival, both for finding food and for evading predators. However, movement costs substantial amounts of energy and while this is true of land based animals it is even more complex for birds and marine animals which travel in three dimensions. Unsurprisingly this has a profound impact on their movement patterns.

The presence of toxic lead in used consumer products is extremely widespread and at levels far beyond safe limits, researchers conclude in a new study.  Research recently found that lead and cadmium were present in cartoon character drinking glasses and now the new study has found that many other items available for purchase throughout the United States – such as toys, home décor items, salvage, kitchen utensils and jewelry – contain surface lead concentrations more than 700 times higher than the federal limit.The results were published in The Journal of Environmental Health.

Lactococcus lactis, the workhorse bacterium that helps turn milk into cheese, may also lead to understanding of how microbes turn the organic compound cellulose into biofuels, according to new research from Concordia University published in Microbial Cell Factories. Concordia biology professor Vincent Martin and PhD student Andrew Wieczorek demonstrated how structural or scaffolding proteins on the surface of the bacteria can be engineered in Lactococcus lactis towards the breakdown of plant material.   They showed how these scaffold proteins were successful in providing a stable surface outside the cell for chemical activity, e.g. the transformation of plant material into biofuels.

Small, dim stars known as red dwarfs have turned out to be much more prolific than previously thought, which means that the total number of stars in the universe is likely three times larger than realized. Red dwarfs are relatively small and dim compared to stars like our Sun, so astronomers haven't been able to detect them in galaxies other than our own Milky Way and its nearest neighbors - so there were only conjectures about how much of the total stellar population of the universe is made up of red dwarfs.

Chronic jet lag alters the brain in ways that cause memory and learning problems long after returning to a regular 24-hour schedule, according to research by Berkeley psychologists.Twice a week for four weeks, the researchers subjected female Syrian hamsters to six-hour time shifts, the equivalent of a New York-to-Paris airplane flight.   During the last two weeks of jet lag and a month after recovery from it, the hamsters' performance on learning and memory tasks was measured.   As expected, during the jet lag period, the hamsters had trouble learning simple tasks that the hamsters in the control group did well on. What surprised the researchers was that these deficits persisted for a month after the hamsters returned to a normal day-night schedule.

Sensorineural hearing loss (SSHL) is a condition that causes deafness in 40,000 Americans each year, usually in early middle-age.   A new treatment has been developed SSHL, say researchers writing in BMC Medicine who describe the positive results of a preliminary trial of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) applied as a topical gel.

Will polar bears survive in a warmer world?   New evidence says their numbers are likely to dwindle. As polar bears lose habitat due to global warming, biologists say, they will be forced southward in search of alternative sources of food, where they will increasingly come into competition with grizzly bears.    Polar bears probably evolved very rapidly in response to glacial climates during the ice ages but rapidly on an evolutionary scale is not a realistic timeline for climate change.

Researchers at the Faculty of Life Sciences (LIFE), University of Copenhagen have published the results of the world's largest diet study, called called Diogenes.Like anything obvious, the formula is simple but the application can be difficult for those who already have a weight problem; if you want to lose weight, you should maintain a diet that is high in proteins with more lean meat, low-fat dairy products and beans and fewer finely refined starch calories such as white bread and white rice.Maintaining that diet, you can eat until you are full without counting calories and without gaining weight.