All posts from Yesterday
- March 15, 2010
- 11:37 PM
- 14 views
A Gene Story: the Negritos’ Early Southern Migration
by bonvito in time travelling
Current Biology’s article, The Human Genetic History of East Asia: Weaving a Complex Tapestry, presents another interesting evidence on the peopling of East Asia using evidences from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and non-recombining Y chromosomes (NRY) haplogroups.
Stoneking and Delfin’s genetic evidence presented an early southern dispersal that created refugia populations. The authors suggested that Philippine Negritos, [...]... Read more »
Stoneking, M., & Delfin, F. (2010) The Human Genetic History of East Asia: Weaving a Complex Tapestry. Current Biology, 20(4). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.11.052
- March 15, 2010
- 10:08 PM
- 22 views
Yes, the Little Things Matter: Parents' Role in Helping Kids Become Socially Competent
by Amy Webb in The Thoughtful Parent
Parents out there you know how it goes: you play the same game over and over again with your toddler or you help them put together a puzzle. This is the daily "stuff" of parenting and you may feel it doesn't make a difference. Well, turns out, it does make a difference! A recent study from the University of Montreal and the University of Minnesota shows that how parents interact with young children helps them develop crucial cognitive skills. Here's a brief overview of the study:- researchers st........ Read more »
Bernier, A., Carlson, S., & Whipple, N. (2010) From External Regulation to Self-Regulation: Early Parenting Precursors of Young Children’s Executive Functioning. Child Development, 81(1), 326-339. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01397.x
- March 15, 2010
- 09:52 PM
- 11 views
Discriminating Cathinone Analogs
by DrugMonkey in DrugMonkey
sourceMy Google news alert for MDMA, Ecstasy and the like has been turning up references to a cathinone analog called variously 4-methylmethcathinone (4-MMC), mephedrone (2-methylamino-1-p-tolylpropan-1-one), Meow-Meow, MMCAT and a few other things. There has been one fatality attributed* to 4-MMC that I can find and a few bits of seized-drug analysis confirming that the stuff is indeed being used. A quick scan over at PubMed finds little reported on the effects of this compound in animal models........ Read more »
DALCASON, T., YOUNG, R., & GLENNON, R. (1997) Cathinone: An Investigation of Several N-Alkyl and Methylenedioxy-Substituted Analogs. Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, 58(4), 1109-1116. DOI: 10.1016/S0091-3057(97)00323-7
- March 15, 2010
- 09:03 PM
- 17 views
The Red Queen hypothesis in a glass
by Pablo Astudillo in astu's science blog
What factors predominate in evolution? In daily life, the constant evolution of our lives is influenced by our conditions and by external factors. If I want to build a house with my own hands, I have to consider my abilities, some of which are genetic (I am small, thin and I am not strong, so [...]... Read more »
Benton MJ. (2009) The Red Queen and the Court Jester: species diversity and the role of biotic and abiotic factors through time. Science (New York, N.Y.), 323(5915), 728-32. PMID: 19197051
Paterson S, Vogwill T, Buckling A, Benmayor R, Spiers AJ, Thomson NR, Quail M, Smith F, Walker D, Libberton B.... (2010) Antagonistic coevolution accelerates molecular evolution. Nature, 464(7286), 275-8. PMID: 20182425
Falush D. (2009) Toward the use of genomics to study microevolutionary change in bacteria. PLoS genetics, 5(10). PMID: 19855823
- March 15, 2010
- 08:37 PM
- 14 views
Antennectomizing Ants For Science!
