Johns Hopkins researchers examine why people eat the foods they do
...l knowledge, attitudes and perceptions and dietary behavior and food choices....Genetic studies endow mice with new color vision
...f an animals sensory perception, altering both its behavior and nerve activity, Jacobs noted that the new study is the first to demonstrate that these simple genetic changes can have even more profound effects. By simply changing receptor proteins, not only can you extend the range of information that an anim...Is bigger better? Breast surgery linked to boost in self-esteem and sexuality
...al plastic surgeons should screen for this type of behavior and rule out potential patients who may have more serious psychological issues, she said. There may be patients who will never be satisfied with their bodies no matter how much surgery they receive or feel that their life will completely change aft...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
...aviors. Whether GUCY1A3 is simply a marker of this behavior or plays a causal role remains to be determined. 3. Input Fluctuations in Layer 5 Pyramidal Neurons Maura Arsiero, Hans-Rudolf Lscher, Brian Nils Lundstrom, and Michele Giugliano Cortical neurons fire asynchronously, thus producing membrane volt...Eavesdropping nuthatches distinguish danger threats in chickadee alarm calls
...iven by the chickadee. "No one has ever seen this behavior before. There are a fair number of animals that re... of the nuthatches were present. He observed their behavior when he played chickadee calls warning about pygmy and great horned owls. All trials were conducted...Gene controlling circadian rhythms may be involved in onset of bipolar disorder
...risky" activities, lower levels of depression-like behavior and increased sensitivity to the rewarding effects...studies to show that Clock has a major effect on behavior in a different brain region specifically the one that controls reward responses and mood." Dr. Er...Steroid hormones regulate the body clock
...structure in the brain controls diurnal rhythms of behavior and hormone release. However, biological clocks are also encountered in almost every cell type (so-called peripheral clocks), in which they regulate daily changes in cell biology, including cell division. Very little is known to date about how the tw...Tiny, spontaneous gene mutations may boost autism risk
...develop social skills and repetitive and obsessive behavior may in fact be the consequence of a reaction to many different cognitive impairments," note the researchers. The new study is part of a growing body of NIH-funded research on autism genetics. For example, researchers last fall reported discovery ...Homing pigeons get their bearings from their beaks
... since it has been shown that many animals display behavior that is modified or controlled by the Earths magnetic field. The meaning of these minute iron oxide crystals goes farther than their amazing ability to help pigeons home. Research into how they work has caught the interest of nanotechnologists con...Keeping the body in sync -- the stability of cellular clocks
...clical changes in physiology, gene expression, and behavior that run on a cycle of approximately one day, even in conditions of constant light or darkness. Peripheral organs in the body have their own cellular clocks that are reset on a daily basis by a central master clock in the brain. The operation of the ...Protein overexpression at heart of heart failure
...bunit) that is responsible for the altered channel behavior in human heart failure. Similar changes of both beta-subunit expression and single-channel behavior were also observed in a mouse model of heart failure with cardiac overexpression of the human L-type...New cell type identified in cancer development
...to further differentiate a strong contrast to the behavior of normal stem cells. "We thought this was an interesting development," says Gao, "because these precancerous cells were actually stopped from becoming malignant. We are calling this process differentiation-induced cell death, a protective mechanis...A rarity among arachnids, whip spiders have a sociable family life
..., and all mix in social groups. This is surprising behavior for these arachnids long-thought to be purely aggr...-social, according to a Cornell researcher. Social behavior is extremely rare in arachnids, a class that includes spiders, amblypygids, scorpions and mites, amo...These legs were made for fighting
...hs Were Short and Nasty? "Given the aggressive behavior of modern humans and apes, we should not be surprised to find fossil evidence of aggressive behavior in the ancestors of modern humans," Carrier says. "This is important because we have a real problem ...Super small nanoelectrodes can probe microscale environments
...AMPAIGN, Ill. -- Investigating the composition and behavior of microscale environments, including those within living cells, could become easier and more precise with nanoelectrodes being developed at the University of Illinois. "The individual nanotube-based probes can be used for electrochemical and biochem...Press conferences at the year's largest physics meeting
...ART ORGANISMS USE PHYSICS Watching and analyze the behavior of living organisms with the tools of physics, researchers will present new discoveries showing that even very simple organisms carry out surprisingly sophisticated strategies for survival. Studying naturally produced "antifreeze proteins" that prot...Researchers find suntan's 'master regulator'
...ponse, -endorphin is believed to drive sun-seeking behavior and may act as a natural painkiller. Fishers team further found that the ears and tails of mice lacking p53 lose the ability to tan. Similarly, the induction of -endorphin by UV also depends on p53. "The induction of -endorphin appears to be hard...Social tolerance allows bonobos to outperform chimpanzees on a cooperative task
...ned to deepen our understanding of how cooperative behavior evolves, researchers have found that bonobos, a pa...ugh chimpanzees exhibit strong cooperative hunting behavior in the wild. The work suggests that some social tendencies or emotions that are adaptive under certa...Genes and groups of genes commonly shared between species, studies show
...species, and we can monitor and discriminate their behavior within the same natural community. These abilities will allow us to understand the implications of small differences in genome sequence and content on ecological performance, one of the key goals of the current microbial genomic sequencing efforts."......eries (MEPS), raise new questions about the diving behavior of both species. "Sperm whales (Physeter macroce... said. "We also know relatively little about the behavior of jumbo squid in the wild," Gilly added. "For example, it was only a couple of years ago that we di...