Research conducted by Sandy Kawano and Richard Blob at Clemson University compared terrestrial locomotion in tiger salamanders and mudskipper fish, which have similar characteristics to early tetrapod ancestors. The researchers filmed these organisms as they walked over a force platform which measures forces like a bathroom scale but separates them into 3 directions (upward, fore-aft, and side-to-side). They compared the forces experienced by the pectoral fins of the mudskipper fishes to the forelimbs and hind limbs of walking tiger salamanders. The results showed that ...

Dr Nicolai Konow (Brown University, USA), who led the research said: "Energy is stored in the triceps tendon, which is used to power elbow extension – in essence, elbow extension happens using "recycled" energy. State of knowledge, and our results, indicates that bats are unique among small mammals in stretching their tendons, as small mammal limb tendons are thought to be too thick and stiff to be stretched." "By combining information about skeletal movement with information about muscle mechanics, we found that the biceps and triceps tendons of small fruitbats are stretched ...

Why do so many mothers have difficulty making enough milk to breastfeed? A new study by scientists at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University of California Davis adds to their previous research implicating insulin's role in lactation success. The study is the first to describe how the human mammary gland becomes highly sensitive to insulin during lactation. It is also the first study to get an accurate picture of how specific genes are switched on in the human mammary gland during lactation. The researchers used next generation sequencing ...

The genes that code for proteins—more than 20,000 in total—make up only about 1 percent of the complete human genome. That entire thing—not just the genes, but also genetic junk and all the rest—is coiled and folded up in any number of ways within the nucleus of each of our cells. Think, then, of the challenge that a protein or other molecule, like RNA, faces when searching through that material to locate a target gene. Now a team of researchers led by newly arrived biologist Mitchell Guttman of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Kathrin Plath of UCLA, ...

How do ideas spread? What messages will go viral on social media, and can this be predicted? UCLA psychologists have taken a significant step toward answering these questions, identifying for the first time the brain regions associated with the successful spread of ideas, often called "buzz." The research has a broad range of implications, the study authors say, and could lead to more effective public health campaigns, more persuasive advertisements and better ways for teachers to communicate with students. "Our study suggests that people are regularly attuned ...

It's squishy, synthetic, flexible, mostly water and almost as tough as rubber. No, it's not "flubber" — it's a hydrogel, and now scientists at The University of Akron are exploring new biomedical uses for this polymer-based product. Dr. Jie Zheng, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and Dr. Robert Weiss, Hezzleton E. Simmons professor and chair of polymer engineering, are among the most recent to contribute to the growing research of hydrogels, the gelatinous substance that, because of its toughness and plasticity, has several biomedical applications, ...

There are two tropical cyclones in the Eastern Pacific Ocean on July 5 and one is powering up and one is powering down. NOAA's GOES-15 satellite captured Tropical Depression Dalila and Tropical Storm Erick, both off the western coast of Mexico. Because Erick is strengthening and is close to the coast, tropical storm warnings have gone into effect for Mexico. Tropical Depression Dalila has weakened from a Category 1 hurricane status and is expected to dissipate in the next day or two. Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Erick grew from a low pressure area called System 97E into ...

NASA's Aqua satellite captured multiple images of fire and smoke from Canadian wildfires on July 4, 2013. The images were stitched together to form a visual quilt. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument that flies aboard Aqua captured the images. MODIS has the ability to detect hot spots (fires), which appear red in the image. Plumes of smoke from various wildfires can be seen blowing across many of the Canadian provinces and out over the Atlantic Ocean. As of July 5, the government of Saskatechewan reported 17 wildfires. British Columbia has ...

Many black or racially mixed women in Venezuela are undergoing nose jobs in an effort to look whiter, but the procedure only temporarily improves their self-esteem and body image in a culture that values whiteness, a Dartmouth College study finds. Cosmetic surgery is increasingly common in many countries, including Venezuela, where an obsession with physical appearance prompts many women to get breast implants, face lifts, liposuction and other cosmetic procedures. But the trend has also sparked controversy -- the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez blamed cosmetic ...

Researchers have designed droplets using a technique that could have applications for everything from extracting oil from wells to creating makeup and food. You've seen Hollandaise sauce or mayonnaise that has separated, or that shiny layer of oil that forms on top of skin cream. This mixture of water and oil is called an emulsion, but it can be difficult to keep emulsions from separating. A special substance called an emulsifier is used to keep the mixture stable and prevent separation. This is an ongoing problem for the food and medical industries, as well as for ...

The surface of Mercury is rather different from those of well-known rocky bodies like the Moon and Mars. Early images from the Mariner 10 spacecraft unveiled a planet covered by smooth plains and cratered plains of unclear origin. A team led by Dr. Simone Marchi, a Fellow of the NASA Lunar Science Institute located at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Boulder, Colo., office, collaborating with the MESSENGER team, including Dr. Clark Chapman of the SwRI Planetary Science Directorate, studied the surface to better understand if the plains were formed by volcanic flows ...

The influenza virus' ability to mutate quickly has produced new, emerging strains that make drug discovery more critical than ever. For the first time, researchers at Seattle BioMed, along with collaborators at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and the University of Washington, have mapped how critical molecules regulate both the induction and resolution of inflammation during flu infection. The results are published this month in the journal Cell. Flu is an elusive foe The influenza virus mutates extremely ...

