Biosentients - Science Biology… etc

The inland areas of the Pacific Northwest, where rainfall averages only 4 to 12 inches per year, present growing challenges for vineyard owners and wine grape producers. The arid conditions in this part of the country have not been conducive for vineyard owners who produce and market high-quality wine grapes……..

Census of Marine Life-affiliated scientists, plumbing the secrets of a vast underwater mountain range south of New Zealand, captured the first images of a novel Brittlestar City established against daunting odds on the peak of a seamount an underwater summit taller than the worlds tallest building……..

Divorce is widespread, not only in humans, but also in socially monogamous birds like the blue tit. Behavioural ecologists Mihai Valcu and Bart Kempenaers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen found divorce rates of up to 50% in a long-term study of this species. But why do partners split up? To answer this question, it helps to know who suffers and who benefits from the separation (Animal Behaviour, April 23, 2008)……..

Thanks once again to Jackie Chambers, UBC Botanical Garden horticulturist, for supplying both the photograph and write-up for today’’s ………

A team of Penn State scientists has developed a simple artificial cell with which to investigate the organization and function of two of the most basic cell components: the cell membrane and the cytoplasm–the gelatinous fluid that surrounds the structures in living cells. The work could lead to the creation of new drugs that take advantage of properties of cell organization to prevent the development of diseases. The team’s findings will be published later this month in the Journal of the American Chemical Society……..

Researchers of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena succeeded in capturing syntrophic (means “feeding together”) microorganisms that are known to dramatically reduce the oceanic emission of methane into the atmosphere. These microorganisms that oxidize methane anaerobically are an important component of the global carbon cycle and a major sink for methane on Earth. Methane — a more than 20 times stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide — constantly seeps out large methane hydrate reservoirs in the ocean floors, but 80 percent of it are immediately consumed by these microorganisms. The importance of the anaerobic oxidation of methane for the Earth’s climate is known since 1999 and various international research groups work on isolating the responsible microorganisms, so far with little success. Pernthaler and co-workers developed a new molecular technique to selectively separate these microorganisms from their natural complex community, and subsequently sequenced their genome. The findings were exciting: Besides identifying all genes responsible for the anaerobic oxidation of methane, new bacterial partners of this syntrophic association were discovered and the ability to fix N2 could be demonstrated. The work has been reported in the current issue of the renowned Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)……..

Communities of Oregon white oak were once widespread in the Pacific Northwests western lowlands, but, today, they are in decline. Fire suppression, conifer and invasive plant encroachment, and land use change have resulted in the loss of as much as 99 percent of the oak communities historically present in some areas of the region……..

As Charles Darwin showed nearly 150 years ago, bird beaks are exquisitely adapted to the birds’ feeding strategy. A team of MIT mathematicians and engineers has now explained exactly how some shorebirds use their long, thin beaks to defy gravity and transport food into their mouths. The phalarope, usually found in western North America, takes advantage of surface interactions between its beak and water droplets to propel bits of food from the tip of its long beak to its mouth, the research team reports in the May 16 issue of Science……..

It’s a paradox that has confounded evolutionary biologists since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859: Since parasites depend on their hosts for survival, why do they harm them? A new University of Georgia and Emory University study of monarch butterflies and the microscopic parasites that hitch a ride on them finds that the parasites strike a middle ground between the benefits gained by reproducing rapidly and the costs to their hosts. The study, reported in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides the first empirical evidence in a natural system of what’s called the “trade-off hypothesis”……..

The genetic profile of two large Georgia families with high rates of late-onset Alzheimer’s disease points to a gene that may cause the disease, scientists say. Genetic variations called single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, are common in DNA, but this pattern of SNPs shows up in nine out of 10 affected family members, says Dr. Shirley E. Poduslo, neuroscientist in the Medical College of Georgia Schools of Medicine and Graduate Studies and the Charlie Norwood Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Augusta……..