Tag Archives: honey

When Cells Hit the Wall: UCLA Engineers Put The Squeeze on Cells to Diagnose Disease

If you throw a rubber balloon filled with water against a wall, it will spread out and deform on impact, while the same balloon filled with honey, which is more viscous, will deform much less. If the balloon’s elastic rubber was stiffer, an even smaller change in shape would be observed.

By simply analyzing how much a balloon changes shape upon hitting a wall, you can uncover information about its physical properties.

Although cells are not simple sacks of fluid, they also contain viscous and elastic properties related to the membranes that surround them; their internal structural elements, such as organelles; and the packed DNA arrangement in their nuclei. Because variations in these properties can provide information about cells’ state of activity and can be indicative of diseases such as cancer, they are important to measure. (more…)

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Science Fair Winner Publishes New Study on Butterfly Foraging Behavior

GAINESVILLE, Fla.University of Florida lepidopterist Andrei Sourakov has spent his life’s work studying moths and butterflies. But it was his teenage daughter, Alexandra, who led research on how color impacts butterflies’ feeding patterns.

The research shows different species exhibit unique foraging behaviors, and the study may be used to build more effective, species-specific synthetic lures for understanding pollinators, insects on which humans depend for sustaining many crops.

In a study appearing online in April in the journal Psyche, researchers used multi-colored landing pads and baits in the Florida Museum of Natural History’s McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity on the UF campus to determine that some butterflies use both sight and smell to locate food, while others rely primarily on smell. (more…)

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