Archive for the ‘Biology / Biochemistry’ Category
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
Plant-animal mutualisms are characterized by weak or asymmetric mutual dependences between interacting species, such that if a plant species depends strongly on an animal species, the animal typically depends weakly on the plant, and vice versa. This limited reciprocal dependency or "mutualism strength" might increase species persistence by buffering plant ...
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Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
Biologists are developing ever more sophisticated means to characterize molecular interactions in living systems. But a new study suggests that many of the interactions detected by a widely-used experimental method are functionally irrelevant.
ChIP-chip is a "hot technique" in biology, allowing scientists to visualize the binding between regulatory proteins and genes ...
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Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
Since the late 1970s, salmon aquaculture has grown into a global industry, producing over 1 million tons of salmon per year. However, this solution to globally declining fish stocks has come under increasing fire. In a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLoS Biology, Jennifer Ford and ...
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Saturday, February 9th, 2008
Researchers from San Diego State University and the University of California have been using computer models to mimic the effects of underwater noise on an unusual whale species and have discovered a new pathway for sound entering the head and ears.
Advances in Finite Element Modeling (FEM), Computed tomography (CT) scanning, ...
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Saturday, February 9th, 2008
The Vilcek Foundation has announced the names of the recipients of its annual prizes in biomedical research and in the arts. Dr. Inder Verma is the prize recipient for biomedical science; the prize recipient for the arts is composer Osvaldo Golijov. The Vilcek Foundation Prizes are awarded annually to foreign-born ...
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Saturday, February 9th, 2008
Compelled to mate, yet firmly attached to the rock, barnacles have evolved the longest penis of any animal for their size - up to 8 times their body length - so they can find and fertilize distant neighbours.
Graduate student Christopher Neufeld and Dr. Richard Palmer from the Department of Biological ...
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Saturday, February 9th, 2008
An MIT team has used an engineering approach to show that complex biological systems can be studied with simple models developed by measuring what goes into and out of the system.
Such an approach can give researchers an alternative way to look at the inner workings of a complicated biological system-such ...
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Saturday, February 9th, 2008
As perhaps confirmed by their ubiquity on nature cable channels, crocodiles are among nature's most fearsome predators. When the opportunity arises, crocodilians will gorge, voluntarily consuming meals weighing 23% of their own body weight. This is analogous to a 130 -pound woman eating, at one sitting, a hamburger weighing 30 ...
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Saturday, February 9th, 2008
groups worldwide will celebrate the birthday of Charles Darwin, the scientist who documented evolution through natural selection nearly 150 years ago. Today, Darwin's groundbreaking work on the origin of species forms the basis of modern evolutionary biology and is at the heart of biomedical research.
Evolution happens every day, and it ...
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