March 2009
164 posts
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Can talking to plants bear fruit? →
Much-derided claims that talking to plants can help them grow are being tested in a serious study at the Royal Horticultural Society’s (RHS) gardens.
For 30 days tomato plants at Wisley in Surrey will “listen” to voices through MP3 headphones attached to their pots…. (continues @ BBC News)
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Polypill 'Could Become A Reality' →
A cheap five-in-one pill can guard against heart attacks and stroke, research suggests.
The concept of a polypill for everyone over 55 to cut heart disease by up to 80% was mooted over five years ago, but slow progress has been made since.
Now a trial in India shows such a pill has the desired effects and is safe and well-tolerated by those who take it…. (continues @ BBC News)
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Nine Lives: Cats' Central Nervous System Can... →
In a study published March 30, 2009 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison reports that the restoration in cats of myelin — a fatty insulator of nerve fibers that degrades in a host of human central nervous system disorders, the most common of which is multiple sclerosis — can le lead to functional recovery….
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Building a Brain on a Silicon Chip →
An international team of scientists in Europe has created a silicon chip designed to function like a human brain. With 200,000 neurons linked up by 50 million synaptic connections, the chip is able to mimic the brain’s ability to learn more closely than any other machine.
(via Technology Review & BoingBoing)
This is a cool idea. However, it is one thing to build a chip, but...
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Massive Lions Recently Prowled North America →
From Scientific American:
Large lions roamed North America and Europe as recently as 13,000 years ago, according to a new study published in Molecular Ecology. “These ancient lions were like a super-sized version of today’s lions, up to 25 percent bigger,” study co-author Ross Barnett, a researcher at the Ancient Biomolecules Centre at the University of Oxford’s...
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Why Pygmies? Understanding The Evolution of The... →
Some human populations in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia are of extraordinarily small stature: they are called pygmies. All of them inhabit rainforests that are warm and humid. Although they bear a common name, genetic work shows that each group has evolved independently, so it is better to speak of “the pygmy phenotype….”
A new paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution...
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Bayer Trying to Limit Disclosure on Explosion →
Last August, an explosion tore through the Bayer CropScience chemical plant [in West Virginia], killing two employees and raising the fears of residents in what has long been known as Chemical Valley.
Now, a federal agency wants to hold a public hearing to lay out its preliminary findings about what caused the accident. But Bayer, citing a terrorism-related federal law, is trying to limit what...
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Marjorie Grene, a Leading Philosopher of Biology,... →
With an uncompromising, volatile brilliance, Marjorie Grene helped shape a modern philosophical approach to biology, opening a new field that strives to interpret the deepest meanings of the scientific study of life, including the meaning of humanness.
A philosopher of biology who once spent time as a farmer’s wife writing scholarly works before doing chores, Dr. Grene was one of the first...
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Among Climate Scientists, a Dispute Over ‘Tipping... →
The language was apocalyptic. Last month, a leading climate scientist warned that Earth’s rising temperatures were poised to set off irreversible disasters if steps were not taken quickly to stop global warming.
“The climate is nearing tipping points,” the NASA climate scientist James E. Hansen wrote in The Observer newspaper of London. “If we do not change course, we’ll hand our children a...
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Favorite Free PC Tools
So, I thought it might be interesting for me to once in a while list free computer utilities that I’ve come to depend upon. In this first list, I’m going to give some links for some basic tools that keep my Windows computers up and running smoothly. I’m currently running Windows XP, Vista, and 7. Although a lot of these utilities apply to all Windows operating systems, some...
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Insight Into The Way Nicotine Works In The Brain →
A tiny genetic mutation is the key to understanding why nicotine—which binds to brain receptors with such addictive potency—is virtually powerless in muscle cells that are studded with the same type of receptor….
By all rights, nicotine ought to paralyze or even kill us, explains Dennis Dougherty, the George Grant Hoag Professor of Chemistry at Caltech and one of the leaders...
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Drinking Very Hot Tea Can Increase The Risk Of... →
People are advised to wait a few minutes before drinking a cup of freshly-boiled tea today as a new study, published on the British Medical Journal website, finds that drinking very hot tea (70°C or more) can increase the risk of cancer of the oesophagus, the muscular tube that carries food from the throat to the stomach.