Ungulates like Tibetan antelope, Kiang, wild yak, Przewalski's gazelle, Tibetan gazelle, Mongolian gazelle, roam on the steppes and grasslands of Asia, need large open habitats. For examples, once millions of Mongolian gazelles migrate to the Inner Mongolian steppe in winter and return to steppes in eastern Mongolia and Durian, Russia during the breeding in summer. Hundreds of thousands of Przewalski's gazelles also roam in the Alpine steppe in Qinghai lake drainage (Fig. 1). Those wild ungulates move freely on the grasslands are animal spectacles in Eurasia. Area of ...

CHARGE syndrome* is a severe developmental disorder affecting multiple organs. It affects 1 in 8500 newborns worldwide. The majority of patients carry a mutation in a gene called CHD7. How this single mutation leads to the broad spectrum of characteristic CHARGE symptoms has been a mystery. CHD7 encodes a so-called chromatin remodeler, an important class of epigenetic regulators. DNA is wound around bead-like nucleosomes consisting of histone proteins. The string of beads is then twisted into a structure called chromatin. The more nucleosomes that occupy a gene, the ...

Risky behavior can lead to premature death – in humans. Anna Lindholm and her doctoral student Yannick Auclair investigated whether this also applies to animals by studying the behavior of 82 house mice. They recorded boldness, activity level, exploration tendency and energy intake of female and male house mice with two different allelic variants on chromosome 17, thereby testing predictions of "life-history theory" on how individuals invest optimally in growth and reproduction. According to this theory, individuals with a greater life expectancy will express reactive personality ...

A policy known as sustainable intensification could help meet the challenges of increasing demands for food from a growing global population, argues a team of scientists in an article in the journal Science. The goal of sustainable intensification is to increase food production from existing farmland says the article in the journal's Policy Forum by lead authors Dr Tara Garnett and Professor Charles Godfray from the University of Oxford. They say this would minimise the pressure on the environment in a world in which land, water, and energy are in short supply, highlighting ...

The earliest evidence of using flower beds for burial, dating back to 13,700 years ago, was discovered in Raqefet Cave in Mt. Carmel, during excavations led by the University of Haifa. In four different graves from the Natufian period, dating back to 13,700-11,700 years ago, dozens of impressions of Salvia plants and other species of sedges and mints (the Lamiaceae family), were found under human skeletons. "This is another evidence that as far back as 13,700 years ago, our ancestors, the Natufians, had burial rituals similar to ours, nowadays", said Prof. Dani Nadel, from ...

Imaging techniques in cancer medicine provide far more than merely information on the scale and location of cancerous ulcers. There are modern methods that additionally characterise the tumour cells precisely, for instance by specific molecules they carry on their surface. Such additional information gives doctors key clues as to the precise cancer type and enables them to predict the probability that a patient will respond to a particular form of therapy. Positron emission tomography (PET) is one such technique. Unlike with computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging, ...

An international project has developed a response programme for rapidly restoring the use of drinking water networks following a deliberate contamination event. The importance of water and of water infrastructures to human health and to the running of our economy makes water systems likely targets for terrorism and CBRN (chemical, biological and radionuclide) contamination. Reducing the vulnerability of drinking water systems to deliberate attacks is one of the main security challenges. SecurEau, a four-year Seventh Framework Programme funded project, involved 12 partners, ...

This news release is available in German. The experimental work, which was performed at the German Electron Synchrotron Facility (DESY) in Hamburg, involved levitating hot metal droplets and observing them as they cooled by irradiating them with x-rays from one of the world's strongest x-ray sources. The research work is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the results have just been published in 'Nature Communications'. Supercooled liquids demonstrate some interesting phenomena when they are irradiated with an extremely bright x-ray source. Shuai ...

Japanese films have retaken the box office in their home market in a major shift not seen since the 1960s, according to new research by the University of East Anglia (UEA). A boom in production numbers has taken place since 2000 - in 2012 Japan produced 554 films, the first time it had broken the 500-film barrier since 1961. This is in contrast to the period from the 1950s to the end of the 1990s, when Japanese production steadily declined from about 500 movies a year to only around 250. However, despite their popularity at home this success has yet to translate into ...

News agencies continue to have an edge over Twitter in being first with the news, a study found. Research into reporting of news events by Twitter and newswire services has found that while Twitter can sometimes break news before newswires, for major events there is little evidence that it can replace traditional news outlets. Twitter's main benefits for news are bringing additional coverage of events, and for sharing news items of interest to niche audiences or with a short lifespan, such as local sports results. Scientists at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow ...

The radioactive element astatine, the name of which is derived from the Greek word for 'instability,' is so rare on earth that it has not yet been investigated to any greater extent and, as a consequence, very little is known about it. Using artificially generated astatine, the Mainz-based physicist Sebastian Rothe has now managed for the first time to experimentally explore one of its fundamental parameters, the ionization potential, and thus determine one of the most important properties of the rare element. The ionization potential is the binding energy, i.e., the amount ...

High-resolution mapping of the epigenome has discovered unique patterns that emerge during the generation of brain circuitry in childhood. While the 'genome' can be thought of as the instruction manual that contains the blueprints (genes) for all of the components of our cells and our body, the 'epigenome' can be thought of as an additional layer of information on top of our genes that change the way they are used. "These new insights will provide the foundation for investigating the role the epigenome plays in learning, memory formation, brain structure and mental ...

Very little is known about the Sahamalaza sportive lemur (Lepilemur sahamalazensis), other than the fact it roosts during the day in rather open situations, such as tree holes, and therefore risks falling victim to predators from both the air and the ground. Sportive lemurs are not kept in any zoo. Prior to this research virtually nothing was known about this particular species despite the fact that it has been classified as Critically Endangered, the top threat category of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, at ...