It’s not just football supporters who join together in a rousing chorus to celebrate a victory. Winning a fight also appears to put the tropical boubou, an African bird, in the mood for a song. Research published in BMC Ecology describes a rare example of a context-specific birdsong and identifies the tropical boubou as the first bird species known to sing a ’victory duet’. The birds probably sing to deter other birds from intruding into their territory. According to
If comets hitting the Earth could cause ecological disasters, including extinctions of species and climate change, they could also disperse Earth-life to the most distant parts of the Galaxy.
The “splash-back” from a large comet impact could throw material containing micro-organisms out of the planet’s atmosphere, suggest scientists from Cardiff University Centre for Astrobiology.
Although some of this outflowing material might become sterilised by heat and radiation, they believ
Woodpeckers carry fungus in beaks that promotes tree decay
A new study in the journal Condor by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Arkansas State University suggests that a woodpecker’s beak is a virtual petri dish of fungal spores that play a key role in the decay of dead trees, or “snags.”
The authors examined several species of woodpeckers living in ponderosa pine forests in northern California and Oregon, finding that over 60 percent of the sa
Diamonds are getting bigger, more colorful and cheaper, thanks to chemistry. A favorite gem at Valentine’s Day is getting a makeover with synthetic diamond making processes, according to the Feb. 2 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.
The diamond-making business has been around for years and although synthetic diamonds had many important uses, including saw blades, drill bits and exfolian
Findings Could Lead to Faster Electronic Devices
Working at the nexus of biology and nanotechnology, a researcher and an alumnus from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have released findings that could lead to the tailoring of bacterial processes for a host of smaller, faster semiconductors and other electronic devices.
Pulickel Ajayan, professor of materials science and engineering at Rensselaer, and geobiologist Ronald Oremland reported that three different kinds of common
A team of cell biologists at the Stanford University School of Medicine has developed a new imaging technique using biosensors that precisely monitor the timing of cell division. Researchers tested the technique by observing and measuring the slowdown of cell division associated with an anti-cancer drug. They believe the discovery may allow them to screen for many more anti-cancer compounds in the future.
Tissues and organs form and grow through a highly regulated process of cell division k
At 2.5 tons and 9 feet high, the truck that Ohio State University engineers are about to race across the Mojave Desert could literally crush the competition.
And it would do so without a driver.
Of course, the truck won’t be squashing its rivals — the purpose of the competition is to design vehicles that can drive autonomously and avoid obstacles, rather than run them over.
With no human intervention and only global positioning system and local sensing data to guid
’Smart vivarium’ could enable better care of laboratory animals
Computer scientists and animal care experts at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have come up with a new way to automate the monitoring of mice and other animals in laboratory research. Combining cameras and distributed, non-invasive sensors with elements of computer vision, information technology and artificial intelligence, the Smart Vivarium project aims to enhance the quality of animal research, while at
During the last decade, Val Beasley of the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine has led a team wanting to know why the world’s amphibian populations have been dwindling or riddled with limb deformities.
Evidence from his and other teams points to increasing numbers of common parasites as an important cause. However, the problems facing amphibian habitats really pose a poignant example of ecosystems out of balance because of human activity, according to Beasley, a professor o
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have found a way to significantly improve the performance of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers by drilling holes in their surfaces. Faster and cheaper long-haul optical communication systems, as well as photonic integrated circuits, could be the result.
Low-cost VCSELs are currently used in data communication applications where beam quality is of little importance. To operate at higher speeds and over longer distances, the
Team shows tumors can be triggered in normal cells by signals from nearby supporting cells
Like a detective combing the scene of a crime for clues, researchers often target their search for cancer causes in the cells known as epithelial cells. After all, it is these cells that most often become cancerous, so it makes sense to look for what goes wrong inside these cells.
However, a new report from a team of Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center scientists demonstrates that tumors ca
Excavation of what is believed to be remains of the first-dated mammoth discovered on the Texas Gulf Coast is in its initial phases but living up to the expectations of its researchers, a team of students and archaeologists from Texas A&M University’s Center for the Study of the First Americans.
The mammoth was found buried in a sand pit just outside Lake Jackson, Texas in the town of Clute by a backhoe operator for Vernor Material & Equipment Co. who uncovered a pair of tusks. Further
Finding mice suggests that abnormalities of this beta-catenin protein underlie certain muscle diseases in human
The organization and stability of growing muscles in both embryonic and adult mice depends on the ability of a protein called Ozz to direct the timely destruction of membrane-bound â-catenin, according to scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. â-catenin is one of the key proteins that orchestrates this process. Ozz directs destruction of â-catenin by assem
Being able to predict customer trends has just become much easier thanks to new research sponsored by the ESRC into the use of website and other new media data.
A project led by Dr Bruce Hardie of the London Business School has resulted in the development of simple systems – or mathematical models – which can enable companies to describe, diagnose and forecast the behaviour of subscribers to these services.
Dr Hardie said: “Website operators are collecting volumes of data all the ti
Semantic Web emerges as commercial-grade infrastructure for sharing data on the Web
Today, the World Wide Web Consortium announced final approval of two key Semantic Web technologies, the revised Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL). RDF and OWL are Semantic Web standards that provide a framework for asset management, enterprise integration and the sharing and reuse of data on the Web. These standard formats for data sharing span application, enterp
Scientists have shed new light on the impact of global environmental changes on remote tropical forests with studies that show that the rates of growth and death of trees in pristine forests across the Amazon have accelerated substantially in recent decades. The scientists also demonstrate that the tropical forests globally have warmed by half a degree in the last 20 years and warn that this is expected to increase by a further three to eight degrees by the end of the century, with dangerous implicat
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