Steve Yanoviak tosses ants from very high places: tropical forest canopy trees. In the 10 February, 2005 issue of the journal, Nature, Yanoviak, ant biologist, Mike Kaspari, and biomechanics expert, Robert Dudley, publish an amazing observation: canopy ant workers (Cephalotes atratus L) jettisoned from branches 30 m above the ground, glide backwards to the trunk of the same tree with incredible accuracy. This is the first published account of directed gliding in wingless insects.

The adult male zebra finch knows only one scratchy tune learned in its youth, which it performs repeatedly and intensely when females are listening. But occasionally, the finch might improvise, experimenting with a slower, more sultry variation or emphasizing different notes.

Neurobiologists studying the finch now say the improvisation arises from a component of a crucial learning circuit in a section of the forebrain that seems to generate the trial and error necessary to master s

Forget a box of chocolates and a dozen roses. When it comes to attracting a mate, the male sagebrush cricket brings a special nuptial gift to his partner. During copulation, these insect Romeos offer their Juliets a peculiar food gift: females chew off the ends of the males’ fleshy hind wings and ingest fluid that is seeping from the wounds they inflict.

However, once males have endured this “love bite,” their chances of finding another partner are slim because they lack the energy to

A new species of black coral has been discovered off southern California, including around the Channel Islands, by Milton Love, University of California, Santa Barbara marine researcher, and Mary Yoklavich of NOAA Fisheries. The discovery came during dives by the researchers in “Delta,” the submersible.

The new species, found at depths of approximately 300 to 725 feet, is reported this week in the online scientific journal Zootaxa by taxonomist Dennis Opresko of Oak Ridge National

Yerkes-based finding may help researchers develop sex-specific therapies for humans to guard against age-related memory loss

When it comes to aging, women may have another reason to be thankful. Research conducted in nonhuman primates at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University shows male nonhuman primates are more susceptible to age-related cognitive decline. The February issue of Behavioral Neuroscience reports this finding, which the researchers say has imp

Expanded HIV screening can increase patient life span, prevent the spread of the disease, and is cost effective, researchers at Yale, Harvard and the Massachusetts General Hospital report in the February 10 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

The study’s findings are part of a two-paper series in NEJM on the value of expanded HIV screening in the United States. The Yale/Harvard study used different data and methods than another study by VA, Duke and Stanford r

Millions of people at risk of becoming blind could one day be helped by an Oak Ridge National Laboratory technology originally intended to understand semiconductor defects.

The project takes advantage of the Department of Energy lab’s proprietary content-based image retrieval technology, which is a method for sorting and finding visually similar images in large databases. Manufacturers of semiconductors have found this technology highly effective for rapidly scanning hundr

Researchers call for routine mouse allergy testing for inner-city children with asthma

The amount of mouse allergen found in the air in many inner-city homes could be high enough to trigger asthma symptoms in the children who live there, say researchers at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. Their study, published in the February issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, found more than a quarter of inner-city homes sampled had airborne allergen levels already kno

Researchers from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) at the Free University of Brussels have recently published results that show promise in the quest for a new remedy for chronic urinary tract infections. The researchers have shown that administration of the sugar Heptyl-á-D-mannoside can prevent E. coli bacteria from binding to the wall of the urinary tract − which is the first step in the development of the infection.

A widespread problem

A little-studied outcome of animal migration is whether these long journeys can limit the spread of parasites by weeding out diseased animals. Monarch butterflies in eastern North America fly up to thousands of kilometers from Canada to Central Mexico – one of the longest migrations of any insect species.

Emory University researchers found that monarchs infected with a protozoan parasite fly slower, tire out faster and expend more energy flying than healthy monarchs. These result

A project to create a common platform throughout Europe for researchers working in the field of ‘biological crystallography’ is underway thanks to a grant of 10 million euros from the EU’s 6th Framework Programme (FP6).

The BIOXHIT (Biocrystallography on a Highly Integrated Technology Platform) project plans to integrate and further develop the best of current technologies at major European centres for research in structural biology. It will then weave them into a single standardis

A steroid hormone released during the metabolism of progesterone, the female sex hormone, reduces the brain’s response to stress, according to research in rats by scientists at Emory University School of Medicine, the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Atlanta’s Center for Behavioral Neuroscience. The scientists found evidence that the progesterone metabolite allopregnanolone reduces the brain’s response to corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), a peptide hormone that play

Uncharted area of umbilical cord offers hope

University of Toronto researchers have discovered an ample source of stem cells in an uncharted part of the umbilical cord, providing new hope for bone marrow transplants and tissue repair.

The study, published in the February issue of Stem Cells, outlines how researchers discovered that the jelly-like connective tissue surrounding the blood vessels of the human umbilical cord, the so-called “Wharton’s Jelly,” is rich in me

An international team of scientists has used gene therapy in two separate studies to renew brain cells and restore normal movements in monkeys and rats with a drug-induced form of Parkinson’s disease.

The research, detailed online in the scientific publications Brain and The Journal of Neuroscience, essentially describes one strategy to halt Parkinson’s disease at its onset and another strategy to treat the devastating side effects that occur when treating the d

Ancient wisdom, technological savvy

Researchers at the University of Washington have blended the past with the present in the fight against cancer, synthesizing a promising new compound from an ancient Chinese remedy that uses cancer cells’ rapacious appetite for iron to make them a target.
The substance, artemisinin, is derived from the wormwood plant and has been used in China since ancient times to treat malaria. Earlier work by Henry Lai and Narendra Singh, both UW

From person to piranha to petunia, it’s pretty easy to spot different species in the human-scale part of the plant and animal kingdoms. But a new study shows that species differences aren’t so clear, at least as currently measured, when it comes to microscopic bacteria.

MSU researchers have spotted significant differences in genetic libraries among thought-to-be similar bacteria strains. The results, published this week in the journal the Proceedings of the National