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Nature press release for 8 August issue
August 09, 2002[1] FISH BEING EATEN NOT POISONED (DOI: 10.1038/nature01008)
***THE EMBARGO FOR THIS PAPER (NUMBER [1]) ONLY WAS:
2200 London time (BST) Monday 5 August
1700 US Eastern Daylight Time Monday 5 August
0600 Japanese Standard Time Tuesday 6 August
0700 Australian Eastern Standard time Tuesday 6 August
We lifted the embargo at this time to coincide with publication of similar work in PNAS, so that the papers could be reported on together. The Nature paper will be published electronically on www.nature.com/nature at this time as part of our Advance Online Publication programme, and will appear in print at a later date. ***
Protozoons are thought to be killing millions of mid-Atlantic menhaden fish. They probably do this not by poisoning them, as was suspected, but by eating them, suggest Wolfgang K. Vogelbein of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, The College of William and Mary, and colleagues in this week`s Nature, possibly weakening their defences against other fungal or bacterial attack.
In laboratory experiments, larvae of sheepshead minnows, Cyprinodon variegates, only died when they were in direct physical contact with Pfiesteria piscicida and P. shumwayae dinospores. "No mortalities occurred in treatments where the membrane prevented contact between dinospores and fish," the team writes. This suggests that secreted toxins are not to blame.
CONTACT:
Wolfgang K. Vogelbein (after 4th August) tel +1 804 684 7261, e-mail wolf@vims.edu
Dr. Jeffrey Shields (co-author, contact until 4th August) tel +1 804 684 7128, e-mail jeff@vims.edu
[2] LIFELINES: `THIRD HELPING` HORMONE FOUND (pp650-654; N&V)
Scientists claim to have found a `fullness` hormone that could help fight the obesity epidemic.
Volunteers injected with the hormone, called PYY3-36, helped themselves to one-third less food from a free buffet, Stephen Bloom of Imperial College, London, and his colleagues discovered, and ate less for up to 12 hours. "It`s what stops you having the third helping," says Bloom.
The hormone, which is made by cells lining the bowel, rises in the blood after eating and remains high between meals. The team propose in this week's Nature that it travels to the brain`s hypothalamus, where it shuts down nerves that trigger eating.
Researchers hope that drugs mimicking PYY3-36 and taken before mealtime could curb appetite and help fight weight gain. "If we are to combat the global obesity epidemic, such breakthroughs are urgently needed," says Michael Schwartz of the University of Washington in Seattle in an accompanying News and Views article.
CONTACT:
Stephen R. Bloom tel +44 208 743 2030, e-mail s.bloom@ic.ac.uk
Michael W. Schwartz tel +1 206 341 5288, e-mail mschwart@u.washington.edu
[3] CLIMATE: CLEAR EVIDENCE OF CONTRAILS' EFFECTS (p601)
Water vapour exhaust trails, or contrails, left by cruising jet planes have a small but significant effect on the range of daily temperatures felt on Earth, a Brief Communication to this week`s Nature reveals.
Contrails left high in the atmosphere were known to turn into cirrus-like clouds under the right atmospheric conditions, but the effect these artificial clouds have on climate, if any, has been difficult to determine. It had been virtually impossible to measure their effect because air traffic, especially over regions like Europe and North America, never stopped.
At least until 11 September 2001. Within hours of the terrorist attacks in the US, all commercial aircraft were grounded and did not fly again until 14 September. Clear skies gave David Travis, at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, and colleagues a unique opportunity to tease out the impact of contrails.
They compared the average daily highest and lowest temperatures over North America for the three days of clear skies with records for the same interval from 1977 to 2000. They found that the range of temperatures in the absence of contrails was more than one degree Celsius larger than when contrails are present.
Cirrus clouds act like an insulator, reflecting the heat of the Sun, as well as trapping heat below. Contrails, Travis and colleagues conclude, appear to be exacerbating this effect.
CONTACT:
David J. Travis tel +1 608 877 9427, e-mail travisd@mail.uww.edu
[4] POLICY: ALL OR NONE FOR DNA TESTING (pp585-586)
There are two fair possibilities when it comes to forensic DNA testing: everyone or no one. That's the case argued by Robert Williamson and Rony Duncan of the University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, in a Commentary in this week's Nature.
The most logical practice would be to test the DNA of all individuals at birth, they say. This would act as a deterrent to those contemplating crime, and make the task of catching criminals easier. If the correct safeguards are in place to protect civil liberties, why not? In contrast, if the correct safeguards are not in place, it's better not to test anyone at all.