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Where last we left our heroes of the Tunisian salt pans, we found that desert ants (Cataglyphis fortis) represent direction by using the sun as a compass in combination with a mental clock to correct for the changing position of the sun. Ants represent distance by counting its steps in 3D space, in [...]... Read more »
Steck, K., Hansson, B., & Knaden, M. (2009) Smells like home: Desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis, use olfactory landmarks to pinpoint the nest. Frontiers in Zoology, 6(1), 5. DOI: 10.1186/1742-9994-6-5
Steck, K., Knaden, M., & Hansson, B. (2010) Do desert ants smell the scenery in stereo?. Animal Behaviour. DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2010.01.011
- March 15, 2010
- 08:11 PM
- 19 views
Picky Octopuses Don't Settle For Less Than The Best HDTV
by Christie Wilcox in Observations of a Nerd
Octopuses* and their cephalopod relatives are some of the smartest animals on the planet. Accordingly, many scientists want to understand how their mind works. To gain insights into the complex minds of cephalopods, researchers have been studying behavior in individual animals for years by presenting different animals with various visual stimuli. But many of the methods have downsides - for example, if you want to see how an octopus reacts to another octopus, you can add an octopus to the tank, ........ Read more »
Pronk, R., Wilson, D., & Harcourt, R. (2010) Video playback demonstrates episodic personality in the gloomy octopus. Journal of Experimental Biology, 213(7), 1035-1041. DOI: 10.1242/jeb.040675
- March 15, 2010
- 07:59 PM
- 17 views
Regeneration in Mice Through a Single Gene Deletion
by Reason in Fight Aging!
You might recall the accidental discovery of unusually potent regeneration in MRL mice by Ellen Heber-Katz's team some years ago: Our laboratory has determined that the MRL mouse strain is unique in its capacity for regenerative wound healing, as shown by the closure of ear punches with normal tissue architecture and cartilage replacement reminiscent of amphibian regeneration as opposed to scarring. One line of research into regenerative medicine is based on understanding and then recreating in ........ Read more »
Khamilia Bedelbaeva, Andrew Snyder, Dmitri Gourevitch, Lise Clark, Xiang-Ming Zhang, John Leferovich, James M. Cheverud, Paul Lieberman, & Ellen Heber-Katz. (2010) Lack of p21 expression links cell cycle control and appendage regeneration in mice. PNAS. info:/10.1073/pnas.1000830107
- March 15, 2010
- 07:40 PM
- 15 views
Krill v. Salps in the Southern Ocean
by Sam in Oceanographer's Choice
Last week, writing about copepods, I mentioned that they make up what is probably the most massive group of animals on earth. I also mentioned the likely runner up: krill. In particular, the Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba.
The Euphausiids are a major group of small, shrimp-like crustaceans found worldwide in the marine plankton. [...]... Read more »
V Loeb, V Siegel, O Holm-Hansen, R Hewitt, W Fraser, W Trivelpiece, S Trivelpiece. (1997) Effects of sea-ice extent and krill or salp dominance on the Antarctic food web. Nature, 897-900. info:/
- March 15, 2010
- 07:03 PM
- 14 views
Vaccinate the kids to protect the “herd”
by geekheartsscience in geek!
Vaccinating young children and adolescents against influenza protects unvaccinated individuals in the wider community (the herd immunity), show results from a clinical trial conducted in rural communities in Canada and published free in the journal JAMA. “Our findings … support selective influenza immunisation of school aged children with inactivated influenza vaccine to interrupt influenza transmission,” [...]... Read more »
Loeb, M., Russell, M., Moss, L., Fonseca, K., Fox, J., Earn, D., Aoki, F., Horsman, G., Van Caeseele, P., Chokani, K.... (2010) Effect of Influenza Vaccination of Children on Infection Rates in Hutterite Communities: A Randomized Trial. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 303(10), 943-950. DOI: 10.1001/jama.2010.250
- March 15, 2010
- 06:02 PM
