Home owners may sleep better because student overcame her fear of insects
...oing her master's degree research on the wintering behavior of carpenterants, Cannon decided to bring the insects into a Virginia Tech lab to study forher doctoral degree research on the insects' foraging behavior. Her desire tomaintain a colony of carpenter ants in the lab has resulted in an effective baitfo...New targets for nerve diseases, nerve regrowth: It's all in the handshake
...ite similar in chronic human neuropathies." Mouse behavior also reflectedthe deterioration: mice were weaker, had trouble moving and lost key reflexes. "We had predicted that altered gangliosides would make such adifference," says Schnaar. The reason stems, he says, from disruption of thelinkage bet...Economic model to aid alligator farmers
...s from the wild tocompensate for the poor breeding behavior of captive alligators. In Louisiana, aportion of the alligators that hatch from the wild clutch must be returned tothe wild. "Our model considers both the wild population and the farm and ranchpopulation and includes a price prediction method...Ecotourism: Penguins can get used to people
... The first measure was the rate of head-turning, a behavior thatpenguins display when agitated by, for instance, the approach of a fox or other predator. The second measure of stress was the blood level of corticosterone, asteroid hormone that rises with stress and can kill animals if it gets too high. Walker...CU-Boulder to send experiments ranging from ladybugs to water quality on NASA shuttle
... the Chilean students proposed a testinvolving the behavior of ladybugs and their primary prey, aphids, in lowgravity. The objective will be to document the movements of ladybugs, which hunt upwardon wheat stalks, and aphids, which jump down to escape. High-powered cameraswill download images and post them on...Groundwater impacted by fire-fighting foams
...ndwater, butvirtually nothing is known about their behavior in the environment, shesays. The surfactants associated with fire training activities may also occurwith other pollutants, such as fuel components and solvents, so it is importantto determine if the AFFF surfactants affect the transport and biodegra...Cellular espionage at play in post-menopausal osteoporosis
...doby and his group have concentrated on osteoclast behavior and activity in aseries of published papers over the past 19 years. The original work on theosteoclast cell surface proteins in 1984 sought to determine the nature ofreceptor proteins on the osteoclast and it has led to a number of basicbiological q...Simulating protein folding from physical laws
...otein solely from the physical laws thatgovern the behavior of its atoms. A group led by Harold Scheraga, the Todd Professor of Chemistry emeritus,simulated the folding of the protein HDEA from the bacterium E. coli onCornell's IBM supercomputer and predicted a structure consisting of a bundle offive spira...National Science Board approves five new NSF Science and Technology Centers
...ll attempt to break new ground inunderstanding how behavior emerges from the interaction of the nervous system'smolecular components. A new center for environmentally responsible solvents andprocesses (led by the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) will researchhow to use carbon dixoide as an industri...Biology, engineering jointly train students in neuro-mechanics
...d-winning legged and worm-like robots based on the behavior of cockroaches and slugs. "The challenge has been to develop a robot that is as agile as an animal," explains Ritzmann. Legged robots have the potential to maneuver around and over obstacles much better than wheeled vehicles. "Our collaborations ar...Rockefeller scientists discover surprising new cancer gene
...s and can therefore be used to test the tumor-like behavior of cells in ananimal). The results of these experiments demonstrate that persistently activeStat3 does indeed possess the potential to cause cancer. The discovery is surprising because Stat3 isn't a usual oncogene. "Mostpeople think oncoge...... proteins and theirreceptors that regulate feeding behavior in mice. To probe the role that orexinsplay in reg... duringthe day is the equivalent of watching human behavior in the middle of the night.They're asleep," explained Yanagisawa. "So we started videotaping them in...Naked mole-rats break the rules on nursing
...tive rodents at Cornell. "We watchedtheir nursing behavior and realized what's going on. They share. The youngtake turns nursing from the same mammary. There are no fights, and there'splenty of milk to go around." No food fights among baby mole-rats, that is. But vicious fights-to-the-death periodical...Response to cocaine linked to biological clock genes
...ian rhythms in insects and cocainesensitization, a behavior that occurs in both fruit flies and vertebrates an...tudy the molecular underpinnings ofcocaine-induced behavior and addiction. Last year, the team hit pay dirt, showing that normal fruit flies develop aheightened...Jefferson scientist hopes to answer the question, 'Why is it so hard to quit smoking?'
...they might help support the concept that addictive behavior may be geneticallymodified. "Once you have the gene, you can get the biochemical pathway and thebrain process of nicotine addiction," Dr. Leone says. "When you understand that,you can talk about intervention. Ultimately, we'd like to find a d...Genetic variation in sensitivity to estrogen may mask endocrine disruption
...sed sperm counts, deformed genitals,aberrantmating behavior and sterility in wildlife. Spearow and Barkley, who study reproductive hormones using mice as aresearch model, became interested in the possible genetic control over susceptibility to endocrine disruption byestrogen. "Many commerc......thattriggers violence, self-destruction, psychotic behavior and schizophrenia, withmonoclonal antibodies - identical copies of animal antibodies cloned andreproduced in the laboratory. (See page 107, MEDI 156, 9 a.m., Monday, August23, Convention Center, Room R09 in the final program.) - Brain Chemical Imbal...Agency awards $8.2 million to study how air pollution affects us
...how this exposuremight be affecting them. "We know behavior plays a big role: how often you gooutside and how active you are inside," Koenig says. The center will also bring visiting scientists to UW, and try to spreadthe word about air pollution and research to the public. The center already hasa Web...Primate genus sheds light on great ape and human origins, as reported in Science
...us , we expect to learn a great dealmore about the behavior of this animal," said Steve Ward. Removing the more primitive Equatorius specimens from the Kenyapithecus sample was like lifting a veil off the second genus,allowing the researchers to clearly identify the advanced features of Kenyapithecus that...Natural repellant in Spanish cedar leaves could help tropical forests
...ord, have otherwork in progress that describes the behavior of Exopthalus jekelianus in moredetail....