http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Researchers have discovered where basking sharks - the world's second largest fish - hide out for half of every year, according to a report published today in Current Biology. The discovery revises scientists' understanding of the iconic species and highlights just how little we still know about even the largest of marine animals, the researchers said. http://www.physorg.com/news160921814.html Biology Thu, 07 May 2009 13:30:52 EST news160921814 It's a bird. It's a plane. It's a potentially deadly combination. http://www.physorg.com/news160674609.html Biology Mon, 04 May 2009 16:50:33 EST news160674609 South Korea on Wednesday conditionally lifted a ban on stem cell research using human eggs, three years after outlawing the practice because a scientist was found to have faked his work. http://www.physorg.com/news160208331.html Biology Wed, 29 Apr 2009 07:19:32 EST news160208331 Animals that seem identical may belong to completely different species. This is the conclusion of researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, who have used DNA analyses to discover that one of our most common segmented worms is actually two types of worm. The result is one of many suggesting that the variety of species on the earth could be considerably larger than we thought. http://www.physorg.com/news159631527.html Biology Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:13:39 EST news159631527 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from the United States and Canada have found a fossil skeleton of a newly discovered carnivorous animal, Puijila darwini. New research suggests Puijila is a "missing link" in the evolution of the group that today includes seals, sea lions, and the walrus. The analysis of the skeleton and support for the hypotheses that pinniped origins can be found in the Arctic will be described in the April 23 issue of the journal Nature. http://www.physorg.com/news159625083.html Other Sciences Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:18:27 EST news159625083 Populations of major wild grazing animals that are the heart and soul of Kenya's cherished and heavily visited Masai Mara National Reserve -including giraffes, hartebeest, impala, and warthogs -have "decreased substantially" in only 15 years as they compete for survival with a growing concentration of human settlements in the region, according to a new study published today in the May 2009 issue of the British Journal of Zoology. http://www.physorg.com/news159599572.html Biology Wed, 22 Apr 2009 06:13:35 EST news159599572 (PhysOrg.com) -- New calculations made by marine chemists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) suggest that low-oxygen "dead zones" in the ocean could expand significantly over the next century. These predictions are based on the fact that, as more and more carbon dioxide dissolves from the atmosphere into the ocean, marine animals will need more oxygen to survive. http://www.physorg.com/news159200016.html Space & Earth Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:15:09 EST news159200016 The common research worm, C. elegans, is able to use heat-sensing nerve cells to not only regulate its response to hotter environments, but also to control the pace of its aging as a result of that heat, according to new research at the University of California, San Francisco. http://www.physorg.com/news159109624.html Biology Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:07:44 EST news159109624 (PhysOrg.com) -- Move over, Y chromosome - it's time X got some attention. In the first evolutionary study of the chromosome associated with being female, University of California, Berkeley, biologist Doris Bachtrog and her colleagues show that the history of the X chromosome is every bit as interesting as the much-studied, male-determining Y chromosome, and offers important clues to the origins and benefits of sexual reproduction. http://www.physorg.com/news159105336.html Biology Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:56:19 EST news159105336 Researchers have discovered an important element for making night vision possible in nocturnal mammals: the DNA within the photoreceptor rod cells responsible for low light vision is packaged in a very unconventional way, according to a report in the April 17th issue of Cell, a Cell Press publication. That special DNA architecture turns the rod cell nuclei themselves into tiny light-collecting lenses, with millions of them in every nocturnal eye. http://www.physorg.com/news159105142.html Biology Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:53:01 EST news159105142 Once thought to be only the realm of the blue-ringed octopus, researchers have now shown that all octopuses and cuttlefish, and some squid are venomous. The work indicates that they all share a common, ancient venomous ancestor and highlights new avenues for drug discovery. http://www.physorg.com/news159014369.html Biology Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:40:03 EST news159014369 (AP) -- Conservationists have discovered a new population of orangutans in a remote, mountainous corner of Indonesia - perhaps as many as 2,000 - giving a rare boost to one of the world's most critically endangered great apes. http://www.physorg.com/news158722993.html Biology Sun, 12 Apr 2009 02:43:41 EST news158722993 As the U.S. Southwest grew warmer from 18,700 to 10,000 years ago, juniper trees vanished from what is now the Mojave Desert, robbing packrats of their favorite food. Now, University of Utah biologists have narrowed the hunt for detoxification genes that let the rodents eat toxic creosote bushes that replaced juniper. http://www.physorg.com/news158206615.html Biology Mon, 06 Apr 2009 03:17:25 EST news158206615 (PhysOrg.com) -- When it comes to sex, sea sponges are certainly not monogamous. But, thanks to a project based at the Heron Island Research Station, UQ researchers will uncover whether the marine animals are partaking in an underwater orgy, or if reproduction is a little harder to come by. http://www.physorg.com/news157739235.html Biology Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:27:53 EST news157739235 Just as no two humans are the same, a Purdue University scientist has shown treating mice more as individuals in laboratory testing cuts down on erroneous results and could significantly reduce the cost of drug development. http://www.physorg.com/news157643106.html Medicine & Health Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:45:34 EST news157643106 When