- 27 views
Altruism has 3 degrees of separation
One of the mysteries of human behaviour is why we sometimes act with completely selfless altruism. When asked to play totally anonymous games in which we can cheat without anyone else ever finding out, very often we don't.Instead, we play the game fairly, which results in a cost to ourselves (compared with what we could've had) and a benefit to the stranger. That's a mystery because a evolution says that organisms which don't act to maximise benefit to themselves - whatever the cost to others -........ Read more »
Fowler, J., & Christakis, N. (2010) Cooperative behavior cascades in human social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0913149107
- March 15, 2010
- 05:16 PM
- 24 views
a marauding star vs. our solar system
by Greg Fish in weird things
Imagine a speeding star plowing through the Oort Cloud surrounding our solar system and sending a stream of comets towards the Sun, a number of them smashing into Jupiter or diverted by the Jovian gravity into the inner solar system where the Earth could easily careen into them. The impacts could easily cause the kind [...]... Read more »
Bobylev, V. (2010) Searching for Stars Closely Encountering with the Solar System. Astronomy Letters, 2010 Vol. 36, No. 3. arXiv: 1003.2160v1
- March 15, 2010
- 05:00 PM
- 28 views
The Drosophila Circadian Clock
by Allison in Dormivigilia
Today, we had a guest seminar speaker, Dr. Bridget Lear, who presented us with the molecular regulation of circadian locomotor activity in the Drosophila. By deleting several of specific genes and interfering with the kinetics of specific ion channels, Bridget is able to modify, and in most cases, eradicate organized circadian locomotor activity... Read more »
Lear, B., Lin, J., Keath, J., McGill, J., Raman, I., & Allada, R. (2005) The Ion Channel Narrow Abdomen Is Critical for Neural Output of the Drosophila Circadian Pacemaker. Neuron, 48(6), 965-976. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2005.10.030
- March 15, 2010
- 01:04 PM
- 42 views
Dyslexia and Brain Connectivity: Insights from Periventricular Nodular Heterotopia
by Livia in Reading and Word Recognition Research
Accessibility Level: Intermediate
One theory of dyslexia is that it stems from abnormal brain connectivity -- that faulty connections between different language areas result in reading difficulty. Now, some evidence from another condition offers some support for this theory.
Periventricular nodular heterotopia (PNH) is a neurological condition in which neurons don’t migrate to the correct
... Read more »
Chang, B., Katzir, T., Liu, T., Corriveau, K., Barzillai, M., Apse, K., Bodell, A., Hackney, D., Alsop, D., Wong, S.... (2007) A structural basis for reading fluency: White matter defects in a genetic brain malformation. Neurology, 69(23), 2146-2154. DOI: 10.1212/01.wnl.0000286365.41070.54
- March 15, 2010
- 01:04 PM
- 33 views
Dry Spell
by Roberta Kwok in Journal Watch Online
Study contradicts idea that drought caused Amazon 'greening'
... Read more »
Samanta, A. et al. (2010) Amazon forests did not green-up during the 2005 drought. Geophysical Research Letters, 37(5). DOI: 10.1029/2009GL042154
- March 15, 2010
- 01:01 PM
- 32 views
Hitting cancer’s Achilles’ heel
by Cancer Research UK in Cancer Research UK - Science Update
Like the mythical Greek hero Achilles, whose heel was his only vulnerable spot, we now know that cancer cells have certain weaknesses that we can exploit. The difficulty is finding them.
Today, new research from Professor Alan Ashworth and his team at The Institute of Cancer Research, who have already been involved in the exploitation of [...]... Read more »
Sarah A. Martin, Nuala McCabe, Michelle Mullarkey, Robert Cummins, Darren J. Burgess, Yusaku Nakabeppu, Sugako Oka, Elaine Kay, Christopher J. Lord, & Alan Ashworth. (2010) DNA Polymerases as Potential Therapeutic Targets for Cancers Deficient in the DNA Mismatch Repair Proteins MSH2 or MLH1. Cancer Cell. info:/10.1016/j.ccr.2009.12.046
- March 15, 2010
- 12:42 PM
- 43 views
Is Weight Loss Associated with Increased Risk of Early Mortality?