CONTACT:
Robert Williamson tel +61 3 9 345 5045, e-mail williamb@cryptic.rch.unimelb.edu.au
[5] CLIMATE: WOOD WON'T WORK (pp623-626; N&V)
The assumption that forest expansion and regrowth is a substantial component of the terrestrial carbon sink may need to be reassessed. In a sample of six grassland areas invaded by woody plants in the past 30 to 100 years, there was substantial loss of organic carbon from the soil at the wetter sites. This is more than enough to offset increases in plant biomass carbon, report Robert B. Jackson of Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, and colleagues in this week`s Nature. This also means that new forest plantations may not necessarily lead to overall carbon gain - although in many case, especially in dryer regions, a positive effect remains the most likely outcome.
"This cancelling of gains in carbon above ground with losses below ground has been demonstrated before for individual sites, but we now have evidence of a regional phenomenon that appears to vary somewhat predictably along a climatic gradient," comments Christine L. Goodale and Eric A. Davidson of the Woods Hole Research Center, Massachusetts, in an accompanying News and Views article.
CONTACT:
Robert B. Jackson tel +1 919 660 7408, e-mail Jackson@duke.edu
Christine L. Goodale (after 6th August) tel +1 508 540 9900, e-mail cgoodale@whrc.org
Eric Davidson (co-author) tel +1 508 540 9900, e-mail edavidson@whrc.org
[6] LIFELINES: NEW ANTIBIOTICS LIBRARY (pp658-661)
Researchers in the US have made a library of potential antibiotics using a remarkably versatile natural catalyst, described in this week's Nature. The enzyme, involved in making natural antibiotics in microorganisms, overcomes one of the major hurdles encountered when chemists try to put such chemical compounds together in the laboratory.
Christopher Walsh of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and co-workers assembled candidate antibiotics piece by piece using standard chemical synthesis. They then used the enzyme thioesterase to carry out the crucial and difficult process of linking the long, chain-like molecules of the antibiotics into rings. It is surprising that the enzyme works under these conditions, because the synthetic molecules that it transforms are quite different from those it normally encounters in living cells.
Among the potential ring-shaped antibiotics Walsh and colleagues have made are some that kill a variety of pathogenic bacteria, including the dreaded methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, against which many standard antibiotics are useless.
CONTACT:
Christopher T. Walsh tel +1 617 432 1715, e-mail Christopher_walsh@hms.harvard.edu
[7] PHYSICS: A NEW RESOLUTION (pp617-620)
P. E. Batson and colleagues from the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York, and Nion R&D, Kirkland, Washington, have constructed an electron probe that can image individual gold atoms and islands of gold atoms on a carbon substrate. The ability to use electron microscopy to identify and locate individual atoms will have a wide impact on materials physics and biological sciences. For example, accurate imaging of atomic impurities and defects within bulk materials and interfaces is important for optimizing semiconductor devices.
Presented this week in Nature, these are some of the first results from a scanning electron microscope equipped with state-of-the-art computer-controlled aberration correction. Until now, lens aberration has prevented the direct imaging of single atoms.
CONTACT:
P. E. Batson tel +1 914 945 2782, e-mail batson@us.ibm.com
[8] ECOLOGY: UNCULTIVABLE MICROORGANISM GROWN (pp630-633)
The marine bacterium SAR11 is one of the most abundant organisms on Earth, but until now it has only been known from gene sequences detected in sea water. Now this previously uncultivable microorganism has been isolated and cultured by Stephen J. Giovannoni and colleagues at Oregon State University, Corvallis.
This achievement, described in this week's Nature, should provide an unusual opportunity for genome sequence analysis of an organism that has global biogeochemical significance, and provide an insight into the adaptations of cells to very low nutrient availability.
The crescent-shaped cells are among the smallest free-living organisms known. "These isolates should refine our understanding of the minimal macromolecular machinery required for autonomous cellular replication," the team concludes.
CONTACT:
Stephen J. Giovannoni tel +1 541 737 1835 /4441, e-mail Steve.giovannoni@orst.edu
[9] ECOLOGY: FROGS TAKE YOUNG FOR A RIDE (pp601-602)
Human dads aren't the only ones to give their babies piggy-back rides. Zoologists have discovered that the males of two frog species in Papua New Guinea carry their young around on their backs.
