Harvard scientists discover how the venus flytrap snaps
...o looking at biochemical events, we looked at what happened after the plant was stimulated and found that the rapid closing is due to a 'snap-buckling instability' that the plant itself controls." To trap its prey, the carnivorous plant relies on both an active biochemical and a passive elastic process, sa...Recognizing new aneurysm syndrome can save lives
... this patient died we didn't know that the rupture happened so much earlier than in any other condition," says Bart Loeys, M.D., an instructor in pediatrics and genetic medicine in the McKusick-Nathans Institute. "We can now get patients to surgery in time to prevent aortic rupture and save their lives." The ...Experiments provide proof of how traveling in groups protects insects
...eviously it has been too difficult to monitor what happened to specific insects among untold millions. "With t...eep track of individual crickets and find out what happened to them when they were in the band and also when we removed them and put them in other locations by ......st 50 to 100 years. Smith and his colleagues first happened upon a whale skeleton in 1987 while doing a deep-sea survey using the submersible Alvin. They were amazed to find hundreds of species of animals encrusting the bones. Some of these species were remarkably similar to the sulfur loving clams, mussels a......before and after method is shocking, given that it happened in just 10 to 20 years. "We're talking about an ar... Ontario disappearing, that's essentially what has happened to the marshes in southern Iraq." The biologist, whose work is supported by Science and Engineering ...An evolutionary road less traveled
...lation size" for the Mlabri. This reduction likely happened 500 to 800 years ago, Stoneking and colleagues con...her, as yet unknown language, an event that likely happened less than 1,000 years ago. The genetic and linguistic evidence indicates that the Mlabri were "fou...Study: Soap and water work best in ridding hands of disease viruses
...e first time, too, the UNC researchers tested what happened when people cleaned their hands for only 10 seconds, Sickbert-Bennett said. That represented the average length of time researchers observed busy health-care personnel washing or otherwise disinfecting their hands at work. "Previous studies have had ...From lobster flock to lobster feast?
...c.,discovered that lobster larvae by the thousands happened to be settling on large submerged cages the company uses to raise fish. The cages, anchored in 100 feet of water, are about 50 feet high by 80 feet in diameter, making for a total of 12,000 square feet of lobster larvae-snagging surface area.In 2004,...NC State scientist finds soft tissue in T. rex bones
...ossil. But the team was surprised by what actually happened when they removed the minerals from the T. rex femur fragment. The removal process left behind stretchy bone matrix material that, when examined microscopically, seemed to show blood vessels, osteocytes, or bone building cells, and other recognizable...For sardine and anchovy, El Nio events do not always have the same effects
... to find favourable conditions again. That is what happened for the egg-laying periods of April and June 1998, performed just before the transition, which was exceptionally quick that year, of El Nio to a new cold La Nia period favourable for extending the habitat of anchovy. The existence of this habitat "l...Protein tags regulate key ion channel
...cific part of the K2P1 channel, and that when this happened the channel was entirely silent. When a different enzyme removed the SUMO tag, however, ions began to stream through the channel. Understanding the role of sumoylation allowed the team to study the K2P1 channel for the first time. The channel is open...Currents could disrupt ocean food chain
..." Schmittner said, "but the individual transitions happened surprisingly fast. The climate went from a cold state to a warm state in as little as 20 to 50 years. Surface temperatures in Greenland increased 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit and water temperatures increased 10 to 20 degrees." Schmittner said the imp...NSAID drug protects against intestinal tumors in mice, despite poor diet and gene losses
...o an invasive state." Finally, they examined what happened when the knock-out mice were fed a Western diet enhanced with sulindac, an agent they had previously found help suppress tumor formation. To their surprise, none of the knock-out mice developed cancer. "To us this means that as long as an animal can...Neandertal femur suggests competition with hyenas and a shift in landscape use
...cused," Trinkaus said. It's been assumed that this happened in the Upper Paleolithic which is associated with some very late Neandertals and early modern humans. However, this is a femur bone from a Middle Paleolithic Neandertal. It shows in the shape of the femur that a shift to greater mobility had already ...The Ape in the Tree: An intellectual and natural history of proconsul
...' ideas of our distant past. In 1980, when Walker happened to recognize some misidentified bones from the well-known partial skeleton in the National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi, the chance find set him on his own quest to unravel Proconsul's secrets. He began by "excavating" in the museum, turning up still m...Scientists inhibit cancer gene
...absence would cause more tumors to develop, as has happened with other DGKs we have tested. This time, though,...pham says. "This result is interesting, because it happened when the Ras gene was activated. The implication is that a drug therapy could be developed to reduce...Audiovisual integration of speech falters under competing demands for attention
...ful that observers usually do not realize what has happened until they look away from the talker--at which point the illusion breaks up and the true auditory event ("ba") is heard. The currently accepted view on the McGurk illusion and similar multisensory-integration phenomena is that so-called binding proce...Tsunami-damaged coral reefs should be left to recover naturally, say scientists
... Sri Lanka were badly affected by the tsunami that happened in December last year. The damage was mainly caused by the backwash waves returning to the sea that sucked back debris from the shore such as trees, cars, sediment and parts of buildings, which broke and overturned corals. The group recommend that...Love's all in the brain: fMRI study shows strong, lateralized reward, not sex, drive
...eahen," Fisher noted. "But no one has studied what happened in the brain of the viewer, the individual that becomes attracted to these traits. Our study indicates what happens in the brain of the viewer as he or she becomes physiologically attracted to these traits." She added, "This brain system probably ev...... which the gene was "silenced." By showing what happened when the gene was disabled, the researchers determined the normal gene has two key functions: DHR4 determines when metamorphosis should begin, when the fly should begin changing from juvenile to adult. If the gene was crippled, fly larvae started...