Don't stand so close to me: A new view on how species coexist
...aped both by ecology and by evolution." One way of capturing the essence of the new work, he added, is expressed in the concept of the 'Darwinian demon' - a hypothetical species that develops rapidly, reproduces continuously and does not age. Trade offs in life histories are thought to prevent Darwinian demons...How to use math and a CT scanner to see how trees intercept light
...ict which branching patterns are more efficient at capturing light," said Dutilleul. "This is of obvious importance when choosing which plants to grow in environments with short photoperiod." Dutilleul has developed links between statistics and life sciences throughout his career. His research in applied stat...Drought reduces nitrogen-fixing in legumes
...from the micro-organism, that takes on the task of capturing nitrogen from the air and converting it into ammonia in such a way that the plant can use it. This ammonia is incorporated into carbon skeletons in order to form aminoacids and proteins. On the other hand, the micro-organism obtains nutrients necessa...Falling ants glide back to trunk to avoid dangers of forest floor
...water, because then you're definitely dead." After capturing some quick video snippets with his digital still camera, Yanoviak contacted UC Berkeley's Dudley to arrange a more scientific study of the ants' gliding behavior. They met up with Kaspari last summer in Panama for a week to videotape the same species......lls looking for signs of crystal formation--key to capturing protein structures. "At this large scale, it would be unthinkable to do all these steps by hand," said John Norvell, Ph.D., director of the PSI at NIGMS and a scientist trained in protein structure determination. He noted that some robotics and auto...Novel sulfide-binding mechanism found in deep-sea tubeworms
...lfide through their gills, they have no organs for capturing or digesting food. Their only known source of nutrition comes from internal bacteria, which, in turn, rely on the worm's hemoglobin for both sulfide and oxygen. The unusual form of hemoglobin gives the worms an advantage over other organisms compet...The transparent organism: EMBLEM and Carl Zeiss give labs a unique look at life
... a sample is passed through a thin sheet of light, capturing high-quality images layer-by-layer. The sample can be rotated and viewed along different directions, further eliminating the blurry and unwanted light which prevented scientists from looking deep into tissues in the past. The entire procedure is very......olved quick-freezing the viruses in liquid ethane, capturing snapshots of them at various angles and then combining the snapshots to create three-dimensional pictures. From dozens of these digitized 3-D pictures of whole viruses, hundreds of protruding surface protein complexes could be cut out, aligned, and a...Water research initiatives at UW-Madison
...tion, such gardens can help improve water quality, capturing common contaminants such as excess nitrogen and phosphorous. CONTACT: Kenneth Potter, (608) 262-0040; kwpotter@wisc.edu MONITORING EROSION ON THE LAKE SUPERIOR SHORELINE To help local governments plan and manage shoreline development, a UW-Madiso...Researchers uncover sequence of major rice pathogen
...genome to life." Bringing the genome to life means capturing the biological meaning of the genome, Dean says. To do this, he and his colleagues used two strategies: comparative genomics and functional genomics. "In comparative genomics, you compare this genome to that of other organisms, other fungi," Dean say...The making and breaking of microtubules
... Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is capable of capturing such polymer structures without having to break th...s. But because GTP can rapidly hydrolyze into GDP, capturing transitional states of GTP-bound tubulin directly was impractical. Instead the researchers worked w...Oceans turning to acid from rise in CO2
...s view the world's oceans as an important sink for capturing the human-induced greenhouse gas CO2 and slowing global warming. Marine plants soak up CO2 as they breathe it in and convert it to food during photosynthesis. Organisms also use it to make their skeletons and shells, which eventually form sediments. ...Light-sensing protein illuminates sun-loving ocean bacteria
...reveals that proteorhodopsin is uniquely suited to capturing the high-radiation sunlight that illuminates the sea. Through the use of meta-genomic analysis, the authors also observed great diversity among proteorhodopsin genes. Estimating the average size of the bacterial genome led Beja and colleagues to ...Wanted: Companies to license life-saving breath test developed at NJIT
...veloped the world's most sensitive breathalyzer by capturing and concentrating volatile organic compounds in the breath onto activated carbon, then separating them with a gas chromatograph and identifying them with a mass spectrometer. The test detects around 200 different volatile organic compounds in a sing...Using computers and DNA to count bacteria
...' Bioscience Division, describes a new approach to capturing the structure of bacterial communities in soil. In addition, the study provides insight into the devastating effects of metal pollution on those bacterial populations. Why is this important, you ask? It turns out that in our technology-driven world, ...Researcher: Toxic flood lifts lid on common urban pollution problem
...treet sweeping equipment that is very effective at capturing pavement contaminants. "If you pick up this potentially toxic material before it gets into the hydrological cycle, it is far more economical than if you try to take it out of the water after the fact," he said....International Council for Science launches International Polar Year 2007-8, an historical endeavour
...e IPY plan comes as polar research is increasingly capturing the attention of not only scientists but policy makers and the general public as well. Just a few weeks ago scientists at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center generated headlines with their alarming findings that over the past century there has ...Scientists map one of biology's critical light-sensing structures
...help stabilize the protein so it can do its job of capturing light and triggering the cascade of downstream events under its control. "We think that without the knot, the protein conformational changes (prompted by light) would be too floppy to be efficiently channeled to downstream proteins," Forest explains...Crystal sponges excel at sopping up CO2
...-one of the current state-of-the-art materials for capturing CO2 in power plant flues---would hold only four tanks worth of CO2. MOFs can be made in large quantities from low-cost ingredients, such as zinc oxide---a common component of sunblock---and terephthalate, which is used in plastic soda bottles. And fi...Purdue biologists clarify how a cellular 'spacecraft' opens its airlock
...s" to relax, closing the membrane protein gate and capturing the nutrient. Lastly, the membrane protein releases the nutrient into the cell's interior. "The ABC protein is like the inner door of the airlock; that's what we were able to see in operation in this study," Chen said. "If you opened both it and the ...