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Move over Rover: There's a new sniffing powerhouse in the neighborhood
Nov 19, 2018 | 21:03 pmScientists are now homing in on the secrets behind animals' super sniffers to develop an artificial chemical sensor that could be used for a variety of tasks, from food safety to national security.
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Prototype of robot dog nose
Nov 19, 2018 | 20:59 pmEvery day, thousands of trained K9 dogs sniff out narcotics, explosives and missing people. These dogs are invaluable for security, but they're also expensive. Researchers have made the beginning steps toward an artificial 'robot nose' device that officers could use[…]
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Geneticist solves long-standing finch beak mystery
Nov 19, 2018 | 11:41 amBiologist have compared the genes of large-beaked Cameroonian finches to those of their smaller-beaked counterparts, found the answer to a 20-year old mystery: 300,000 base pairs, apparently inherited as a unit, always varied between them, and right in the middle[…]
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Eleven seal species narrowly escaped extinction
Nov 16, 2018 | 16:06 pmPopulation geneticists have found that eleven seal species only narrowly escaped extinction.
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Predatory behavior of Florida's skull-collecting ant
Nov 16, 2018 | 16:05 pmNew research describes the behavioral and chemical strategies of a Florida ant, Formica archboldi, that decorates its nest with the dismembered body parts of other ant species.
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Human pharmaceuticals change cricket personality
Nov 16, 2018 | 16:05 pmCrickets that are exposed to human drugs that alter serotonin levels in the brain are less active and less aggressive than crickets that have had no drug exposure, according to a new study.
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Establishment of the immortalized cell line derived from Okinawa rail (endangered species)
Nov 16, 2018 | 13:32 pmAs part of the cellular conservation of endangered species, our group initiated a primary cell culture project aimed at preserving endangered avian species in Japan, such as the Okinawa rail. However, primary cells cannot be cultured indefinitely because of cellular[…]
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Drop your weapons!
Nov 15, 2018 | 21:50 pmIt takes energy to make weapons, but it may take even more energy to maintain them. Because leaf-footed bugs drop their legs, it is possible to measure how much energy they allocate to maintaining this appendage that males use to[…]
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Animal populations are shrinking due to their high-risk food-finding strategies
Nov 15, 2018 | 21:50 pmA study using animal-attached technology to measure food consumption in four very different wild vertebrates has revealed that animals using a high-risk strategy to find rarer food are particularly susceptible to becoming extinct, as they fail to gather food for[…]
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Human activity may influence the distribution and transmission of Bartonella bacteria
Nov 15, 2018 | 19:51 pmA new study suggests that humans play an important role in disease risk, infection patterns, and distribution of Bartonella, advancing current understanding of Bartonella's evolutionary history and how the bacteria may be transmitted between humans and other animal species.
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