The young of Liophryne schlaginhaufeni and Sphenophryne cornuta develop from eggs directly into miniature versions of adults, with no intervening tadpole stage. Male parents transport as many as 22 tiny froglets, carrying them for up to nine days over distances of up to 55 metres, reports David Bickford of the University of Miami, Florida, in a Brief Communication to this week's Nature.
The froglets jump off their father at different points during his journey, which could be the key to why the behaviour evolved, says Bickford. By dispersing widely, the froglets may ease competition for food, avoid making life easy for predators, and reduce the likelihood of inbreeding.
Liophryne schlaginhaufeni and Sphenophryne cornuta are members of the microhylid family of frogs, the only known large group of terrestrial vertebrates in which male parental care predominates.
CONTACT:
David Bickford tel +1 305 284 4797, e-mail bickford@bio.miami.edu
POLICY: FOOD AND THE FUTURE
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, genetically modified (GM) crop plants, antibiotics and hormones in animal feed, the impact of agriculture on biodiversity, fast food and globalization, famine in Africa - food is news. One strand unites these issues: sustainability. The world`s population continues to grow, yet resources are finite. Our mission is to squeeze more crops from the same patch of ground, while preserving that patch in a state fit to pass on to further hungry generations. This month`s Insight reviews supplement in Nature - `Food and the Future` - takes that quest for sustainability as its theme.
After the Second World War, the `Green Revolution` averted worldwide famine. Half a century on, the world needs yet greater ingenuity to feed itself. Science is again at the sharp end, as this collection illustrates. The public wants it to deliver food to satisfy an increasing population without compromising the integrity of the landscape we live in or the health of consumers. Agriculture in the future must be environmentally sensitive and, above all, sustainable. Much current debate on these issues concerns GM crops, but this is only part of the story. The reviews in this Insight demonstrate that sustainability has lessons for the whole agricultural enterprise, from high-tech viticulture to the depths of the ocean.
***For full listing of Insight papers, please see the press site.***
[10]AND FINALLY: SNAKE WIGGLES AND SUCKS TO FLY (pp603-604)
Flying without wings, rotors or flaps should be impossible, but a Brief Communication to this week`s Nature reveals how the paradise tree snake (Chrysopelea paradisi) glides gracefully and accurately between trees in its native Singapore with little regard for conventional aerodynamics.
From videotapes of wild-caught paradise tree snakes leaping from a ten-metre tower, John Socha from the University of Chicago, Illinois, concludes that a combination of body flattening and aerodynamic slithering allows them to glide. They do so as efficiently as their fellow aeronauts - flying squirrels and lizards - which exploit wing-like flaps of skin to stay aloft.
Sucking in their stomachs and turning their bodies into a thin aerofoil, the snakes then generate lift by wiggling their bodies, roughly once a second. They steer not by banking but by changing the pattern of slithering. Regulating their body shape and movements may require specialist neuromuscular control unique to this snake, Socha concludes.
CONTACT:
John J. Socha tel +1 773 702 8092, e-mail jjsocha@midway.uchicago.edu
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
[11] Structural changes in the calcium pump accompanying the dissociation of calcium (pp605-611; N&V)
[12] Coherent properties of a two-level system based on a quantum-dot photodiode (pp612-614; N&V)
[13] Evidence for spin-charge separation in quasi-one-dimensional organic conductors (pp614-617)
[14] Experimental evidence for sub-3-fs charge transfer from an aromatic adsorbate to a semiconductor (pp620-623)
[15] Reassessing the evidence for the earliest traces of life (pp627-630)
[16] An unexpected specialization for horizontal disparity in primate visual cortex (pp633-636)
[17] Wnt-11 activation of a non-canonical Wnt signalling pathway is required for cardiogenesis (pp636-641)
[18] A naturally occurring MTA1 variant sequesters oestrogen receptor-a in the cytoplasm (pp654-657)
[19] Three-dimensional structure of the bacterial protein-translocation complex SecYEG (pp662-665)
[20] Black holes constrain varying constants (pp602-603)
GEOGRAPHICAL LISTING OF AUTHORS
The following list of places refers to the whereabouts of authors on the papers numbered in this release. The listing may be for an author`s main affiliation, or for a place where they are working temporarily. Please see the PDF of the paper for full details.
