July 23, 2006, 11:14 PM CT

Shared ancestor to humans

When contemplating the coos and screams of a fellow member of its species, the rhesus monkey, or macaque, makes use of brain regions that correspond to the two principal language centers in the human brain, as per research conducted by researchers at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), two of the National Institutes of Health. The finding, published July 23 in the advance online issue of Nature Neuroscience, bolsters the hypothesis that a shared ancestor to humans and present-day non-human primates may have possessed the key neural mechanisms upon which language was built. Principal collaborators on the study are Allen Braun, M.D., chief of NIDCD's Language Section, Alex Martin, Ph.D., chief of NIMH's Cognitive Neuropsychology Section, and Ricardo Gil-da-Costa, Gulbenkian Science Institute, Oeiras, Portugal, who conducted the study during a three-year joint appointment at the NIDCD and NIMH.

"This intriguing finding brings us closer to understanding the point at which the building blocks of language appeared on the evolutionary timeline," says James F. Battey, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., director of the NIDCD. "While the fossil record cannot answer this question for us, we can turn to the here and now through brain imaging of living non-human primates for a glimpse into how language, or at least the neural circuitry mandatory for language, came to be."........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

July 22, 2006, 11:17 PM CT

Yeast In Space

Far above the heads of Earthlings, arrays of single-cell creatures are circling Earth in nanostructures.

The sample devices are riding on the International Space Station (courtesy of Sandia National Laboratories and the University of New Mexico, NASA and US Air Force) to test whether nanostructures whose formations were directed by yeast and other single cells can create more secure homes for their occupants - even in the vacuum and radiation of outer space - than those created by more standard chemical procedures.

Sandia is a National Nuclear Security Administration laboratory.

"Cheap, tiny, and very lightweight sensors of chemical or biological agents could be made from long-lived cells that require no upkeep, yet sense and then communicate effectively with each other and their external environment," says former UNM graduate student and Sandia consultant Helen Baca, lead author on the paper. Baca was advised by Sandia Fellow and UNM professor of chemical engineering, molecular genetics & microbiology Jeff Brinker.

Groups of such long-lived cells may also serve as models to investigate how tuberculosis bacteria survive long periods of dormancy within human bodies.

En masse, they also may be used to generate signals to repel harmful bacteria from the surfaces of surgical tools like catheters.........

Posted by: Brooke      Permalink

July 22, 2006, 10:45 PM CT

Watching Real-time Chemical Activity In Cells

Attempts to identify potential drugs that interfere with the action of one particular enzyme linked to heart disease and similar health problems led scientists at Johns Hopkins to create a new tool and new experimental approach that allow them to see multiple, real-time chemical reactions in living cells. Their report on the work is published July 21 in the journal ACS Chemical Biology.

Most current drug development operations test chemicals on enzymes isolated from their normal environs and then take further steps to see if the chemical can get into the cell to do its work, and figure out how poisonous the chemical is to a cell.

"Living cells are critical to our work because they show us how and what is actually happening in a normal context and time span when a chemical is added," says Jin Zhang, Ph.D., an assistant professor of pharmacology and molecular sciences in Hopkins' Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences.

Testing chemicals on enzymes in living cells provides the opportunity to find potential drugs that work in new ways. For example, using living cells allows researchers to "see" where in the cell chemicals do their work. Scientists could then design new drugs to go to specific places within cells to work more efficiently. Also, streamlining the one-at-a-time approach offers the chance to study - and rule out or in - many potentially useful chemicals at once.........

Posted by: Sarah      Permalink         Source

July 19, 2006, 9:41 PM CT

Ocean Floor May Drive Global Warming

Gas escaping from the ocean floor may provide some answers to understanding historical global warming cycles and provide information on current climate changes, as per a team of researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The findings are published in the July 20 on-line version of the scientific journal, Global Biogeochemical Cycles.

Remarkable and unexpected support for this idea occurred when divers and researchers from UC Santa Barbara observed and videotaped a massive blowout of methane from the ocean floor. It happened in an area of gas and oil seepage coming out of small volcanoes in the ocean floor of the Santa Barbara channel -- called Shane Seep -- near an area known as the Coal Oil Point seep field. The blowout sounded like a freight train, as per the divers.

Atmospheric methane is at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide and is the most abundant organic compound in the atmosphere, as per the study's authors, all from UC Santa Barbara.

"Other people have reported this type of methane blowout, but no one has ever checked the numbers until now," said Ira Leifer, lead author and an associate researcher with UCSB's Marine Science Institute. "Ours is the first set of numbers linked to a seep blowout." Leifer was in a research boat on the surface at the time of the blowouts.........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink         Source

July 12, 2006, 8:55 PM CT

Parasites Form The Thread Of Food Webs

Parasites may be much more important than you think and they might be serving a purpose in the food chain. Scientists have recently found that surprisingly parasites are very important in food webs. The findings of these researchers are published in the recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The results are from a study performed in Santa Barbara County at the Carpinteria Salt Marsh. This is one of several natural reserves set aside by the University of California for research and teaching.

Food webs trace the flow of energy through an ecosystem. They extend the concept of food chains, those who-eats-whom sequences, to biological communities. Food webs rarely include parasites because of the difficulty in quantifying them by standard ecological methods. Parasites are small and invisible, hidden inside their hosts. However, parasites strongly affect food web structure and parasite links are necessary for measuring ecosystem stability, according to the study.

