Page 27 - Cell Press News Today

Its well known that reptiles depend on temperature cues while in the egg to determine a hatchlings sex. Now, researchers writing in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution on May 26 say that embryos of many different animal species also rely on acoustic signals in important ways. They call this phenomenon acoustic developmental programming.

The embryos are essentially dependent upon sound cues to prepare them for the outside world. 

Researchers in Kenya and worldwide are seeking new ideas for ventilation systems So the researchers wanted to see whether the same was true in mice, rats and pigs — common animal subjects new ideas are tested on humans. "Also, we know that [parts] of the rectum are suitable for drug or nutrient absorption," Takebe said. The rectum can serve as a route to administer drugs or fluids, which are then absorbed by blood vessels and flow into the bodys circulatory system.   Oxygenation like a...

Credit: Aron Hejdström, CAnMove Swifts arent called "swifts" for nothing. Theyre known for being among the fastest migrating small birds around. When they arent breeding, common swifts stay in the air most of the time--up to 10 months of the year. Scientists had thought they travel about 500 kilometers per day on average. Now, new evidence reported in the journal iScience on May 20 shows thats a conservative estimate. According to new tracking data, common swifts travel 570 kilometers (more ...

They got the idea from aquatic creatures like sea cucumbers and catfish, which can take in oxygen through their intestines. But before shoving a hose up anyones rear, they had to find out whether it could even work in mammals. First up were mice. Mice subjected to an environment with lethally low levels of oxygen without the ability to breathe through their bums died within minutes, but three-quarters of those with a specially designed "intestinal gas ventilation system" made it almost an hour....

 E-Mail Rodents and pigs share with certain aquatic organisms the ability to use their intestines for respiration, finds a study publishing May 14th in the journal Med. The researchers demonstrated that the delivery of oxygen gas or oxygenated liquid through the rectum provided vital rescue to two mammalian models of respiratory failure. "Artificial respiratory support plays a vital role in the clinical management of respiratory failure due to severe illnesses such as pneumonia or acute respi...

 E-Mail IMAGE: This illustration represents the overfitted brain hypothesis of dreaming, which claims that the sparse and hallucinatory quality of dreams is not a bug, but a feature, since it helps prevent... view more  Credit: Georgia Turner The question of why we dream is a divisive topic within the scientific community: its hard to prove concretely why dreams occur and the neuroscience field is saturated with hypotheses. Inspired by techniques used to train deep neural networks, Er...

Researchers identify six “words” used by specific immune cells to call up immune defense genes UCLA life scientists have identified six "words" that specific immune cells use to call up immune defense genes -- an important step toward understanding the language the body uses to marshal responses to threats. In addition, they discovered that the incorrect use of two of these words can activate the wrong genes, resulting in the autoimmune disease known as Sjögrens syndrome. The research, con...

Credit: San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance The once-abundant California condor briefly went extinct in the wild, with only 22 individuals living in captivity by 1982. Today, 300 condors live freely in the wild and another 200 are in captivity. But, despite the condors struggles, a new study of the California condor genome reported in the journal Current Biology on May 13 has found a surprising amount of genetic diversity. The study is the first to begin quantifying diversity across the entire Ca...

  In this image from a microscopy video, scientists "listen" to macrophages as they responded to an immune threat. Credit: Brooks Taylor/ UCLA Life Sciences Read Time: UCLA life scientists have identified six "words" that specific immune cells use to call up immune defense genes -- an important step toward understanding the language the body uses to marshal responses to threats. In addition, they discovered that the incorrect use of two of these words can activate the wrong genes, resulting ...