By Deborah Bach-UW Many animals can move with more precision and accuracy than our best-engineering aircraft and technologies—and they do so without gyroscopes, which are rarely found in nature. Gyroscopes measure rotation in everyday technologies, from unpiloted aerial vehicles to cell phone screen stabilizers. Scientists know of just one group of insects, the group including…
By Bjorn Carey-Stanford Many male African cichlid fish attract mates by building pits or “sand castles” on a lake bottom. To study evolution’s effect on behavior, Stanford University biologists have looked at why the fish build these structures, known collectively as bowers. They found that multiple physical traits, which arose in parallel, heavily influence Read…
By Kim Ward-Michigan State Malaria kills a child every minute. While medical researchers have successfully developed effective drugs to kill the malaria parasite, efforts to treat the effects of the disease have not been as successful. But that soon may change. In a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Read Full…
By Andrea Estrada-UCSB When Tsimane men come home to their families after a day of hunting, their levels of oxytocin—the “love hormone”—go up. The Tsimane are an indigenous population of forager-farmers and hunters who live in the lowlands of Bolivia’s Amazon basin. The human hormone system should be particularly well adapted to their lifestyle—small, Read…
By Lisa Chedekel-Boston U. The growth of assisted reproductive technology (ART) has raised concerns about a range of issues, including an excess of preterm births, low birth weight, and newborn deaths. But because previous studies have compared ART birth outcomes with spontaneous conceptions, it hasn’t been clear whether differences in outcomes are related to underlying…
By Marin Hedin-Johns Hopkins Researchers have solved at least part of the puzzle as to how anesthesia blocks pain during surgery. They’ve discovered that anesthetic drugs bind to and interfere with certain proteins that nerve cells need to transmit signals involved in the perception of pain. The discovery should help scientists better understand the workings…
By Tom Abate-Stanford Sixty years ago, Nobel Prize-winning scientist Joshua Lederberg first described a biological mystery. He showed how bacteria could lose the cell walls that define their shapes, potentially becoming less visible to the immune system, only to later revert back to their original form and regain their full infectious potential. Now, using Read…
By Karen Kemp-Duke Children who are older when they start kindergarten do well in the short term, academically and socially. But as teenagers, these old-for-grade students are more likely to drop out and commit serious crimes, new research finds. The negative outcomes are significantly more likely for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. “This research provides the…
By Sonia Fernandez-UCSB Acne, a scourge of adolescence, may be about to meet its high-tech match. By using a combination of ultrasound, gold-covered particles, and lasers, researchers from University of California, Santa Barbara and the private medical device company Sebacia have developed a targeted therapy that could potentially lessen the frequency and intensity of Read…
By Kara Gavin-U. Michigan New research adds more troubling evidence to the case against antipsychotic drugs as a treatment for the delusions, hallucinations, agitation, and aggression that many people with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias experience. The drugs may also hasten their deaths more than previously realized, a new study finds. In the new issue…