Scientific Blogging

A male fish can size up potential rivals, and even rank them from strongest to weakest, simply by watching how they perform in territorial fights with other males, according to a new study by Stanford University scientists. The researchers say their discovery provides the first direct evidence that fish, like people, can use logical reasoning to figure out their place in the pecking order.
The study, published in the Jan. 25 edition of the journal Nature, is based on a unique experiment with cichlids (SIK-lids), small territorial fish from Africa. "In their natural habitat, male cichlids are constantly trying to ascend socially by beating each other up," said study co-author Russell D. Fernald, professor of biological sciences at Stanford.

Breeding dairy cattle is an inexact science, so many gene-linked traits must be considered. Some of the major ones are quantity of milk produced, its fat and protein content, mothers' pregnancy rates, calving ease and, most recently, stillbirth rate. Such evaluating of genetic traits has allowed dairy farmers to increase milk production to all-time highs.
Scientists recently added calf survival to a series of calculations that lead to what's called a Lifetime Net Merit score. This is an economic evaluation of a bull and--by extension--what he will transmit to his daughters and granddaughters.

Carnegie Mellon University Chemical Engineers have devised a new process that can improve the efficiency of ethanol production, a major component in making biofuels a significant part of the U.S. energy supply.
Carnegie Mellon researchers have used advanced process design methods combined with mathematical optimization techniques to reduce the operating costs of corn-based bio-ethanol plants by more than 60 percent.
The key to the Carnegie Mellon strategy involves redesigning the distillation process by using a multi-column system together with a network for energy recovery that ultimately reduces the consumption of steam, a major energy component in the production of corn-based ethanol.

Researchers working in Australia have discovered ways in which fruit flies might react to extreme fluctuations in temperature. Short-term exposure to high heat stress ("heat hardening") has been known to have negative effects on Drosophila. But Loeschcke and Hoffmann discovered that it can have advantages too.
Flies exposed to heat hardening were much more able to find their way to bait on very hot days than were the flies that were exposed to cooler temperatures, but the heat hardened flies did poorly on cool days.
Loeschcke and Hoffmann did field releases with colored flies exposed to different heat hardening treatments to get estimates of a fitness component in the wild.

What do red grapes, white onions, green and black teas and blackeye cowpeas all have in common? In addition to vitamins and minerals, these plant foods are rich in a class of chemical compounds called flavonoids.
The first update of the USDA Database for the Flavonoid Content of Selected Foods, Release 2, is now available. The new release provides analytical values for 26 selected flavonoid compounds in 393 foods.
For the update, scientists with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) analyzed the flavonoids in nearly 60 representative fruits, nuts and vegetables taken from a nationwide sampling.

The secret to the ability of a molecule critical for cell division to throw off the protein yoke that restrains its activity is the yoke itself--a disorderly molecule that seems to have a mind of its own, say investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Innsbruck Medical University (Austria) and Max Planck Institute (Martinsried, Germany).
The researchers showed that the disorderly protein yoke, called p27, participates in its own destruction by swinging the end of its long arm up into a key side pocket of the cell division molecule called CDK2. After the end of p27 slips into the pocket, CDK2 marks p27 for destruction by tagging it with a molecule called phosphate.

A decade ago, Shuhai Xiao, associate professor of geosciences at Virginia Tech, and his colleagues discovered thousands of 600-million-year-old embryo microfossils in the Doushantuo Formation, a fossil site near Weng'an, South China. In 2000, Xiao's team reported the discovery of a tubular coral-like animal that might be a candidate for parenthood.

Shown are scanning electron photomicrographs of two fossil embryo specimens from the 600-million-year-old Doushantuo Formation in South China.

Embryonic stem cell research should advance a bit more freely because of policy changes announced this week by a major patent holder in this area, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). The move could clearly benefit biotech companies and possibly negate for now some criticism that the organization has endured.
"It creates a little more comfort in academic research institutions," explained Tom Quinlan, an attorney in the San Francisco office of Reed Smith LLP.

The emerging picture of microbes as gene-swapping collectives demands a revision of such concepts as organism, species and evolution itself.
One of the most fundamental patterns of scientific discovery is the revolution in thought that accompanies a new body of data. Satellite-based astronomy has, during the past decade, overthrown our most cherished ideas of cosmology, especially those relating to the size, dynamics and composition of the Universe.
Similarly, the convergence of fresh theoretical ideas in evolution and the coming avalanche of genomic data will profoundly alter our understanding of the biosphere — and is likely to lead to revision of concepts such as species, organism and evolution.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have developed two strategies to reactivate the p53 gene in mice, causing blood, bone and liver tumors to self destruct. The p53 protein is called the "guardian of the genome" because it triggers the suicide of cells with damaged DNA.
Inactivation of p53 can set the stage for the development of different types of cancer. The researchers' findings show for the first time that inactivating the p53 gene is necessary for maintaining tumors. While the researchers caution that cancers can mutate to circumvent p53 reactivation, they believe their findings offer ideas for new approaches to cancer therapy.

A new survey by researchers at Oregon State University and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of more than 600 rivers and streams in the western United States found widespread mercury concentrations in fish.
Though few of the more than 2,700 fish analyzed in the study contained alarmingly high levels of mercury, the prevalence of the element throughout 12 western states caught the researchers somewhat by surprise.

In a new study from The American Journal of Human Genetics, a research team lead by Xinzhi Zhao and Ruqi Tang (Shanghai Jiao Tong University) present evidence that genetic variation may indicate predisposition to schizophrenia.