Clashing colonies of sea anemones fight as organized armies with distinct castes of warriors, scouts, reproductives and other types, according to a new study.
The sea anemone Anthopleura elegantissima lives in large colonies of genetically identical clones on boulders around the tide line. Where two colonies meet they form a distinct boundary zone. Anemones that contact an animal from another colony will fight, hitting each other with special tentacles that leave patches of stinging
Sacha Nelson of Brandeis University in Waltham, MA and Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research in Cambridge, MA and their colleagues report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition that spontaneous neuronal activity is reduced in the cortex of a knockout mouse model for the childhood neurodevelopmental disorder, Rett Syndrome. The Rett Syndrome Research Foundation (RSRF) and the McKnight Foundation funded this project.
R
A broiler chicken produces an average 115g excrements a day; this amounts to 2 million tons a year in Germany alone. In terms of plant nutrients this is equivalent to 33 million kg nitrogen (N) and 7 million kg phosphorus (P). The environmetal effects of these nutrients and their interaction with different production systems has been investigated by scientists of the Institute of Plant Nutrition and Soil Science of the Federal Agricultural Research Centre (FAL) in Braunschweig, Germany.
New breast cancer research shows for the first time that even women with large breast tumors can benefit from a less invasive biopsy method that has been reserved until now for women with small breast cancers.
Lymphatic mapping and sentinel node biopsy, when used to determine how far the cancer has progressed into the lymph nodes, can help some patients avoid the pain and discomfort of full armpit node removal, which often causes swelling, numbness and infection.
The su
Imagine this: A tiny, fast switch that uses water droplets to create adhesive bonds almost as strong as aluminum by borrowing a mechanism found in palm beetles.
The new beetle-inspired switch, designed by Cornell University engineers, can work by itself on the scale of a micron — a millionth of a meter. The switches can be combined in arrays for larger applications like powerful adhesive bonding. Like the transistor, whose varied uses became apparent only following its inventio
Heart healthy habits are good for oral health, too, according to a new study published in the current issue of the Journal of Periodontology, the official publication of the American Academy of Periodontology.
Researchers from Case Western Reserve University examined data from 12,110 individuals who participated in the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III) and found that individuals who exercised, had healthy eating habits and maintained a normal weigh
May help identify heart disease in patients who have no symptoms
The Mayo Clinic research report appears online and in the August issue of the American Journal of Hypertension. The Mayo Clinic collaborative study with researchers from the University of Michigan looked at 214 men and women with an average age of 59, who had no history of heart attack or stroke. Results suggest that low grade inflammation is associated with arterial stiffness (hardening). This inflammation may be a
Epidemiological survey study links heart protection with non-aspirin, non-steroidal drugs
It is well known that aspirin, a non-selective, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) that inhibits cyclooxygenase (COX), reduces the risk of heart attack and stroke. Non-aspirin non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NANSAIDs) such as ibuprofen and naproxen may reduce this same risk, but studies have shown conflicting results. Some have shown no association between NANSAIDs and heart
Changes in heart mass and volume linked to early signs of left ventricle problems
Using magnetic resonance imaging technology, or MRI, to tag the work of millions of individual strands of heart muscle fibers, researchers at Johns Hopkins have successfully mapped the smallest deformations inside the beating hearts of 441 middle-aged and elderly men and women who have either silently developed heart disease or remained healthy. The novel use of the MRI allowed the researchers to creat
Virginia Tech scientists say that there has been a change in the status of the fungus causing Asian Soybean Rust but that the new information is still too preliminary for any action on the part of the Commonwealth’s soybean producers.
A single cluster of six urediniospores found at Virginia Tech’s Tidewater Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Suffolk was identified by morphological characteristics as matching the description of the fungus.
“The spores
Recursive splicing is key
Important messages require accurate transmission. Big genes are especially challenging because they combine many coding segments (exons) that lie between long stretches of non-coding elements (introns). During processing, introns are snipped out and exons pasted together to form a template for proteins called messenger RNA (mRNA). Mistakes in RNA processing can reduce the expression of a functional protein or, worse, produce an abnormal protein that interfe
Vector improved in two ways creates a sustained, partial correction to bleeding problems in mice
A virus that typically infects insects could help with the development of gene therapy treatment for Hemophilia A, a condition in which even a bump on the knee can cause serious internal bleeding in people.
Researchers at the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine improved a vector — a vehicle that delivers gene therapy to cells — in two ways to
Malfunctioning bone marrow cells that produce insulin appear to cause a dangerous nerve condition called neuropathy that disables many people with diabetes, said a research team led by Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
The report from researchers at BCM, Shiga University of Medical Science in Japan, and the University of Chicago appears online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The finding not only provides a basis for understanding the
It has been known for some time that many species of birds use the Earth’s magnetic field to select a direction of movement–for example, during migration. However, although such birds clearly have a sense of direction, until now it has not been possible to train birds to move in a certain direction in the laboratory, even if they are motivated by a food reward. The reasons for this failure have been perplexing, but researchers now report that they have been able to successfully accomplish thi
Magnetic orientation is critical to the migratory success of many bird species. By studying the influence of light on the ability of migratory birds to orient to magnetic signals, researchers have found clues to suggest that birds’ orientation abilities may be more complex than previously thought and that birds may be able to interpret magnetic signals by more than one mechanism. The work is reported in Current Biology by a team including Thorsten Ritz, of the University of California, Irvi
Like humans, other animals are faced with everyday obstacles in their physical environments and must engage appropriate decision-making and motor skills to deal with them. Navigating these obstacles can involve highly complex events in mammals and other vertebrates, but in new work, researchers have employed an ingenious obstacle-based system for studying the control and structure of goal-oriented motor programs in the fruit fly Drosophila.
The findings are reported in Current Biol
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