Backyard
Nature's Direct Feed from |
Backyard
Nature's Direct Feed from |
Last updated on November 21st, 2009
| Barn personnel experience higher-than-average rates of respiratory symptoms: Click here |
| The estimated 4.6 million Americans involved in the equine industry may be at risk of developing respiratory symptoms due to poor air quality in horse barns, according to a questionnaire study. |
| Why bird flu has not caused a pandemic: Click here |
| Bird flu viruses would have to make at least two simultaneous genetic mutations before they could be transmitted readily from human to human, according to new research. |
| An atomic-level look at an HIV accomplice: Click here |
| Since the discovery in 2007 that a component of human semen called SEVI boosts infectivity of the virus that causes AIDS, researchers have been trying to learn more about SEVI and how it works, in hopes of thwarting its infection-promoting activity. |
| Active hearing process in mosquitoes: Click here |
| A mathematical model has explained some of the remarkable features of mosquito hearing. In particular, the male can hear the faintest beats of the female's wings and yet is not deafened by loud noises. |
| Amaizing: Corn genome decoded: Click here |
| In recent years, scientists have decoded the DNA of humans and a menagerie of creatures but none with genes as complex as a stalk of corn, the latest genome to be unraveled. A team of scientists has published the completed corn genome -- an accomplishment that will speed efforts to develop better crop varieties to meet the world's growing demands for food, livestock feed and fuel. |
| First map of chromosome terminals of higher fungi: Click here |
| Scientists have described for the first time how the telomeres and adjacent sequences of the oyster fungus are organized. |
| Antioxidant found in vegetables has implications for treating cystic fibrosis: Click here |
| Scientists have discovered that a dietary antioxidant found in such vegetables as broccoli and cauliflower protects cells from damage caused by chemicals generated during the body's inflammatory response to infection and injury. The finding has implications for such inflammation-based disorders as cystic fibrosis, diabetes, heart disease and neurodegeneration. |
| How fish is cooked affects heart-health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids: Click here |
| Baked or boiled fish is associated with more benefit from heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids than fried, salted or dried fish. Caucasian, Japanese-American and Latino men may be more likely to get the health benefits of fish than African-American or Hawaiian men, perhaps because of how their fish is prepared or genetic predisposition. Omega-3s from plant sources such as soy may do more to improve women's heart health than fish sources. |
| Frog legs trade may facilitate spread of pathogens: Click here |
| Most countries throughout the world participate in the $40-million-per-year culinary trade of frog legs in some way, with 75 percent of frog legs consumed in France, Belgium and the United States. Scientists have found that this trade is a potential carrier of pathogens deadly to amphibians. |
| Why Israeli rodents are more cautious than Jordanian ones: Click here |
| Rodent, reptile and ant lion species behave differently on either side of the Israel-Jordan border. Researchers found that Israeli gerbils are more cautious than their Jordanian friends, and the funnel-digging ant lion population in Israel is unmistakably larger than in Jordan. |
| Bacterially produced antifungal on skin of amphibians may protect against lethal fungus: Click here |
| A new study suggests that naturally occurring bacteria on the skin of salamanders could help protect other amphibians, including some species of endangered frogs, from a lethal skin disease. |
| Let them eat snail: Nutritional giant snails could address malnutrition: Click here |
| A nutritionist in Nigeria says that malnutrition and iron deficiency in schoolchildren could be reduced in her country by baking up snail pie. She explains snail is not only cheaper and more readily available than beef but contains more protein. |
| After mastodons and mammoths, a transformed landscape: Click here |
| Roughly 15,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, North America's vast assemblage of large animals -- including such iconic creatures as mammoths, mastodons, camels, horses, ground sloths and giant beavers -- began their precipitous slide to extinction. |
| Unknowingly consuming endangered tuna: Click here |
| New DNA barcoding shows that nearly a third of the tuna plated in sushi restaurants was bluefin -- even if it was not labeled bluefin on the menu. |
| On the origin of nematodes: Phylogenetic tree of world's most numerous group of animals: Click here |
| Scientists have published the largest nematode phylogenetic tree up until now. It contains over 1,200 species and is entirely based on the analysis of DNA sequence data. |
| How crops survive drought: Click here |
| Breakthrough research done earlier this year by a plant cell biologist has greatly accelerated scientists' knowledge on how plants and crops can survive difficult environmental conditions like drought. In drought conditions certain receptor proteins in plants perceive ABA, causing them to inhibit an enzyme called a phosphatase. The receptor protein is at the top of a signaling pathway in plants, functioning like a boss relaying orders to the team below that then executes particular decisions in the cell. Now recent published studies show how those orders are relayed at the molecular level. |
| Maize cell wall genes identified, giving boost to biofuel research: Click here |
| Scientists have identified and grouped the genes thought to be responsible for cell wall development in maize, an effort that expands their ability to discover ways to produce the biomass best suited for biofuels production. |
