What is it about elite sprinters that gives them the edge over non-sprinters in the 100m dash? Stephen Piazza from the Pennsylvania State University publishes his discovery, in The Journal of Experimental Biology, that the ...
Other
Oct 30, 2009
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Barnacles are a big problem for boats. Adhering to the undersides of vessels, carpets of the crustaceans can increase fuel consumption by as much as 25%. Ship owners would love to know how to stop these hitchhikers gluing ...
Biochemistry
Oct 16, 2009
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Since the human response to infection is highly complex, research to understand how people fight infection is facilitated by studying how similar processes occur in simpler organisms. Zebrafish are becoming an important model ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 24, 2009
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Marathon runners are famed for pasta packing in the days before a big run but when tiny passerine birds set out on their epic migrations, the distances are too great to cover on the energy reserves with which they embark. ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 11, 2009
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Most lacertid lizards are content scurrying in and out of nooks and crannies in walls and between rocks. However, some have opted for an arboreal life style. Neon blue tailed tree lizards (Holaspis guentheri) leap from branch ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 17, 2009
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It's a terrible sight: hundreds of dead seabirds washed up on the seashore. These catastrophic events occur in the winter and are known as winter wrecks. No one knows why the birds perish, and it is almost impossible to study ...
Ecology
Jul 17, 2009
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We can only marvel at the way that dolphins, whales and porpoises scythe through water. Their finlike flippers seem perfectly adapted for maximum aquatic agility. However, no one had ever analysed how the animals' flippers ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 26, 2009
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The world is a perilous place for the endangered manatee. While the mammals are at risk from natural threats, human activity also poses a great danger to manatee numbers. Debborah Colbert, from the Association of Zoos and ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 12, 2009
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Fingerprints mark us out as individuals and leave telltale signs of our presence on every object that we touch, but what are fingerprints really for? According to Roland Ennos, from the University of Manchester, other primates ...
Evolution
Jun 12, 2009
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In a new study published in Disease Models & Mechanisms, scientists use the zebrafish to gain insight into the influence of known cancer genes on the development and progression of melanoma, an aggressive form of human skin ...
Cell & Microbiology
May 26, 2009
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