Honeybee decision-making ability rivals any department committee
...owded, its queen and half the hive will swarm to a nearby tree and quietly wait while several hundred scouts go house hunting. To explore the decision-making process, the researchers conducted a series of experiments. To study the waggle dancing for house hunting, the researchers: labeled all 4,000 bees......ce. This species is currently known only from two, nearby localities in northern Laos. Conservationists are eager to begin surveys of this species to document the extent of its range and habitat requirements, in order to get it protected by the Lao government before it becomes threatened by overexploitatio...Duke study examines evolutionary consequences of bluebird aggression
...oxes. She observed the bluebirds' reactions from a nearby blind. She found that when she manipulated the densities of nest boxes prior to the birds' arrival at the breeding ground, more-aggressive males did, indeed, acquire territories with multiple boxes. But when she manipulated the densities after the bi...Lunar rocks suggest meteorite shower
...llion years ago, suggesting that the moon and its nearby neighbor Earth were bombarded by a series of large meteorites at that time. The idea that meteorites have hammered the moon's surface isn't news to scientists. The lunar surface is pock-marked with large craters carved out by the impact of crashing...Brain communicates in analog and digital modes simultaneously
...tterns of activity may be directly communicated to nearby neurons, even in the absence of the generation of the digital code of action potential activity. McCormick said future investigations and models of neuronal operation in the brain will need to take into account the mixed analog-digital nature of com...People prefer belonging to groups in which members can punish freeloaders
...cleaner and thus more popular than a more polluted nearby town whose inhabitants do not punish polluters, the scientists found that a group that punishes or threatens to punish its freeloaders holds a competitive advantage over a nearly identical group that has no mechanism for punishing freeloaders. In the...First direct mechanical communication of mitochondria, cardiomyocyte nucleus shown
...yocyte, that "mitochondria could push and compress nearby structures like myofibrils and modulate their functional properties." This additional evidence of intracellular mechanical signaling "may have important physiological significance," Veksler said. He noted that a "number of studies indicate a sensitiv...Value of services performed by insects tops $57 billion in US
...estimated the losses if dung beetles did not clean nearby plants and cattle environments, which would deter cattle from eating the plants and attract more flies and parasites that would have to be controlled. They also calculated how much fertilizer would be needed to compensate for the nitrogen not being r...Embryos tell story of Earth's earliest animals
...cell's own degradation processes don't destroy it, nearby bacteria will. The embryos must die in the presence of a so-called "reducing" substance, such as hydrogen sulfide. Such reducing substances slow or stop the internal degradation processes that occur very soon after cells die and also inhibit voraciou...Seagrass is in decline worldwide, says UNH researcher
...s were in the plume of fresh water released from a nearby Hydro-Quebec plant. The fresh water influx decreased the salinity so much that the seagrass could no longer survive. Short and his SeagrassNet colleagues have not ruled out global climate change as a factor in the decline of seagrass beds. Yet so far...Biggest physics meeting of the year
...e powerful pulse of sound without the need for any nearby solid wall. Sebastien Balibar ( balibar@lps.ens.fr ), who will report the new results obtained with R. Ishiguro and F. Caupin, says that this work should not only help understanding how far one can pressurize a liquid before it crystallizes but also ...Gene influences antidepressant response
...rker for a still-undiscovered functional variation nearby in the gene. Based on scores on a depression rating scale, close to 80 percent of patients who had AA responded to the antidepressant, compared to about 62 percent of those with GG. Thus, patients with the AA gene type were 16-18 percent more likely...NYU scientists ID key factor in how fruit fly color receptor cells 'decide' their type
...se of some similar biological processes, of other, nearby cells). Desplan said, "Stochastic gene expression is an important and fascinating area in biology; the arrangement of receptors for color vision is an excellent model for considering this area. The research in the Nature paper focuses on the cell'...Scan of human genome reveals evidence of more than 700 recently evolving genes
...here's no time for recombination--the shuffling of nearby genes--to take place. This process produces a characteristic signal of unusual homogeneity among the chromosomes that carry the selected allele. For this project, the scientists scanned through the data for genomic regions that fit this pattern. "W...Infection 'alarm' yields clues to immune system behavior
... localized fight against infection, involving only nearby cells. If TNF's signal was strong enough to set off an immune response involving the entire body, the result could be a high fever and septic shock. "We've developed a better understanding of why the fight against a local infection stays local," said...Astronomer announces shortlist of stellar candidates for habitable worlds
...pot planets like our own in habitable zones around nearby stars. Either approach is tricky and relies on cho... targets for scrutiny out of the many thousands of nearby stars in our galactic neighborhood. Margaret Turnbull, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of...Local involvement in national lands management: Can it work nationwide?
Having a say in how the government manages nearby federal lands makes sense to both local residents and federal officials. But the devil is in the details of how this local input is gathered. Known as adaptive environmental management, the concept is popular in Europe, but has only been officially a...The rising tide of ocean plagues: How humans are changing the dynamics of disease
...surface of the water making it an easy target for nearby birds. Ultimately, the parasite returns to the water in the feces of birds and starts all over with the next snail encounter. "Trematodes require all of the pieces of the puzzle to complete their life cycle when we see a lot of parasites in an es...Disturbing former farmlands can rouse old pesticides, says Dartmouth research
... Once disturbed, these metals can then contaminate nearby surface waters. "We continue to learn more about ...ate was once used, and they compared the data to a nearby uncontaminated field. Their research was published in the January-February issue of the Journal of E...Second low-oxygen pathway hints at cancer, cardiovascular disease physiology
...HIF, in turn, signals for physiological changes in nearby tissue that serve to protect oxygen-deprived cells. These changes include an increase in the number of red blood cells and blood vessels, the dilation of vessels, and changes in cell motility. "These physiological changes make biological sense," expl...