| Cigarettes harbor many pathogenic bacteria: Click here |
| Cigarettes are widely contaminated with bacteria, including some known to cause disease in people, concludes a new study conducted by an environmental health researcher and microbial ecologists. The research team describes the study as the first to show that "cigarettes themselves could be the direct source of exposure to a wide array of potentially pathogenic microbes among smokers and other people exposed to secondhand smoke." |
| Sustainable farming may help maintain healthy climate: Click here |
| Sustainable farming, initially adopted to preserve soil quality for future generations, may also play a role in maintaining a healthy climate, according to researchers. |
| Paleontologists find extinction rates higher in open-ocean settings during mass extinctions: Click here |
| Researchers have uncovered a strikingly pattern for ancient mass extinctions: extinctions rates during mass extinctions were significantly higher in open-ocean-facing settings than in epicontinental seas, indicating that open-ocean settings were more susceptible to the mass-extinction-causing agents. |
| New maize map to aid plant breeding efforts: Click here |
| A massive survey of genetic diversity in maize has produced a gene map that should pave the way to significant improvements in a plant that is a major source of food, fuel, animal feed and fiber around the world. |
| New method to measure snow, vegetation moisture with GPS may benefit farmers, meteorologists: Click here |
| Scientists have found a clever way to use traditional GPS satellite signals to measure snow depth as well as soil and vegetation moisture, a technique expected to benefit meteorologists, water resource managers, climate modelers and farmers. |
| Origin of life: Generating RNA molecules in water: Click here |
| A key question in the origin of biological molecules like RNA and DNA is how they first came together billions of years ago from simple precursors. Now, researchers have reconstructed one of the earliest evolutionary steps yet: generating long chains of RNA from individual subunits using nothing but warm water. |
| Flax and yellow flowers can produce bioethanol: Click here |
| Surplus biomass from the production of flax sheaves, and generated from Brassica carinata, a yellow-flowered plant related to those which engulf fields in spring, can be used to produce bioethanol. |
| Adding one single gene to yeast dramatically improves bioethanol production from agricultural waste: Click here |
| With the introduction of a single bacterial gene into yeast, researchers have achieved three improvements in bioethanol production from agricultural waste material: 'More ethanol, less acetate and elimination of the major by-product glycerol' |
| Scientists crack corn code: Reference genome of maize, most important US crop: Click here |
| A four-year, multi-institutional effort co-led by three Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory scientists culminated today in publication of a landmark series of papers in the journal Science revealing in unprecedented detail the DNA sequence of maize. Maize, or corn, as it is commonly called by North American consumers, is one of the world's most important plants and the most valuable agricultural crop grown in the United States, representing $47 billion in annual value. |
| Oil from biotech soybeans increases key omega-3 fatty acid in humans: Click here |
| A modified soybean oil increased the level of an omega-3 fatty acid in humans more than regular soybean oil. The modified oil may provide a plant-based alternative source of omega-3s. However, the oil's health effectiveness as a food ingredient remains to be proven. |
| Lyme disease vaccine? Tick saliva found to protect mice from Lyme disease: Click here |
| A protein found in the saliva of ticks helps protect mice from developing Lyme disease, researchers have discovered. The findings may spur development of a new vaccine against infection from Lyme disease, which is spread through tick bites. |
| The benefits of stress ... in plants: Click here |
| Certain wild flax plants growing in poor soils have succeeded in balancing the stress in their lives -- these plants are less likely to experience infection from a fungal pathogen. The new study attempts to quantitatively explain how plants have evolved a specialization to serpentine soils and ultimately may help to explain floristic diversity in these unique environments. |
| Cousins of prehistoric supercrocodile inhabit lost world of Sahara: Click here |
| Fossils of five ancient crocs, including one with teeth like boar tusks and another with a snout like a duck's bill, have been discovered in the Sahara. The five crocs, three of them newly named species, were part of the bizarre world of crocs that inhabited the southern land mass known as Gondwana some 100 million years ago. |
| Taking aim at hard-to-treat fungal infections: Click here |
| Researchers have developed a new model system to study fungal infections. The system can be a powerful tool for screening potential drug targets for conditions like thrush, athlete's foot and vaginal yeast infections, which affect millions of people each year but are difficult to treat with existing medications. Using the new model, the researchers also identified a gene that may be a promising target for a new anti-fungal drug. |
| Bees can learn differences in food's temperature, study finds: Click here |
| Biologists have discovered that honeybees can discriminate between food at different temperatures, an ability that may assist bees in locating the warm, sugar-rich nectar or high-protein pollen produced by many flowers. |
| How viruses destroy bacteria: Click here |
| Viruses are well known for attacking humans and animals, but some viruses instead attack bacteria. Researchers are exploring how hungry viruses, armed with transformer-like weapons, attack bacteria, which may aid in the treatment of bacterial infections. |