by Travis Saunders, MSc in Obesity Panacea
The current recommendations from major health organizations stipulate that if an individual has a BMI in the obese range (>30 kg/m2), they should be counseled to lose at least 5-10% of their body weight. This advice appears to make some sense given that increasing body weight is generally associated with heightened risk of various diseases, and that reduction of body weight usually improves levels of risk factors for disease (e.g blood pressure, triglycerides, etc). However, the literature h........ Read more »
Ingram, D., & Mussolino, M. (2010) Weight loss from maximum body weight and mortality: the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Linked Mortality File. International Journal of Obesity. DOI: 10.1038/ijo.2010.41
- March 15, 2010
- 12:17 PM
- 25 views
Fumbling the Communication Baton in Patient Hand-offs
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
As you may have gathered from various television dramas, medical residents work insane hours. A typical shift “on call” often means 30 straight hours on duty at the hospital, mostly spent on the time-intensive process of admitting new patients. People outside the medical profession often ask why such marathon shifts are necessary, and express surprise [...]... Read more »
Chang, V., Arora, V., Lev-Ari, S., D'Arcy, M., & Keysar, B. (2010) Interns Overestimate the Effectiveness of Their Hand-off Communication. PEDIATRICS, 125(3), 491-496. DOI: 10.1542/peds.2009-0351
- March 15, 2010
- 12:00 PM
- 23 views
The bizarre history of rangeland management research
by JL in Analyze Everything
As with the paper from last Friday, today's paper comes from "Ecological Restoration", one of the few journals that is delivered, in print, to our office. So yeah, I've been reading through it. This paper is by Sayre (2010; full cite below) and is basically about how the cultural and scientific beliefs of those living in the desert southwest have shaped the way that restoration has occurred ... Read more »
Sayre, N. (2010) Climax and "Original Capacity": The Science and Aesthetics of Ecological Restoration in the Southwestern USA. Ecological Restoration, 28(1), 23-31. DOI: 10.3368/er.28.1.23
- March 15, 2010
- 10:16 AM
- 34 views
How Loss Creates Depression And Growth
by Cole Bitting in Fable
The Creative Destruction of Loss: Can We Grow More Than We Wither?
Height is a trait: the taller the man, the greater the (evolutionary) fitness, at least to a certain point. The average height of a population closely approximates the optimal height. There is a distribution around this optimal norm: some are taller and some are shorter. Neuroticism,1 like height, is also a trait.
Language is an adaptation - an innate capacity baked into our DNA. Language skill is a trait, influenced by ge........ Read more »
NETTLE, D. (2004) Evolutionary origins of depression: a review and reformulation. Journal of Affective Disorders, 81(2), 91-102. DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2003.08.009
Brewin, C., Gregory, J., Lipton, M., & Burgess, N. (2010) Intrusive images in psychological disorders: Characteristics, neural mechanisms, and treatment implications. Psychological Review, 117(1), 210-232. DOI: 10.1037/a0018113
Brewin, C., Dalgleish, T., & Joseph, S. (1996) A dual representation theory of posttraumatic stress disorder. Psychological Review, 103(4), 670-686. DOI: 10.1037/0033-295X.103.4.670
Nettle, D. (2009) An evolutionary model of low mood states. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 257(1), 100-103. DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2008.10.033
Watkins, E. (2008) Constructive and unconstructive repetitive thought. Psychological Bulletin, 134(2), 163-206. DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.134.2.163
Nettle, D. (2006) The evolution of personality variation in humans and other animals. American Psychologist, 61(6), 622-631. DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.61.6.622
- March 15, 2010
- 09:50 AM
- 32 views
Tumour associated macrophages and survival in Hodgkins Lymphoma
by Sally Church in Pharma Strategy Blog
While reading my pile of mail on Friday, I realised that an interesting paper on Hodgkins Lymphoma (HL) appeared in the current edition of the New England Journal of Medicine (full reference below). The basics of the paper are that...... Read more »
Steidl C, Lee T, Shah SP, Farinha P, Han G, Nayar T, Delaney A, Jones SJ, Iqbal J, Weisenburger DD.... (2010) Tumor-associated macrophages and survival in classic Hodgkin's lymphoma. The New England journal of medicine, 362(10), 875-85. PMID: 20220182
DeVita, V., & Costa, J. (2010) Toward a Personalized Treatment of Hodgkin's Disease. New England Journal of Medicine, 362(10), 942-943. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMe0912481
Kunisch, E. (2004) Macrophage specificity of three anti-CD68 monoclonal antibodies (KP1, EBM11, and PGM1) widely used for immunohistochemistry and flow cytometry. Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, 63(7), 774-784. DOI: 10.1136/ard.2003.013029
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