AUSTRALIA
Parkville: 4
Sydney: 2, 20
CANADA
British Columbia
Vancouver: 13
ESTONIA
Tallin: 15
FRANCE
Paris: 19
GERMANY
Cologne: 13
Frankfurt: 19
Garching: 12
Göttingen: 17
Paderborn: 12
Stuttgart: 13
Ulm: 17
JAPAN
Tokyo: 11
NORWAY
Trondheim: 15
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Goroka: 9
SWEDEN
Lund: 14
Uppsala: 14
SWITZERLAND
Villigen: 14
UNITED KINGDOM
London: 2
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
La Jolla: 6, 15
Colorado
Fort Collins: 5
Florida
Coral Gables: 9
Illinois
Chicago: 10
Maryland
Bethesda: 16
Massachusetts
Boston: 6, 19
New Mexico
Albuquerque: 5
New York State
Yorktown Heights: 7
North Carolina
Durham: 5
Oregon
Beaverton: 2
Carvallis: 8
Portland: 2
Pennsylvania
University Park: 3
South Carolina
Charleston: 11
Texas
Austin: 5
Houston: 17
Washington State
Kirkland: 7
Wisconsin
Whitewater: 3
Nature Publishing Group Reference
1700 US Eastern Daylight Time Monday 5 August
0600 Japanese Standard Time Tuesday 6 August
0700 Australian Eastern Standard time Tuesday 6 August
We lifted the embargo at this time to coincide with publication of similar work in PNAS, so that the papers could be reported on together. The Nature paper will be published electronically on www.nature.com/nature at this time as part of our Advance Online Publication programme, and will appear in print at a later date. ***
Protozoons are thought to be killing millions of mid-Atlantic menhaden fish. They probably do this not by poisoning them, as was suspected, but by eating them, suggest Wolfgang K. Vogelbein of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, The College of William and Mary, and colleagues in this week`s Nature, possibly weakening their defences against other fungal or bacterial attack.
In laboratory experiments, larvae of sheepshead minnows, Cyprinodon variegates, only died when they were in direct physical contact with Pfiesteria piscicida and P. shumwayae dinospores. "No mortalities occurred in treatments where the membrane prevented contact between dinospores and fish," the team writes. This suggests that secreted toxins are not to blame.
CONTACT:
Wolfgang K. Vogelbein (after 4th August) tel +1 804 684 7261, e-mail wolf@vims.edu
Dr. Jeffrey Shields (co-author, contact until 4th August) tel +1 804 684 7128, e-mail jeff@vims.edu
[2] LIFELINES: `THIRD HELPING` HORMONE FOUND (pp650-654; N&V)
Scientists claim to have found a `fullness` hormone that could help fight the obesity epidemic.
Volunteers injected with the hormone, called PYY3-36, helped themselves to one-third less food from a free buffet, Stephen Bloom of Imperial College, London, and his colleagues discovered, and ate less for up to 12 hours. "It`s what stops you having the third helping," says Bloom.
The hormone, which is made by cells lining the bowel, rises in the blood after eating and remains high between meals. The team propose in this week's Nature that it travels to the brain`s hypothalamus, where it shuts down nerves that trigger eating.
Researchers hope that drugs mimicking PYY3-36 and taken before mealtime could curb appetite and help fight weight gain. "If we are to combat the global obesity epidemic, such breakthroughs are urgently needed," says Michael Schwartz of the University of Washington in Seattle in an accompanying News and Views article.
CONTACT:
Stephen R. Bloom tel +44 208 743 2030, e-mail s.bloom@ic.ac.uk
Michael W. Schwartz tel +1 206 341 5288, e-mail mschwart@u.washington.edu
[3] CLIMATE: CLEAR EVIDENCE OF CONTRAILS' EFFECTS (p601)
Water vapour exhaust trails, or contrails, left by cruising jet planes have a small but significant effect on the range of daily temperatures felt on Earth, a Brief Communication to this week`s Nature reveals.
Contrails left high in the atmosphere were known to turn into cirrus-like clouds under the right atmospheric conditions, but the effect these artificial clouds have on climate, if any, has been difficult to determine. It had been virtually impossible to measure their effect because air traffic, especially over regions like Europe and North America, never stopped.
At least until 11 September 2001. Within hours of the terrorist attacks in the US, all commercial aircraft were grounded and did not fly again until 14 September. Clear skies gave David Travis, at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, and colleagues a unique opportunity to tease out the impact of contrails.
They compared the average daily highest and lowest temperatures over North America for the three days of clear skies with records for the same interval from 1977 to 2000. They found that the range of temperatures in the absence of contrails was more than one degree Celsius larger than when contrails are present.
