California fiddler crabs may be among the world’s pickiest animal when it comes to selecting a mate.

A study conducted by a biologist at the University of California, San Diego that appears in the August issue of the journal Animal Behaviour found that females of the species Uca crenulata may check out 100 or more male fiddler crabs and their burrows before finally deciding on a mate.

“As far as I know, no other species has been observed sampling nearly as many cand

I. Highlights, including authors and their institutions

The following highlights summarize research papers in Geophysical Research Letters (GL). The papers related to these Highlights are printed in the next paper issue of the journal following their electronic publication.

You may read the scientific abstract for any of these papers by going to www.agu.org/pubs/search_options.shtml and inserting

British researchers have hit on a clever way to search for ancient ozone holes and their relationship to mass extinctions: measure the remains of ultraviolet-B absorbing pigments ancient plants left in their fossilized spores and pollen.

To develop the approach, researcher Barry Lomax and his colleagues at the University of Sheffield and other leading UK institutions analyzed spores held in the British Antarctic Survey’s collection from South Georgia Island, a UK territor

Mayo Clinic researchers searching for explanations of high mortality rates among kidney failure patients undergoing hemodialysis are focusing their attention on the use of heparin, a drug used to reduce clotting of the blood.

Their study in the August issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings is a preliminary look at one aspect affecting the health of patients who undergo hemodialysis. In the study, they found patients who had a higher level of adverse outcomes also had elevated levels of h

Despite gains in the training of women scientists and the implementation of programs to help women overcome ingrained barriers, the career path of most women scientists at universities remains a difficult trek, fraught with roadblocks of bias, a sometimes chilly campus climate and the challenge of balancing family and work.

That, in short, is the conclusion of a group of prominent women scientists and administrators, including chancellors and provosts, in an analysis of the issue

Cornell researchers say double knocks may be ’soundprints’ of ivory-bills
The public is invited to join in, listen and help decipher the sounds of the ivory-billed woodpecker By Simeon Moss

Now hear this: After analyzing more than 18,000 hours of recordings from the swampy forests of eastern Arkansas, researchers at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University have released recordings offering further evidence — including the legendary bird’s dist

EXPWAY of France has designed and launched FastESG™, a unique end-to end Electronic Service Guide solution over mobile and broadcast networks (GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, DVB-H), from server to terminal. FastESG™ is an XML-based software solution, built on rich metadata language such as DVB-CBMS, which guarantees an enhanced end-user experience (particularly in the field of TV viewing and multimedia entertainment). The company will be showcasing its technology at the IFA trade show in Berlin from 2 t

Three confocal microscopic images of a cell stained with an antibody that detects the protein MAVS (left), Mito-Tracker (center), and an overlay of the green and red images (right) that indicates the mitochondrial localization of MAVS.

Researchers have discovered a surprise lurking inside mitochondria, the power plants that are present in every cell. It turns out that these powerhouses also contain a protein that triggers the immune system to attack viral invaders.

A

EXPWAY of France has launched FastEPG™ v1.5, an enhanced multi-media Electronic Program Guide (EPG). It is an application that can be used with digital video recorders, set-top boxes, and the latest TV sets. Viewers can use EPG to find, book, view and review content; it will also be an essential differentiator element for operators, helping them to strengthen their brand. EXPWAY will be showcasing its technology at the IBC trade show in Amsterdam in early September 2005.

As the main

The radioactive carbon-14 produced by above-ground nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s is providing forensic scientists with a more precise way to determine a person’s age at the time of death. The method could help in the identification of victims of Hurricane Katrina and other large-scale disasters.

The new technique, developed by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, determines the amount of carbon-14 in tooth ena

Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers have linked alterations in a gene, called Rsf-1, to the most deadly ovarian cancers. The scientists say the discovery is the first to establish a role for the gene in ovarian cancer and may lead to a test that can predict, early on, which patients will develop aggressive disease.

“We hope new therapies can be tailored to target Rsf-1, in the same way that Herceptin for breast cancer attacks the Her2/neu gene pathway,” says Tian-Li

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco and Georgia Institute of Technology have found a new way to kill cancer cells. Building on their previous work that used gold nanoparticles to detect cancer, they now are heating the particles and using them as agents to destroy malignant cells.

The researchers are a father and son, working together on opposite coasts. Their study findings are reported in the on-line edition of the journal Cancer Letters, found at Sci

Biswarup Mukhopadhyay and Eric Johnson from the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech have discovered a novel enzyme that represents an ancient detoxification system and provides a clue to the development of early metabolism on earth.

The research appears in the Nov. 18, 2005 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, in the article “A New Type of Sulfite Reductase, a Novel Coenzyme F420-dependent Enzyme, from the Methanoarchaeon Methanocaldococcus jannaschii”.

The Mars Express radar, MARSIS, has now been deployed for more than four months. Here we report on the activities so far.

For the operational period up to now, Mars Express has been making its closest approaches to Mars predominantly in the daytime portion of its orbit. The MARSIS radar’s scientists are mainly collecting data about the upper layers of the Martian atmosphere, or ‘ionosphere’, which is the highly electrically conducting layer that is maintained by sunlight.

In the December 6 issue of Nature Biotechnology, scientists from 14 different organizations around the world, including the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute, propose a new quality standard for biochemical models. MIRIAM (for Minimum information requested in the annotation of biochemical models) will help researchers to reuse, modify and combine computer models of biochemical processes to gain a fuller understanding of life at the molecular and cellular level.

Biologists are making a

Create powerful statistical techniques to detect signals

A Case Western Reserve University research team from physics and statistics has recently created innovative statistical techniques that improve the chances of detecting a signal in large data sets. The new techniques can not only search for the “needle in the haystack” in particle physics, but also have applications in discovering a new galaxy, monitoring transactions for fraud and security risk, identifying the carrier

The European Space Agency (ESA) announced today support of a new program that will include development of an instrument for testing deep soil samples on Mars in a European mission called ExoMars. A researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara will direct the development of the instrument.

“We are very excited about this,” said Luann Becker, research scientist with the Institute of Crustal Studies at UC Santa Barbara. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Testing by

A team of ophthalmologists at the University of Liverpool has become the first in the world to image geodesic structures – called CLANs – inside the human body.

Professor Ian Grierson and his colleagues have found that the shape of each CLAN is similar to the design of the framework forming the roofs over the Eden Project and the courtyard at the British Museum.

CLANs is an acronym for Cross-linked Action Networks. They are formed from the components which maintain the str

New method may speed quest for medically useful compounds in fungi

Ever since penicillin, a byproduct of a fungal mold, was discovered in 1929, scientists have scrutinized fungi for other breakthrough drugs. As reported Jan. 20 in the Journal of Chemistry and Biology, a team led by a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher has developed a new method that may speed the ongoing quest for medically useful compounds in fungi.

By manipulating a single fungal protein, the

Obesity, long known as a cause of type II diabetes, may accelerate the onset of type 1 diabetes in some – but not all – groups of younger patients, according to research at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and six clinical sites nationally.

“The increasing prevalence of childhood obesity may substantially account for the younger age at onset of type 1 diabetes observed in various populations,” said the research team, writing in the February issue of Diabetes Care.