animals in southern Africa are sick, often the first place their caretakers look for help is from native plants. http://www.physorg.com/news157636556.html Biology Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:57:01 EST news157636556 (PhysOrg.com) -- Anthropogenic, or human generated, sounds have the potential to significantly affect the lives of aquatic animals - from the individual animal`s well-being, right through to its reproduction, migration and even survival of the species. http://www.physorg.com/news156099748.html Biology Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:03:37 EST news156099748 Scientists trying to understand why oaks are starting to disappear from North American forests may need to look just below the surface to find some answers. http://www.physorg.com/news155315852.html Biology Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:18:53 EST news155315852 Humans and farm animals were known to emit harmful greenhouse gases through digestion, but German researchers said Tuesday that aquatic worms and bugs are also culprits, releasing laughing gas. http://www.physorg.com/news155287675.html Space & Earth Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:30:02 EST news155287675 As if straight out of prehistory, dozens of bison emerge timidly from the dark trunks of a primeval forest, their imposing bulk masking their vulnerability. http://www.physorg.com/news154867537.html Biology Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:46:43 EST news154867537 For many animals, sleep is a risk: foraging for food, mingling with mates and guarding against predators just aren't possible while snoozing. http://www.physorg.com/news154540566.html Medicine & Health Sun, 22 Feb 2009 15:56:43 EST news154540566 Basic arithmetic and "number sense" appear to be part of the shared evolutionary past of many primates; it's the use of language to explain abstractions that apparently takes human math to a higher level. http://www.physorg.com/news153761341.html Biology Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:29:35 EST news153761341 (PhysOrg.com) -- Animals can re-establish their use of smell to detect siblings, even following an interruption such as prolonged hibernation, research at the University of Chicago on ground squirrels shows. http://www.physorg.com/news153759836.html Biology Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:05:10 EST news153759836 If you've ever tried capturing a lizard, you'll know how difficult it is. But if you do manage to corner one, many have the ultimate emergency quick release system for escape. They simply drop their tails, leaving the twitching body part to distract the predator as they scamper to safety. According to Gary Gillis from Mount Holyoke College, USA, up to 50% of some lizard populations seem to have traded some part of their tails in exchange for escape. This made Gillis wonder how this loss may impact on a lizard's mobility and ability to survive. Specifically how do branch hopping, tree dwelling lizards cope with their loss. http://www.physorg.com/news153755239.html Biology Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:48:11 EST news153755239 Over the last two decades, marine biologists have discovered lush forests of deep-sea corals and sponges growing on seamounts (underwater mountains) offshore of the California coast. It has generally been assumed that many of these animals live only on seamounts, and are found nowhere else. However, two new research papers show that most seamount animals can also be found in other deep-sea areas. Seamounts, however, do support particularly large, dense clusters of these animals. These findings may help coastal managers protect seamounts from damage by human activities. http://www.physorg.com/news153594680.html Biology Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:12:03 EST news153594680 (PhysOrg.com) -- Even Charles Darwin was puzzled by the apparently sudden appearance in the fossil record of a great variety of multicellular creatures - a rapid blossoming known as the Cambrian explosion. Since then, the origin of animals was found to extend back earlier, through a period known as the Ediacarian. Now, evidence found by researchers at MIT, UC Riverside and other institutions shows that the first complex life forms may in fact have appeared much earlier still. http://www.physorg.com/news152976776.html Biology Wed, 04 Feb 2009 13:33:27 EST news152976776 A new and comprehensive analysis confirms that the evolutionary relationships among animals are not as simple as previously thought. The traditional idea that animal evolution has followed a trajectory from simple to complex -from sponge to chordate -meets a dramatic exception in the metazoan tree of life. New work suggests that the so-called "lower" metazoans (including Placozoa, corals, and jellyfish) evolved in parallel to "higher" animals (all other metazoans, from flatworms to chordates). It also appears that Placozoans -large amoeba-shaped, multi-cellular animals -have passed over sponges and other organisms as an animal that most closely mirrors the root of this tree of life. http://www.physorg.com/news152259480.html Biology Tue, 27 Jan 2009 06:18:25 EST news152259480 Despite the fact that most of us see our four-legged friends walking around every day, most of us-including many experts in natural history museums and illustrators for veterinary anatomy text books-apparently still don't know how they do it. A new study published in the January 27th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, shows that anatomists, taxidermists, and toy designers get the walking gait of horses and other quadruped animals wrong about half the time. That's despite the fact that their correct walking behavior was described and published more than 120 years ago. http://www.physorg.com/news152196656.html Biology Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:51:18 EST news152196656 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists said Sunday they had uncovered new marine animals in their search of previously unexplored Australian waters, along with a bizarre carnivorous sea squirt and ocean-dwelling spiders. http://www.physorg.com/news151486966.html Biology Sun, 18 Jan 2009 07:42:46 EST news151486966 Some of these responses, including insect outbreaks, wildfire, and forest dieback, may adversely affect people as well as ecosystems and their plants and animals. http://www.physorg.com/news151334006.html Space & Earth Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:13:26 EST news151334006