Cirrus clouds act like an insulator, reflecting the heat of the Sun, as well as trapping heat below. Contrails, Travis and colleagues conclude, appear to be exacerbating this effect.
CONTACT:
David J. Travis tel +1 608 877 9427, e-mail travisd@mail.uww.edu
[4] POLICY: ALL OR NONE FOR DNA TESTING (pp585-586)
There are two fair possibilities when it comes to forensic DNA testing: everyone or no one. That's the case argued by Robert Williamson and Rony Duncan of the University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, in a Commentary in this week's Nature.
The most logical practice would be to test the DNA of all individuals at birth, they say. This would act as a deterrent to those contemplating crime, and make the task of catching criminals easier. If the correct safeguards are in place to protect civil liberties, why not? In contrast, if the correct safeguards are not in place, it's better not to test anyone at all.
CONTACT:
Robert Williamson tel +61 3 9 345 5045, e-mail williamb@cryptic.rch.unimelb.edu.au
[5] CLIMATE: WOOD WON'T WORK (pp623-626; N&V)
The assumption that forest expansion and regrowth is a substantial component of the terrestrial carbon sink may need to be reassessed. In a sample of six grassland areas invaded by woody plants in the past 30 to 100 years, there was substantial loss of organic carbon from the soil at the wetter sites. This is more than enough to offset increases in plant biomass carbon, report Robert B. Jackson of Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, and colleagues in this week`s Nature. This also means that new forest plantations may not necessarily lead to overall carbon gain - although in many case, especially in dryer regions, a positive effect remains the most likely outcome.
"This cancelling of gains in carbon above ground with losses below ground has been demonstrated before for individual sites, but we now have evidence of a regional phenomenon that appears to vary somewhat predictably along a climatic gradient," comments Christine L. Goodale and Eric A. Davidson of the Woods Hole Research Center, Massachusetts, in an accompanying News and Views article.
CONTACT:
Robert B. Jackson tel +1 919 660 7408, e-mail Jackson@duke.edu
Christine L. Goodale (after 6th August) tel +1 508 540 9900, e-mail cgoodale@whrc.org
Eric Davidson (co-author) tel +1 508 540 9900, e-mail edavidson@whrc.org
[6] LIFELINES: NEW ANTIBIOTICS LIBRARY (pp658-661)
Researchers in the US have made a library of potential antibiotics using a remarkably versatile natural catalyst, described in this week's Nature. The enzyme, involved in making natural antibiotics in microorganisms, overcomes one of the major hurdles encountered when chemists try to put such chemical compounds together in the laboratory.
Christopher Walsh of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and co-workers assembled candidate antibiotics piece by piece using standard chemical synthesis. They then used the enzyme thioesterase to carry out the crucial and difficult process of linking the long, chain-like molecules of the antibiotics into rings. It is surprising that the enzyme works under these conditions, because the synthetic molecules that it transforms are quite different from those it normally encounters in living cells.
Among the potential ring-shaped antibiotics Walsh and colleagues have made are some that kill a variety of pathogenic bacteria, including the dreaded methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, against which many standard antibiotics are useless.
CONTACT:
Christopher T. Walsh tel +1 617 432 1715, e-mail Christopher_walsh@hms.harvard.edu
[7] PHYSICS: A NEW RESOLUTION (pp617-620)
P. E. Batson and colleagues from the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York, and Nion R&D, Kirkland, Washington, have constructed an electron probe that can image individual gold atoms and islands of gold atoms on a carbon substrate. The ability to use electron microscopy to identify and locate individual atoms will have a wide impact on materials physics and biological sciences. For example, accurate imaging of atomic impurities and defects within bulk materials and interfaces is important for optimizing semiconductor devices.
Presented this week in Nature, these are some of the first results from a scanning electron microscope equipped with state-of-the-art computer-controlled aberration correction. Until now, lens aberration has prevented the direct imaging of single atoms.
CONTACT:
P. E. Batson tel +1 914 945 2782, e-mail batson@us.ibm.com
[8] ECOLOGY: UNCULTIVABLE MICROORGANISM GROWN (pp630-633)
The marine bacterium SAR11 is one of the most abundant organisms on Earth, but until now it has only been known from gene sequences detected in sea water. Now this previously uncultivable microorganism has been isolated and cultured by Stephen J. Giovannoni and colleagues at Oregon State University, Corvallis.
This achievement, described in this week's Nature, should provide an unusual opportunity for genome sequence analysis of an organism that has global biogeochemical significance, and provide an insight into the adaptations of cells to very low nutrient availability.
