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Female Fish Choose Attractive Friends to Avoid Attention

By Guest PostDecember 8, 2011Naturearipo river, attractive friends, females, freshwater fish, male attention, mating, receptive, reduce harassment, safi darden, scientists, sexual attention, sexual pheromone, species, trinidad, trinidadian guppy, universities of exeter

Scientists have observed a strategy for females to avoid unwanted male attention: choosing more attractive friends.

Published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the study is the first to show females spending time with those more sexually attractive than themselves to reduce harassment from males.

Carried out by the Universities of Exeter and Copenhagen, the study focuses on the Trinidadian guppy, a species of small freshwater fish. It shows that the females choose companions that are relatively more attractive than themselves and in this way reduce harassment from males. The research shows that the tactic is successful and by ensuring they are less attractive than other group members, the fish experience less harassment and fewer mating attempts from males. (more…)

Violent Video Games Reduce Brain Response to Violence and Increase Aggressive Behavior, University of Missouri Study Finds

By Guest PostMay 31, 2011Health, Scienceaggressive, behavior, brain response, brains, bruce bartholow, call of duty, christopher engelhardt, grand theft auto, hitman, indicator of desensitization, killzone, Media, popular violent games, scientists, university of missouri, violence, violent video games

*Parental moderation encouraged for children*

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Scientists have known for years that playing violent video games causes players to become more aggressive. The findings of a new University of Missouri (MU) study provide one explanation for why this occurs: the brains of violent video game players become less responsive to violence, and this diminished brain response predicts an increase in aggression.

“Many researchers have believed that becoming desensitized to violence leads to increased human aggression. Until our study, however, this causal association had never been demonstrated experimentally,” said Bruce Bartholow, associate professor of psychology in the MU College of Arts and Science. (more…)

Scientists Determine What Makes an Orangutan an Orangutan

By Guest PostJanuary 28, 2011Nature, Scienceadam siepel, biogeography, borneo, devin p locke, evolution of primates, fruit fly, genes, genetic code, genetic diversity, genome, genome sequencing of primates, humans, island of origin, malay term, mammals, man of the forest, map, model organisms, orangutan genome, orangutans, reed beaman, scientists, sumatra

*New map of the genetic code of endangered orangutans yields important new conservation tools and insights into evolution*

For the first time, scientists have mapped the genome–the genetic code–of orangutans. This new tool may be used to support efforts to maintain the genetic diversity of captive and wild orangutans. The new map of the orangutan genome may also be used to help improve our understanding of the evolution of primates, including humans.

Partially funded by the National Science Foundation, the orangutan study appears in the Jan. 27 issue of Nature. It was conducted by an international team of scientists led by Devin P. Locke of the Genome Center at Washington University. (more…)

Spacecraft Catches Thunderstorms Hurling Antimatter into Space

By Guest PostJanuary 14, 2011Scienceantimatter, antimatter particles, beams, earth, egypt, electric fields, energy, fermi gamma ray space telescope, fermi spacecraft, gamma ray, joseph dwyer, light, michael briggs, NASA, phenomenon, scientists, seattle, spacecraft, steven cummer, storm, terrestrial gamma ray flash, tgf, thunderstorms, zambia

WASHINGTON — Scientists using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected beams of antimatter produced above thunderstorms on Earth, a phenomenon never seen before.

Scientists think the antimatter particles were formed in a terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF), a brief burst produced inside thunderstorms and shown to be associated with lightning. It is estimated that about 500 such flashes occur daily worldwide, but most go undetected. (more…)

The Giant Panda: The Good News

By PravdaDecember 5, 2010Environment, Natureartificial insemination, bamboo pole, chengdu breeding center, chengdu panda breeding research center, China, cubs, ecology, endangered species, Environment, extinction, giant panda, pr china, reproductive cycle, scientists, timothy bancroft-hinchey, twin swapping technique, viagra

Close up of a cute baby 7-month old panda cub in the Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan, China. Image credit: Sheila Lau. Source: Wikipedia

Finally some good news on the environment, on ecology and on the Giant Panda: a revolutionary new technique developed by the PR China’s Chengdu breeding center seems certain to assure that greater numbers of this endangered species can be raised in thereby save it from extinction.

Just 1,600 Giant Pandas live in the wild, in 40 government-controlled panda reserves in the People’s Republic of China. The new breeding program has raised the number of animals bred in captivity to 300, while just this year 19 cubs have been born after artificial insemination programs in China’s two main breeding centers.

Breeding Giant Pandas in captivity is no easy task. They have the strangest gestation period which can range from eleven weeks to eleven months, they appear not to be sexually aroused by being held in captivity, females are on heat for 72 hours a year and are fertile during a 12 to 24-hour window inside that period. The small size of the male penis also means the mating position has to be exactly right, and this is not always possible in captivity. (more…)

Made in IBM Labs: Breakthrough Chip Technology Lights the Path to Exascale Computing

By Guest PostDecember 1, 2010Technologychip technology, cmos, cmos integrated silicon nanophotonics, computer chips, electrical, electrical signals, exaflop, ibm, nanophotonics, nanophotonics technology, optical devices, pulses of light, scientists, silicon, silicon nanophotonics, t c chen, terabits, yurii a vlasov

*IBM Silicon Nanophotonics uses optical signals to connect chips together faster and with lower power*

Yorktown Heights, N.Y. – 01 Dec 2010: IBM scientists today unveiled a new chip technology that integrates electrical and optical devices on the same piece of silicon, enabling computer chips to communicate using pulses of light (instead of electrical signals), resulting in smaller, faster and more power-efficient chips than is possible with conventional technologies.

The new technology, called CMOS Integrated Silicon Nanophotonics, is the result of a decade of development at IBM’s global Research laboratories. The patented technology will change and improve the way computer chips communicate – by integrating optical devices and functions directly onto a silicon chip, enabling over 10X improvement in integration density than is feasible with current manufacturing techniques. (more…)

WHOI Scientists Map and Confirm Origin of Large, Underwater Hydrocarbon Plume in Gulf

By Guest PostAugust 19, 2010Environment, Scienceautonomous underwater vehicleauv, bp deepwater horizon, cameron mcIntyre, christopher reddy, conductivity, ctd, dan torres, depth, endeavor, gulf of mexico, marine geochemist, natural oil seeps, oil spill, oxygen, petroleum hydrocarbon, plume of hydrocarbons, research vessel, richard camilli, scientists, sentry, sentry auv, susan k. avery, temperature, tethered yearlong spectrometer, tethys, underwater mass spectrometer, whoi, woods hole oceanographic institution

Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have detected a plume of hydrocarbons that is at least 22 miles long and more than 3,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, a residue of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

(more…)

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