High-tech tags on marine animals yield valuable data for biologists and oceanographers
...ging patterns. Crabeater seals are specialized for feeding on Antarctic krill and forage along the continental shelf of Antarctica at the edge of the ice pack. Southern elephant seals, in contrast, forage widely in the offshore waters. The SEaOS project led by SMRU's Fedak is deploying electronic tags on el...Clock molecule's sensitivity to lithium sheds light on bipolar disorder
...sted in the internal control of metabolism because feeding behavior is on a daily cycle, and hormonal activities that regulate this are circadian," says senior author Mitch Lazar, MD, PhD, Director of the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism at Penn. "Many studies, including those here at Penn, su...Spring migration of pink-footed geese under threat
...sult, most wintering populations have changed from feeding on natural or semi-natural habitats to agricultural land," Klaassen says. As well as helping to develop strategies to manage the conflict between farmers and geese, Klaassen's model could help ecologists predict how other species might respond to cli...Red grapefruit appears to lower cholesterol, fight heart disease
...ents with heart disease, the scientists found that feeding some patients the equivalent of one grapefruit daily significantly reduced levels of cholesterol in comparison to patients that did not eat grapefruit. Chronic high blood cholesterol is a major risk factor for heart disease. The study, which strength...Case biologists show that what a neuron can do is a function of mechanical context
...ronger swallows, part of the neural output sets up feeding muscles so that they act in new ways. Specifically, a "grasper" muscle, controlled by motor neuron B8, acquires a new function: it not only grasps the food, but also pulls it in. Another muscle, called the "hinge," that exerts no force in weak swal...2006 Ocean Sciences Meeting: Press Conference Schedule
...ward shift in spawning locations for snow crab and feeding grounds of gray whales, a delay in timing of the spring bloom, and declines in zooplankton biomass. The biological effects of ocean acidification resulting from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide are not completely understood. Scientists have found...Gut protein found to protect against infection and intestinal breakdown
... with obstructive jaundice or in those who rely on feeding tubes for nourishment, the lining breaks down and bacteria pass through it into the body, sometimes causing the massive blood infection known as sepsis. Simply giving bile acids orally as a substitute isn't a good solution because they can cause live...Gene discovery linked to increasingly diagnosed gastrointestinal disease
...lt, they are fed a simple elemental diet through a feeding tube. It is a chronic illness, but with proper management, most patients lead functional lives. Dr. Rothenberg and his team of physicians and researchers (including Philip E. Putnam, M.D., and Margaret H. Collins, M.D., both of Cincinnati Children's)...Swiss researchers develop all-in-one remote control gene expression tool
...expression of the gene can be turned on and off by feeding the animal an antibiotic. Likewise genes that express pathogenic proteins can be conditionally silenced, allowing researchers to study possible new therapeutic approaches. In cancer research this tool could be used to study gene function in tumor ce...Fewer fish eggs, smaller fish result from over-fishing
...r survival and growth, and have lower foraging and feeding rates, the researchers report. "We have shown for the first time that many traits correlated with fish body-size may be evolving in response to intense fishing pressure," said Matthew R. Walsh, a graduate student in UCR's Department of Biology, who l...Study links Alzheimer's disease to abnormal cell division
... and his colleagues are now trying to determine if feeding the mouse models the drug ibuprofen can stop abnormal cell cycling in neurons and halt neurodegeneration. Ibuprofen is an anti-inflammatory drug that reduces production of amyloid beta, and some studies have suggested that it may reduce the risk of ...Avian influenza virus in mammals spreads beyond the site of infection to other organ systems
...the respiratory tract, via the digestive tract (by feeding on infected chicks), or by close contact with respiratory-infected cats. The researchers, led by Dr. Thijs Kuiken, then examined mucous membranes (throat, nasal, and rectal swabs) and organ systems (respiratory, digestive, nervous, cardiovascular, u...'Darwinian debt' may explain why fish stocks don't recover
... growth. Even behavioural traits like foraging and feeding rate declined. Collectively these changes hamper population recovery and because they are genetic, they don't immediately go away when fishing ceases. How long it would take to undo the debt is now being studied by the research team....3,317 and counting (the number of marine species in the Gulf of Maine)
...w Englander." Whales migrate to colder waters for feeding in the summer, and to tropical waters to give birth in the winter. Mammals like the humpback whale are at the top of the marine food chain and depend on multiple species lower in the chain. For example, a humpback whale may need to eat a ton of he...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
... between pharyngeal neuronsand muscles involved in feeding andthe mating-specific spicule muscles. 2. Signaling the Onset of Puberty Alejandro Lomniczi, Anda Cornea,Maria E. Costa, and Sergio R. Ojeda This week, Lomniczi et al. examined theneuronal glial signaling network thatcontrols the onset of female p...On the loose: Urban coyotes thrive in North American cities
...rally start when people feed coyotes, even if that feeding is unintentional. "A coyote may eat the food that's left outside for a pet," Gehrt said. "It's not uncommon to see a coyote pass through an urban or suburban neighborhood. "But most coyotes aren't thrilled about being seen by people," he continued. ...Overfishing may drive endangered seabird to rely upon lower quality food
... in the journal Conservation Biology, suggest that feeding further down the food web may have played a role i...Monterey Bay, marbled murrelets were almost always feeding on higher trophic level prey, regardless of ocean conditions," said Becker. "Now, even in the same e...Sea slug mixes chemical defense before firing at predators
...defend against predators. Its secretion stimulates feeding behaviors in spiny lobsters, but deters these behaviors in other animals. In previous studies, Derby and his team also identified an antimicrobial property in the secretion resulting from the chemical reaction between escapin and L-lysine. The scient...Ability to capture large prey may be origin of army ants' cooperative behavior
...what turned out to be the same species of army ant feeding on the carcass of a snake, has led O'Donnell of th...ebrate flesh, based on the observation of the ants feeding on the dead snake. They noted that raiding parties of other New World army ants occasionally sting ......e-checked by depleting the cells of estrogen, then feeding them testosterone: If aromatase was at work, the cells would produce estrogen. They did. "Once we saw that aromatase was active, we wanted to see if we could inhibit it with the same drugs they use for breast cancer," said Weinberg. The team treated...