| Is 80-year-old mistake leading to first species to be fished to extinction?: Click here |
| A species of common skate is to become the first marine fish species to be driven to extinction by commercial fishing, due to an error of species classification 80 years ago. |
| Beyond genomics, biologists and engineers decode the next frontier: Click here |
| Biologists and engineers have dramatically improved the speed and accuracy of measuring an enigmatic set of proteins that influences almost every aspect of how cells and tissues function. The new method offers a long-sought tool for studying stem cells, cancer and other problems of fundamental importance to biology and medicine. |
| Predator beetle to battle hemlock pest: Click here |
| Hemlock woolly adelgids (HWA) -- aphidlike insects that have destroyed stands of hemlocks throughout the East Coast -- were first identified in hemlocks in the central Finger Lakes in summer 2008. To battle the hemlock-killing insects, a team of entomologists has released one of the adelgids' natural predators as a case study. |
| First aquarium in US to breed dwarf cuttlefish: Click here |
| Scientists have established a successful captive breeding program for dwarf cuttlefish, Sepia bandensis. The program is the first of its kind in a US aquarium, and offers the academy and other institutions the opportunity to study a species that is both captivating and little known. |
| Winemaking enhanced by DNA technology: Click here |
| In winemaking, grape juice is turned to wine during the fermentation process by the action of a number of essential beneficial microorganisms -- namely, bacteria. Sometimes, though, harmful bacteria also populate the fermentation vat, spoiling the wine in the process. A researcher in Finland has developed new methods based on DNA identification for rapidly and accurately identifying detrimental lactic acid bacteria and acetic acid bacteria during the earliest stages of the wine fermentation process. |
| Termite creates sustainable monoculture fungus-farming: Click here |
| Food production of modern human societies is mostly based on large-scale monoculture crops, but it now appears that advanced insect societies have the same practice. Our societies took just ten thousand years of (mainly cultural) evolution to adopt this habit and we are far from convinced that it is sustainable. Farming ants and termites had tens of millions of years to evolve their fungus farming systems and here monocultures are apparently evolutionary stable. |
| Tooth-binding micelles containing antimicrobials may provide long-term cavity protection: Click here |
| A new study suggests that tooth-binding micelles (or particles) may provide long-term cavity protection by adhering to tooth surfaces and gradually releasing encapsulated antimicrobials. Formulation of a mouthwash-based delivery system is anticipated, ultimately simplifying application and increasing at-home patient compliance. |
| New therapy may be effective against bacterial infections and sepsis: Click here |
| A new study found that certain immune cells primarily associated with asthma and allergies may enhance innate immunity and improve clearance of bacterial infections and may be an effective new therapy against bacterial infections and sepsis in humans. |
| Researchers find new piece of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) puzzle: Click here |
| A new treatment route for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and its human form Creutzfeldt Jakob disease could be a step closer based on new results from scientists in the UK. The team has found that a protein called Glypican-1 plays a key role in the development of BSE. |
| New map of variation in maize genetics holds promise for developing new varieties: Click here |
| A new study of maize has identified thousands of diverse genes in genetically inaccessible portions of the genome. New techniques may allow breeders and researchers to use this genetic variation to identify desirable traits and create new varieties that were not easily possible before. |
| New research into the mechanisms of gene regulation: Click here |
| A team of scientists has taken a large step toward unraveling how regulatory proteins control the production of gene products during development and growth. They focused specifically on the complex process of producing red blood cells (erythrocytes). These cells contain large amounts of hemoglobin, a molecule essential for transporting oxygen throughout the body. The research results could help in the development of important new therapies to combat sickle-cell disease. |
| Microorganism may provide key to combating giant salvinia throughout Louisiana: Click here |
| A team of researchers in Louisiana has found that a naturally occurring microorganism acts as a natural herbicide against giant salvinia. |
| Researchers provide understanding to maize genome sequence: Click here |
| The maize genome sequence is now complete thanks to a decoding effort so challenging even the epic aptitudes of secret agent 007 -- James Bond -- would have come up short. |
| Scientists decode maize genome: Click here |
| Scientists have deciphered the complete genetic code of the maize plant for the first time. The researchers, who have been collaborating for the past four years on the Maize Genome Sequencing Project, have provided the complete sequence and structures of maize genes and their locations, in linear order, on both the genetic and physical maps of maize. |
| Scientists unlock clues for tailoring corn plant for food, energy needs: Click here |
| Scientists have long known that the offspring of two inbred strains tend to be superior to both their parents. Now, a team of researchers has discovered clues to why that might be the case for one of the most important crops in the world: corn. |