The crescent-shaped cells are among the smallest free-living organisms known. "These isolates should refine our understanding of the minimal macromolecular machinery required for autonomous cellular replication," the team concludes.
CONTACT:
Stephen J. Giovannoni tel +1 541 737 1835 /4441, e-mail Steve.giovannoni@orst.edu
[9] ECOLOGY: FROGS TAKE YOUNG FOR A RIDE (pp601-602)
Human dads aren't the only ones to give their babies piggy-back rides. Zoologists have discovered that the males of two frog species in Papua New Guinea carry their young around on their backs.
The young of Liophryne schlaginhaufeni and Sphenophryne cornuta develop from eggs directly into miniature versions of adults, with no intervening tadpole stage. Male parents transport as many as 22 tiny froglets, carrying them for up to nine days over distances of up to 55 metres, reports David Bickford of the University of Miami, Florida, in a Brief Communication to this week's Nature.
The froglets jump off their father at different points during his journey, which could be the key to why the behaviour evolved, says Bickford. By dispersing widely, the froglets may ease competition for food, avoid making life easy for predators, and reduce the likelihood of inbreeding.
Liophryne schlaginhaufeni and Sphenophryne cornuta are members of the microhylid family of frogs, the only known large group of terrestrial vertebrates in which male parental care predominates.
CONTACT:
David Bickford tel +1 305 284 4797, e-mail bickford@bio.miami.edu
POLICY: FOOD AND THE FUTURE
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, genetically modified (GM) crop plants, antibiotics and hormones in animal feed, the impact of agriculture on biodiversity, fast food and globalization, famine in Africa - food is news. One strand unites these issues: sustainability. The world`s population continues to grow, yet resources are finite. Our mission is to squeeze more crops from the same patch of ground, while preserving that patch in a state fit to pass on to further hungry generations. This month`s Insight reviews supplement in Nature - `Food and the Future` - takes that quest for sustainability as its theme.
After the Second World War, the `Green Revolution` averted worldwide famine. Half a century on, the world needs yet greater ingenuity to feed itself. Science is again at the sharp end, as this collection illustrates. The public wants it to deliver food to satisfy an increasing population without compromising the integrity of the landscape we live in or the health of consumers. Agriculture in the future must be environmentally sensitive and, above all, sustainable. Much current debate on these issues concerns GM crops, but this is only part of the story. The reviews in this Insight demonstrate that sustainability has lessons for the whole agricultural enterprise, from high-tech viticulture to the depths of the ocean.
***For full listing of Insight papers, please see the press site.***
[10]AND FINALLY: SNAKE WIGGLES AND SUCKS TO FLY (pp603-604)
Flying without wings, rotors or flaps should be impossible, but a Brief Communication to this week`s Nature reveals how the paradise tree snake (Chrysopelea paradisi) glides gracefully and accurately between trees in its native Singapore with little regard for conventional aerodynamics.
From videotapes of wild-caught paradise tree snakes leaping from a ten-metre tower, John Socha from the University of Chicago, Illinois, concludes that a combination of body flattening and aerodynamic slithering allows them to glide. They do so as efficiently as their fellow aeronauts - flying squirrels and lizards - which exploit wing-like flaps of skin to stay aloft.
Sucking in their stomachs and turning their bodies into a thin aerofoil, the snakes then generate lift by wiggling their bodies, roughly once a second. They steer not by banking but by changing the pattern of slithering. Regulating their body shape and movements may require specialist neuromuscular control unique to this snake, Socha concludes.
CONTACT:
John J. Socha tel +1 773 702 8092, e-mail jjsocha@midway.uchicago.edu
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
[11] Structural changes in the calcium pump accompanying the dissociation of calcium (pp605-611; N&V)
[12] Coherent properties of a two-level system based on a quantum-dot photodiode (pp612-614; N&V)
[13] Evidence for spin-charge separation in quasi-one-dimensional organic conductors (pp614-617)
[14] Experimental evidence for sub-3-fs charge transfer from an aromatic adsorbate to a semiconductor (pp620-623)
[15] Reassessing the evidence for the earliest traces of life (pp627-630)
[16] An unexpected specialization for horizontal disparity in primate visual cortex (pp633-636)
[17] Wnt-11 activation of a non-canonical Wnt signalling pathway is required for cardiogenesis (pp636-641)
[18] A naturally occurring MTA1 variant sequesters oestrogen receptor-a in the cytoplasm (pp654-657)
[19] Three-dimensional structure of the bacterial protein-translocation complex SecYEG (pp662-665)
[20] Black holes constrain varying constants (pp602-603)
GEOGRAPHICAL LISTING OF AUTHORS
The following list of places refers to the whereabouts of authors on the papers numbered in this release. The listing may be for an author`s main affiliation, or for a place where they are working temporarily. Please see the PDF of the paper for full details.