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Sexual Reproduction: Birds Do It, Bees Do It;... →
Scientists at North Carolina State University and three universities in Japan have shown for the first time that it is possible for certain female termite “primary queens” to reproduce both sexually and asexually during their lifetimes.
The asexually produced babies mostly grow to be queen successors – so-called “secondary queens” – that remain in the termite colony and...
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Do New Bulbs Save Energy if They Don’t Work? →
It sounds like such a simple thing to do: buy some new light bulbs, screw them in, save the planet.
But a lot of people these days are finding the new compact fluorescent bulbs anything but simple. Consumers who are trying them say they sometimes fail to work, or wear out early. At best, people discover that using the bulbs requires learning a long list of dos and don’ts….
Some experts...
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Advisory Against Visiting Caves →
I guess I’m not going to drive down to Mammoth Cave National Park this spring
Federal officials are asking people to stay out of caves in states from West Virginia to New England, where as many as 500,000 bats have died from a disease called white-nose syndrome.
The Fish and Wildlife Service made the request to guard against the possibility that people are unwittingly spreading the...
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New and Improved Blog!
Sorry for the blog not working super well tonight. I have little html/css knowledge, but I’m trying to code some improvements. I think everything is working better now….let me know if you are having problems!
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A Venomous Tale: How Lizards Can Shed Their Tail... →
What is the main factor that determines a lizard’s ability to shed its tail when predators attack?
The answer, in a word: Venom.
Tail-shedding, known to scientists as caudal autotomy, is a common anti-predator defense among lizards. When attacked, many lizards jettison the wriggling appendage and flee. The predator often feasts on the tail while the lucky lizard scurries to safety....
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“My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual...”
– David Attenbourough (2003) “Wild, Wild Life” via Wikipedia
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Watch“Where The Wild Things Are” movie trailer
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New Blog Address!!! brylog.bfsinger.com
Hello everyone, you can now reach my blog at brylog.bfsinger.com! Typeing in the old address (brylog.tumblr.com) will still work, but will send you to the new page
Enjoy!!!
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Gorillas may not be as vegetarian as they are... →
GORILLAS are gentle giants, chimpanzees aggressive killers and bonobos sex-crazed vegetarians. That, at least, is the PR which has been created around the three species of ape most closely related to man. They are simple stories—and simple stories sell books, TV programmes and even, whisper it softly, newspaper articles.
In nature, of course, things are a little more complicated. Chimpanzees...
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Forget It! A Biochemical Pathway For Blocking Your... →
A receptor for glutamate, the most prominent neurotransmitter in the brain, plays a key role in the process of “unlearning,” report researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies….
“Most studies focus on ‘learning,’ but the ‘unlearning’ process is probably just as important and much less understood,” says Stephen F. Heinemann,...
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Bees Prefer Shortest Distance Between Two Flowers →
Insects such as honeybees and bumble bees are predictable in the way they move among flowers, typically moving directly from one flower to an adjacent cluster of flowers in the same row of plants. The bees’ flight paths have a direct affect on their ability to hunt for pollen and generate “gene flow”, fertilization and seed production that results when pollen moves from one...
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Feds' plan to poison banks of Rio Grande stalled →
Federal officials postponed poisoning a mile-long stretch of the Rio Grande’s banks this week after residents complained that doing so posed health and environmental risks on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it wants to eradicate the invasive Carrizo cane infesting many portions of the Rio Grande’s banks between Texas and Mexico. The lanky...
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Boxed Water: It's What's for Drinking →
Boxed milk and juices are a supermarket staple, but one company is now selling boxed water.
Boxed Water Is Better sells water in cartons, ditching the plastic bottles while reducing the overall carbon footprint of packing and distribution by 80%. 20% of the company’s profits are passed along to reforestation (10%) and water relief (10%) while you sip on the sweet hydrogen/oxygen nectar...
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Scientists Examine Asteroid Remains →
Scientists who for the first time tracked an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, and watched as it exploded in the atmosphere, have now picked up some of the remnants on the ground. The discovery and analysis of the meteorites, reported in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature, give scientists solid data on the composition of meteorites that originate from what are known as F-class...
