Biosentients - Science Biology… etc

Deworming lambs can be minimized with rotational grazing and checking the animals’ eye color, as per an Agricultural Research Service (ARS) study. Animal scientist Joan Burke at the ARS Dale Bumpers Small Farms Research Center in Booneville, Ark., and his colleagues made this finding as part of a continuing collaboration with scientists, veterinarians, and extension agents from the Southern Consortium for Small Ruminant Parasite Control……..

noise increases; and just like humans, at a certain point, it appears to become too costly to continue to shout, as per marine and acoustic scientists. “The impacts of increases in ocean noise from human activities are a concern for the conservation of marine animals like right whales,” said Susan Parks, assistant professor of acoustics and research associate, Applied Research Laboratory, Penn State. “The ability to change vocalizations to compensate for environmental noise is critical for successful communication in an increasingly noisy ocean”……..

Rearing juvenile salmon at the relatively high temperature of 16C causes skeletal deformities in the fish. Scientists writing in the open access journal BMC Physiology investigated both the magnitude and mechanisms of this effect, which occurs when salmon farmers use warmed water to increase fish growth rates……..

The researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Gera number of, who ‘fathered’ the Digital Embryo have now given it wings, creating the Fly Digital Embryo. In work published recently in Nature Methods, they were able to capture fruit fly development on film, and were the first to clearly record how a zebrafish’s eyes and midbrain are formed. The improved technique will also help to shed light on processes and organisms, which have so far been under-studied because they could not be followed under a microscope……..

In a novel mathematical model that reproduces sleep patterns for multiple species, an international team of scientists has demonstrated that the neural circuitry that controls the sleep/wake cycle in humans may also control the sleep patterns of 17 different mammalian species. These findings, reported by scientists from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), the University of Sydney, and the Center for Integrated Research and Understanding of Sleep (Camperdown, Australia), suggest that fundamental physiological mechanisms are at work across diverse species, even though sleep patterns vary drastically. This research published June 24th in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology……..

In a breeding experiment with Houbara bustards - a North African bird species with a very distinctive courtship behaviour, researchers have concluded that visual stimulation from attractive males of the same species positively affects brooding females, improving offspring growth. Females that observed highly displaying male birds in the experiment were more fertile and had a greater breeding success due to an increased allocation of testosterone into their eggs, leading to an increase in the growth rate in chicks. The results showed that using artificial insemination without appropriate stimulation of breeding females probably has negative impacts on their breeding performance and can therefore even affect the survival of a species, as per Adeline Loyau and Frederic Lacroix in the online edition of Proceedings of the Royal Society B…….

Yale University engineers have for the first time created 3D models of whole intact mouse organs, a feat they accomplished using fluorescence microscopy. The team reports its findings in the May/recent issue of the Journal of Biomedical Optics, as per a research findings published online this week. Combining an imaging technique called multiphoton microscopy with “optical clearing,” which uses a solution that renders tissue transparent, the scientists were able to scan mouse organs and create high-resolution images of the brain, small intestine, large intestine, kidney, lung and testicles. They then created 3D models of the complete organs-a feat that, until now, was only possible by slicing the organs into thin sections or destroying them in the process, a disadvantage if more information about the sample is needed after the fact……..

The economically important, environmentally sensitive Atlantic salmon species is one step closer to having its genome fully sequenced, thanks to an international collaboration involving researchers, funding agencies and industry from Canada, Chile and Norway. Genome BC partnered with the Chilean Economic Development Agency, InnovaChile, Norwegian Research Council, Norwegian Fishery and Aquaculture Industry Research Fund to form the International Cooperation to Sequence the Atlantic Salmon Genome (the Cooperation)……..

Coral reefs - kaleidoscopes of pink anemones and silver sharks - are the planet’s most colorful ecosystems and among its most endangered, say marine scientists. As global warming raises ocean temperatures, a number of corals blanch and die, a phenomenon called “coral bleaching.” And pumping large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere could make the ocean more acidic, further decimating corals and the fish that depend on them for food and shelter……..

Travel from the tropics to the poles, and you’ll notice that the diversity of mammals declines with distance from the equator. Move from lowland to mountains, and you’ll see diversity increase as the landscape becomes more varied. Ecologists have proposed various explanations for these well-known “biodiversity gradients,” invoking ecological, evolutionary and historical processes……..