AUSTRALIA
Parkville: 4
Sydney: 2, 20
CANADA
British Columbia
Vancouver: 13
ESTONIA
Tallin: 15
FRANCE
Paris: 19
GERMANY
Cologne: 13
Frankfurt: 19
Garching: 12
Göttingen: 17
Paderborn: 12
Stuttgart: 13
Ulm: 17
JAPAN
Tokyo: 11
NORWAY
Trondheim: 15
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Goroka: 9
SWEDEN
Lund: 14
Uppsala: 14
SWITZERLAND
Villigen: 14
UNITED KINGDOM
London: 2
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
La Jolla: 6, 15
Colorado
Fort Collins: 5
Florida
Coral Gables: 9
Illinois
Chicago: 10
Maryland
Bethesda: 16
Massachusetts
Boston: 6, 19
New Mexico
Albuquerque: 5
New York State
Yorktown Heights: 7
North Carolina
Durham: 5
Oregon
Beaverton: 2
Carvallis: 8
Portland: 2
Pennsylvania
University Park: 3
South Carolina
Charleston: 11
Texas
Austin: 5
Houston: 17
Washington State
Kirkland: 7
Wisconsin
Whitewater: 3
Nature Publishing Group Reference
Antibiotics Current Events and Antibiotics News RSSNew study finds MRSA on the rise in hospital outpatients
The community-associated strain of the deadly superbug MRSA-an infection-causing bacteria resistant to most common antibiotics-poses a far greater health threat than previously known and is making its way into hospitals, according to a study in the December issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases.
A Second Skin
Despite advances in treatment regimens and the best efforts of nurses and doctors, about 70% of all people with severe burns die from related infections.
Study reveals why certain drug combinations backfire
Combination drug therapy has become a staple for treating many infections. For instance, doctors treat extensively drug resistant forms of tuberculosis with one drug that breaks down the pathogen's protective barriers and opens the door for another to deliver the deathblow.
New imagining technique could lead to better antibiotics and cancer drugs
A recently devised method of imaging the chemical communication and warfare between microorganisms could lead to new antibiotics, antifungal, antiviral and anti-cancer drugs, said a Texas AgriLife Research scientist.
UCLA researchers reconstitute enzyme that synthesizes cholesterol drug lovastatin
Researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have for the first time successfully reconstituted in the laboratory the enzyme responsible for producing the blockbuster cholesterol-lowering drug lovastatin.
Progress made on group B streptococcus vaccine
Scientists supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, have completed a Phase II clinical study that indicates a vaccine to prevent Group B Streptococcus (GBS) infection is possible.
Henry Ford Hospital study: A MRSA strain linked to high death rates
A strain of MRSA that causes bloodstream infections is five times more lethal than other strains and has shown to have some resistance to the potent antibiotic drug vancomycin used to treat MRSA, according to a Henry Ford Hospital study.
Bacteria 'launch a shield' to resist attack
Researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the Technical University of Denmark along with other collaborators in Denmark and the US found that the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa can 'switch on' production of molecules that kill white blood cells - preventing the bacteria being eliminated by the body's immune system.
Pumpkin skin may scare away germs
The skin of that pumpkin you carve into a Jack-o'-Lantern to scare away ghosts and goblins on Halloween contains a substance that could put a scare into microbes that cause millions of cases of yeast infections in adults and infants each year.
Deadly stomach infection rising in community settings, Mayo Clinic study finds
Mayo Clinic researchers have found that a sometimes deadly stomach bug, Clostridium difficile is on the rise in outpatient settings.
