From the category archives:

Biology

Breaking up may actually not be hard to do, say scientists who`ve found a population of tropical butterflies that may be on its way to a split into two distinct species.
The cause of this particular break-up? A shift in wing color and mate preference.
In a paper published this week in the journal Science, the researchers [...]

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Bacteria Expect The Unexpected

by mokosam on November 10, 2009

Organisms ensure the survival of their species by genetically adapting to the environment. If environmental conditions change too rapidly, the extinction of a species may be the consequence. A strategy to successfully cope with such a challenge is the generation of variable offspring that can survive in different environments. Even though a portion of the [...]

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A University of Colorado at Boulder team has developed the first atlas of bacterial diversity across the human body, charting wide variations in microbe populations that live in different regions of the human body and which aid us in physiological functions that contribute to our health.
The study showed humans carry "personalized" communities of bacteria around [...]

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A novel method of detection of cervical cancer cells has been developed by Clarkson University Professor Igor Sokolov`s group, an affiliate of the University`s Nanoengineering and Biotechnology Laboratories Center (NABLAB).
The group`s paper is published in Small.
Methods for detection of cancer cells are mostly based on traditional techniques used in biology, such as visual identification of [...]

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Researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech and Montana State University have discovered a fungal protein that plays a key role in causing disease in plants and animals and which also shields the pathogen from oxidative stress.
The researchers have found that the fungal protein TmpL is critical for the infection of host [...]

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Despite the fact that summer 2009 had more sea ice than in 2007 or 2008, scientists are seeing drastic changes in the region from just five years ago and at rates faster than anticipated. The findings were presented October 22 in the annual update of the Arctic Report Card, a collaborative effort of 71 national [...]

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A study by six researchers, including a University of Colorado at Boulder associate professor and his former doctoral student, shows that amputees who use running-specific prosthetic legs have no performance advantage over counterparts who use their biological legs.
A debate on the matter was spurred when Oscar Pistorius, a bilateral amputee, was barred from the 400-meter [...]

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A group of drunken fruit flies have helped researchers from North Carolina State and Boston universities identify entire networks of genes — also present in humans — that play a key role in alcohol drinking behavior.
This discovery, published in the October 2009 print issue of the journal Genetics, provides a crucial explanation of why some [...]

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As the climate gets warmer, arid soils lose nitrogen as gas, reports a new Cornell study. That could lead to deserts with even less plant life than they sustain today, say the researchers.
"This is a way that nitrogen is lost from an ecosystem that people have never accounted for before," said Jed Sparks, associate professor [...]

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It`s as simple as A, T, G, C. Northwestern University scientists have exploited the Watson-Crick base pairing of DNA to provide a defensive tool that could be used to fight the spread of antibiotic resistance in bacteria — one of the world`s most pressing public health problems.
The resistant nasty pathogens cause thousands of deaths each [...]

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