Biology News

Practice makes perfect? Not so much Tuesday, May 21, 2013 - 09:43

New research led by Michigan State University’s Zach Hambrick finds that a copious amount of practice is not enough to explain why people differ in level of skill in two widely studied activities, chess and music.

 

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New study reveals patterns of dinosaur brain development Monday, May 20, 2013 - 10:47

A new study conducted at the University of Bristol and published online today in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology sheds light on how the brain and inner ear developed in dinosaurs.

 

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DNA-Guided Assembly Yields Novel Ribbon-Like Nanostructures Thursday, May 16, 2013 - 12:31

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered that DNA "linker" strands coax nano-sized rods to line up in way unlike any other spontaneous arrangement of rod-shaped objects. The arrangement—with the rods forming "rungs" on ladder-like ribbons linked by multiple DNA strands—results from the collective interactions of the flexible DNA tethers and may be unique to the nanoscale. The research, described in a paper published online in ACS Nano, a journal of the American Chemical Society, could result in the fabrication of new nanostructured materials with desired properties.

 

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Trying to be Happier Works When Listening to Upbeat Music Tuesday, May 14, 2013 - 16:49

The song, “Get Happy,” famously performed by Judy Garland, has encouraged people to improve their mood for decades. Recent research at the University of Missouri discovered that an individual can indeed successfully try to be happier, especially when cheery music aids the process. This research points to ways that people can actively improve their moods and corroborates earlier MU research.

 

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Male Testosterone Levels Increase When Victorious in Competition Against Rivals, but Not Friends Tuesday, May 14, 2013 - 16:44

Sporting events can bring a community together, such as when the Louisville Cardinals won the NCAA championship and University of Louisville campus was filled with camaraderie. They also can fuel bitter rivalries, such as the long-standing animosity between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs. A new University of Missouri study has found that testosterone levels during group competition are modulated depending on the relationships among the competitors and may be related to the formation of alliances in warfare.

 

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Researchers measure oxygen consumption of individual cells Monday, May 13, 2013 - 10:25

How active a living cell is can be seen by its oxygen consumption. The method for determining this consumption has now been significantly improved by chemists in Bochum. The problem up to now was that the measuring electrode altered the oxygen consumption in the cell’s environment much more than the cell itself. “We already found that out twelve years ago,” says Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schuhmann from the Department of Analytical Chemistry at the Ruhr-Universität. “Now we have finally managed to make the measuring electrode an spectator.“ Together with his team, he reports in the “International Edition” of the journal “Angewandte Chemie”.

 

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Scientists Find Key to Gene-Silencing Activity Friday, May 10, 2013 - 10:28

A team led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has found how to boost or inhibit a gene-silencing mechanism that normally serves as a major controller of cells’ activities. The discovery could lead to a powerful new class of drugs against viral infections, cancers and other diseases.

 

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Team Finds Dissimilar Proteins Evolved Similar 7-Part Shape Thursday, May 9, 2013 - 09:31

Solving the structure of a critical human molecule involved in cancer, scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found what they call a good example of structural conservation—dissimilar genes that keep very similar shapes.

 

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