International team of scientists finds adaptations to stress in oyster genome
When it comes to stress, oysters know how to deal. The tough-shelled mollusks can survive temperature fluctuations, toxic metals and exposure to air, and a new study of their genetic makeup is helping to explain how.
An international team of scientists, including the University of Delaware’s Patrick M. Gaffney, professor of marine biosciences, sequenced the genome of the Pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas, in a Naturepaper published on Sept. 19. (more…)
Doubt is not a pleasant mental state, but certainty is a ridiculous one.
—Voltaire
In the first scientific study to test whether doubts about getting married are more likely to lead to an unhappy marriage and divorce, UCLA psychologists report that when women have doubts before their wedding, their misgivings are often a warning sign of trouble if they go ahead with the marriage.
The UCLA study demonstrates that pre-wedding uncertainty, especially among women, predicts higher divorce rates and less marital satisfaction years later. (more…)
Doctors can improve treatment programs using this knowledge
COLUMBIA, Mo. – The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can contain dozens of different mutations, called polymorphisms. In a recent study an international team of researchers, including University of Missouri scientists, found that one of those mutations, called 172K, made certain forms of the virus more susceptible to treatment. Soon, doctors will be able to use this knowledge to improve the drug regimen they prescribe to HIV-infected individuals.
“The 172K polymorphism makes certain forms of HIV less resistant to drugs,” said Stefan Sarafianos, corresponding author of the study and a researcher at MU’s Bond Life Sciences Center. “172K doesn’t affect the virus’ normal activities. In some varieties of HIV that have developed resistance to drugs, when the 172K mutation is present, resistance to two classes of anti-HIV drugs is suppressed. We estimate up to 3 percent of HIV strains carry the 172K polymorphism.” (more…)
Eight billion years ago, rays of light from distant galaxies began their long journey to Earth. That ancient starlight has now found its way to a mountaintop in Chile, where the newly constructed Dark Energy Camera, the most powerful sky-mapping machine ever created, has captured and recorded it for the first time.
That light may hold within it the answer to one of the biggest mysteries in physics: Why the expansion of the universe is speeding up. (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— Childhood vaccines do not cause autism. President Obama was born in the United States. Global warming is confirmed by science. And yet, many people believe claims to the contrary.
In a study appearing in the current issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest, researchers from the University of Michigan, University of Western Australia and University of Queensland examined factors that cause people to resist correcting misinformation.
Misinformation can originate from rumors but also fiction, government and politicians, and organizations, the researchers say. (more…)
As sea ice in the Arctic continues to shrink during this century, more than two thirds of the area with sufficient snow cover for ringed seals to reproduce also will disappear, challenging their survival, scientists report in a new study.
The ringed seal, currently under consideration for threatened species listing, builds caves to rear its young in snow drifts on sea ice. Snow depths must be on average at least 20 centimeters, or 8 inches, to enable drifts deep enough to support the caves. (more…)
COLLEGE PARK, Md. — In a single cave in Ecuador, a species of cavefish has evolved to do something perhaps unique to them, navigate with their teeth.
The sensory use of these teeth, which are not in their mouths, but protrude from their skin, appears to be a previously unknown evolutionary phenomenon, one that may not exist anywhere outside this one cave, say researchers at the University of Maryland, National Institutes of Health and Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador who brought to light this fascinating new adaptation to life in dark, swiftly flowing waters. (more…)
While wave watching is a favorite pastime of beachgoers, few notice what is happening in the shallowest water. A closer look by two University of Colorado Boulder applied mathematicians has led to the discovery of interacting X- and Y-shaped ocean waves that may help explain why some tsunamis are able to wreak so much havoc.
Professor Mark Ablowitz and doctoral student Douglas Baldwin repeatedly observed such wave interactions in ankle-deep water at both Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico, and Venice Beach, Calif., in the Pacific Ocean — interactions that were thought to be very rare but which actually happen every day near low tide. There they saw single, straight waves interacting with each other to form X- and Y-shaped waves as well as more complex wave structures, all predicted by mathematical equations, said Ablowitz. (more…)