"Food web theory is the framework for modern ecology," said Kevin Lafferty, a scientist with the USGS Western Ecological Research Center who is based at UC Santa Barbara and is lead author of the study. "Parasites have been missing from this framework and, as a result, we know relatively little about the role of parasites in ecosystems. It's like driving with a highway map, but with no knowledge of the smaller road network. To reach most destinations, you need a map with both".........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

July 11, 2006, 10:30 PM CT

Extinction Crisis For Amphibians

A strange new fungus disease that kills frogs and toads and every other species of amphibian is spreading around the globe and -- combined with pollution and overdevelopment -- is driving more and more of the creatures to extinction, a coalition of the world's top biologists warns.

At least one-third of the world's known amphibians are threatened by the combination of attacks, and up to 122 species have become extinct within the past 25 years, the international team of specialists is reporting in today's edition of the journal Science.

"Amphibian declines and extinctions are global and rapid," 50 of the world's leading specialists on water-dwelling animals declared in a joint report. At least 427 species are "critically endangered," they said.

The effects are being felt in California's High Sierra, where Berkeley scientists found that the disease is rampant and killing yellow-legged frogs and Yosemite toads, whose populations already are being strained by development and pollution.

While the spread of the disease is a major new threat to all amphibians, the scientists reported that the greatest current danger to every threatened species is still the loss of habitat as cities and suburbs expand, streams and ponds and wetlands give way to the needs of farmers, and forest lands are destroyed.........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

July 11, 2006, 7:00 AM CT

Midgets And Giants In The Deep Sea

How is the deep sea like a desert island? It sounds like a child's riddle, but it's actually a serious scientific question with implications for both terrestrial and marine biology. Biologists have long observed that when animals colonize and evolve on isolated islands, small animals tend to become larger while large animals tend to become smaller. Recent research led by MBARI postdoctoral fellow Craig McClain suggests that a similar trend affects animals as they adapt to life in the deep sea. McClain will present a summary of these findings today at the 11th International Deep-Sea Biology Symposium in Southampton, England. A full article is in press in the peer-reviewed Journal of Biogeography.

Biologists ever since Charles Darwin have noted that when animals colonize an isolated island, after millions of years they may evolve into entirely new species that look very different from the original colonizers. For example, a population of mammoths isolated on the Channel Islands of Southern California developed into a new species that weighed only one tenth as much as their relatives on the mainland. Conversely, on some Caribbean islands, tiny shrews evolved into 30-centimeter-long (1-foot-long) "monsters." As these examples illustrate, small animals on islands often grow larger, while large animals become smaller.........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

July 7, 2006, 9:21 PM CT

Corals Switch Skeleton

Leopards may not be able to change their spots, but corals can change their skeletons, building them out of different minerals depending on the chemical composition of the seawater around them.

That's the startling conclusion drawn by a Johns Hopkins University marine geologist, writing in the recent issue of the journal Geology.

Postdoctoral fellow Justin Ries and his collaborators say this is the first known case of an animal altering the composition of its skeleton in response to change in its physical environment. The aquatic animal's sensitivity to such changes poses questions about its evolutionary history, as well as the future of the ecologically important coral reefs that it builds, Ries said, especially at a time when seawater is changing in response to global warming and the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

A 2005 Ph.D. graduate of Johns Hopkins, Ries collaborated on the research with his dissertation advisors, Steven M. Stanley (now of the University of Hawaii) and Lawrence A. Hardie, professor in the Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins.

Reefs are large underwater structures of coral skeletons, made from calcium carbonate secreted by generation after generation of tiny coral polyps over sometimes millions of years of coral growth in the same location. The team showed that corals can switch from using aragonite to another mineral, calcite, in making the calcium carbonate. They make that switch in response to decreases in the ratio of magnesium to calcium in seawater, Ries said. That ratio has changed dramatically over geologic time.........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

July 1, 2006, 8:48 AM CT

replacing the rotting shark

Damien Hirst is in talks with US hedge fund manager Steve Cohen to replace the shark in his iconic work, The physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living, 1991.

The animal suspended in formaldehyde has deteriorated dramatically to the naked eye since it was first unveiled at the Saatchi Gallery in 1992 because of the way it was preserved by the artist. The solution which surrounds it is murky, the skin of the animal is showing considerable signs of wear and tear, and the shark itself has changed shape.

In a statement to The Art Newspaper, Hirst's company Science Ltd said: "Damien will happily help to refurbish [the shark] as he would with any of his works that are over 10 years old".........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

July 1, 2006, 8:40 AM CT

Whale meat on sale

With the prospect of Japan getting the go-ahead to resume commercial whaling in the not so necessarily distant future, the people in power are desperately trying to get rid of the nation's growing stock of scientific research by-products - or whale meat as it's more usually known.

School children in certain prefectures are being served it for lunch, one restaurant chain is offering whale burgers, and, in a rather desperate measure, dogs are allegedly being fed the stuff, whether they like it or not.

Yet as the sale of the meat helps in part to fund Japan's very important whale-related research, it's imperative that the stuff is sold, with these brightly coloured and jolly looking tins surely tempting both dedicated devourers and the uninitiated alike.........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source

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