The Earth’s outer layer is made up of a series of moving, interacting plates whose motion at the surface generates earthquakes, creates volcanoes and builds mountains. Geoscientists have long sought to understand the plates’ fundamental properties and the mechanisms that cause them to move and drift, and the questions have become the subjects of lively debate.
A study published online Feb. 27 by the journal Science is a significant step toward answering those questions. (more…)
UA Regents’ Professor Nicholas Strausfeld and an international team of researchers have discovered the earliest known complete nervous system exquisitely preserved in the fossilized remains of a never-before described creature that crawled or swam in the ocean 520 million years ago.
A team of researchers led by University of Arizona Regents’ Professor Nick Strausfeld and London Natural History Museum’s Greg Edgecombe have discovered the earliest known complete nervous system, exquisitely preserved in the fossilized remains of a never-before described creature that crawled or swam in the ocean 520 million years ago.
The find suggests that the ancestors of chelicerates – spiders, scorpions and their kin – branched off from the family tree of other arthropods – including insects, crustaceans and millipedes – more than half a billion years ago. (more…)
For decades, scientists have known that dolphins and other toothed whales have specialized fats associated with their jaws, which efficiently convey sound waves from the ocean to their ears. But until now, the hearing systems of their toothless grazing cousins, baleen whales, remained a mystery.
Unlike toothed whales, baleen whales do not have enlarged canals in their jaws where specialized fats sit. While toothed whales use echolocation to find prey, baleen whales generally graze on zooplankton, and so some scientists have speculated that baleen whales may not need such a sophisticated auditory system. But a new study by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), published April 10, 2012, in The Anatomical Record, has shown that some baleen whales also have fats leading to their ears. (more…)
Conventional wisdom holds that during the Mesozoic Era, mammals were small creatures that held on at life’s edges. But at least one mammal group, rodent-like creatures called multituberculates, actually flourished during the last 20 million years of the dinosaurs’ reign and survived their extinction 66 million years ago.
New research led by a University of Washington paleontologist suggests that the multituberculates did so well in part because they developed numerous tubercles (bumps, or cusps) on their back teeth that allowed them to feed largely on angiosperms, flowering plants that were just becoming commonplace. (more…)
*Commercial production will allow scientists, academia opportunity for use in cancer studies*
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Early detection of melanoma, the most aggressive skin cancer, is critical because melanoma will spread rapidly throughout the body. Now, University of Missouri researchers are one step closer to melanoma cancer detection at the cellular level, long before tumors have a chance to form. Commercial production of a device that measures melanoma using photoacoustics, or laser-induced ultrasound, will soon be available to scientists and academia for cancer studies. The commercial device also will be tested in clinical trials to provide the data required to obtain U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for early diagnosis of metastatic melanoma and other cancers. (more…)
Sara Rockwell is a leader in her field. A professor of therapeutic radiology and pharmacology at the School of Medicine, Rockwell was among the first researchers to study the effects of oxygen deficiency on the response of malignant cells to radiation and anticancer drugs, and was among the first to consider the implications of this deficiency in microscopic tumors for the development of solid malignancies.
Rockwell, who is also associate dean for scientific affairs, joined the faculty of Yale School of Medicine in 1974, and teaches radiation biology, pharmacology, cancer biology, ethics and career development skills. She earned her bachelor’s degree in physics from Penn State University in 1965. She went on to earn her doctorate degree in biophysics from Stanford University in 1971. (more…)