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Device Provides Household Energy Savings of 12% →
A team of researchers from the UPC Center for Technological Innovation in Static Converters and Actuators (CITCEA-UPC) has designed the device “100% Off,” which disconnects electronic appliances in stand-by mode and reduces their power consumption to zero. The device is compatible with all existing appliances, and the technology is adaptable to other equipment manufactured in the...
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To Fight Drug Addiction, Researchers Target The... →
A precise, new nanotechnology treatment for drug addiction may be on the horizon as the result of research conducted at the University at Buffalo.
Scientists in UB’s Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics and UB’s Department of Medicine have developed a stable nanoparticle that delivers short RNA molecules in the brain to “silence” or turn off a gene that plays...
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Evolution Of Fins And Limbs Linked With That Of... →
The genetic toolkit that animals use to build fins and limbs is the same genetic toolkit that controls the development of part of the gill skeleton in sharks, according to a new study.
The research builds on the breakthrough discovery of the fossil Tiktaalik, a “fish with legs,” by Neil Shubin and his colleagues in 2006 - “This is another example of how evolution uses common...
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Rocket Scientists Shoot Down Mosquitoes With... →
A quarter-century ago, American rocket scientists proposed the “Star Wars” defense system to knock Soviet missiles from the skies with laser beams. Some of the same scientists are now aiming their lasers at another airborne threat: the mosquito….
The scientists’ actual target is malaria, which is caused by a parasite transmitted when certain mosquitoes bite people....
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Briny Pools 'May Exist On Mars' →
Pools of salty water might be able to exist just below the surface of Mars, planetary scientists believe.
Researchers previously thought water existed largely as ice or as vapour on Mars, because of the low temperatures and atmospheric pressure.
But Nasa’s Phoenix lander has shown the presence in Martian soil of perchlorate salts, which can keep water liquid at temperatures of minus...
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'Ice That Burns' May Yield Clean, Sustainable... →
In the future, natural gas derived from chunks of ice that workers collect from beneath the ocean floor and beneath the arctic permafrost may fuel cars, heat homes, and power factories. Government researchers are reporting that these so-called “gas hydrates,” a frozen form of natural gas that bursts into flames at the touch of a match, show increasing promise as an abundant,...
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Setback For Climate Technical Fix →
The biggest ever investigation into “ocean fertilisation” as a climate change fix has brought modest results. The idea is that putting iron filings in the ocean will stimulate growth of algae, which will absorb CO2 from air. ….
Previous experiments, which have been going on for at least a decade, had indicated that iron particles could stimulate the growth of phytoplankton -...
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New 'Green' Pesticides Are First To Exploit Plant... →
Exploiting a little-known punch/counterpunch strategy in the ongoing battle between disease-causing fungi and crop plants, scientists in Canada are reporting development of a new class of “green” fungicides that could provide a safer, more environmentally-friendly alternative to conventional fungicides.
Developed with sustainable agriculture in mind, the new fungicides — called...
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Synthetic Blood From Embryos →
UK scientists plan a major research project to see if synthetic human blood can be made from embryonic stem cells. Led by the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service, the three year trial could provide an unlimited supply of blood for emergency transfusions.
The blood should be free of infections like the human form of mad cow disease.
Teams will test human embryos left over from IVF...
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Wildlife flee Kenyan forest fires →
Hundreds of thousands of flamingos….Zebras, buffaloes, antelopes, gazelles and giraffes have fled the fires, crossing roads and residential areas to reach safety….But some wildlife experts said snakes and smaller animals, like rabbits and mongooses, may not have managed to escape….
Police say they suspect some of the still-raging blazes were started by communities to make...
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New Stem Cell Therapy May Lead To Treatment For... →
Deafness affects more than 250 million people worldwide. It typically involves the loss of sensory receptors, called hair cells, for their “tufts” of hair-like protrusions, and their associated neurons. The transplantation of stem cells that are capable of producing functional cell types might be a promising treatment for hearing impairment, but no human candidate cell type has been...
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Bees And Ants 'Operate In Teams' →
Bees and ants are true team players unlike other creatures who seek safety in numbers for selfish reasons….[Researchers] found that bison or fish want to get to the centre of large groups to keep themselves safe from predators. Ants and bees worked together as a single unit, and were prepared to die for the greater good of the colony….
In some co-operative groups of animals -...