More Antibiotics Current Events and Antibiotics News Articles
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Antibiotics Simplified by Jason Gallagher (Author) Antibiotics Simplified is a succinct guide designed to bridge knowledge gained in basic sciences courses with clinical practice in infectious diseases. Introductory chapters explain the rationale behind the treatment of infectious diseases, describe a system for selecting antimicrobial agents and briefly review basic microbiology. Later chapters present relevant characteristics of drug classes, emphasizing clinical "pearls" for individual agents, and also include content on antifungals. The concise nature of the text allows for emphasis on key points, allowing readers to extract the most important characteristics of anti-infective drugs from the larger mass of material that they learn from detailed pharmacology textbooks. This is an ideal handbook for students as well as practicing... |
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First Aid Only Triple Antibiotic Ointment Pack, 0.5 Gram, 25-Count Boxes (Pack of 3) by First Aid Only Use this triple antibiotic ointment pack to treat all kinds of minor cuts, burns and abrasions. Helps prevent infection while it promotes healing. May be applied 2 to 3 times daily as the condition indicates. Active ingredients: neomycin and polymyxin B sulfates and bacitracin zinc ointment USP. |
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Fish Mox (Amoxicillin 250 mg) - 100 Caps by THOMAS LABS Fish-Mox exerts a bactericidal action on gram positive and some gram negative bacteria. Useful for control of some common bacterial diseases of fish including aeromonas and pseudomonas genera and mysobacterial group (gill diseases, chondrococcus). Add contents of one capsule (250 mg) into aquarium for each 10 gallons of water to be treated. Repeat in 24 hours. It is suggested that a partial water change be made between treatments. While duration of treatment depends on type and severity of infection, it is recommended that extended medication baths continue for a minimum of 5 days & for not more than 10 days. Discontinue treatment if no improvement is noted within 5 days. To remove harmless yellow color, change 20% of water and use charcoal filter until clear. |
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Antibiotics Pocketcard 2009 by H. Hof (Author) Antibiotics pocketcard provides an initial choice of antimicrobial therapy for most common infections. These empirical therapies cover more than 90% of everyday scenarios. The reverse side of this durable plastic card shows a table of antimicrobial spectra for the most important antibiotics. **2009 edition, completely updated! **Initial choice of antimicrobials for: CNS, heart, blood, gastrointestinal tract, bones/joints, urogenital tract, eye, ENT, skin/soft tissue diseases, fever of unknown origin. **Antimicrobial agents against selected bacteria, e.g. streptococci, staphylococci. |
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Antibiotic Essentials 2009 by Burke Cunha MD (Author) Antibiotic Essentials is a concise, practical, and authoritative guide to the treatment and prevention of infectious diseases commonly encountered in adults. It covers 542 clinical infectious disease syndromes, HIV infection, 134 detailed drug summaries, pediatric infectious diseases, and a chest x-ray atlas. Topics include: Empiric Therapy Based on Clinical Syndrome; Initial Therapy Based on Isolates; Pending Susceptibility Testing; HIV Infection; Fungi, Parasites, Unusual Organisms; Antibiotic Prophylaxis and Immunizations; Drug Summaries |
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Antibiotic Basics for Clinicians: Choosing the Right Antibacterial Agent (Point (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins)) by Alan R Hauser (Author) Designed for quick, easy comprehension, this handbook reference will assist medical students in understanding the rationale behind antibiotic selection for common bacterial pathogens and infectious disease presentations. By supplying the rationale for choosing antibiotics, the book reduces the amount of memorization necessary for proper antibiotic prescribing. The book is heavily illustrated with two-color figures and includes fact-anecdotes, interesting ancillary information, mnemonics, and questions to test understanding. Appendices include dosing in adults and children; antibacterial agents in pregnancy; generic and trade names of commonly used antibacterial agents; and treatment of infections caused by bacterial agents of bioterrorism. |
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Fish Flex Cephalexin - 250 mg 100 capsules by THOMAS LABS Fish-Flex is for use in aquariums for treatment of bacterial activity. Add contents of one capsule (250 mg) into aquarium for each 10 gallons of water to be treated. Repeat in 24 hours. It is suggested that a partial water change be made between treatments. While duration of treatment depends on type and severity of infection, it is recommended that extended medication baths continue for a minimum of 5 days & for not more than 10 days. Discontinue treatment if no improvement is noted within 5 days. |
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Triple Antibiotic Ointment, 144/box by Swift First-Aid Each 0.5 gram packet contains a 3-in-1 antibiotic: bacitracin, neomycin, and polymixin B. |
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Antibiotics: Actions, Origins, Resistance by Christopher Walsh (Author) Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. Text analyzes how small molecules interfere selectively with the processes central to the survival of bacterial cells. Focuses on the relatively few molecules in antibiotics having an impact on human infectious disease. DNLM: Antibiotics--pharmacology. |
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First Aid Only Triple Antibiotic Ointment Pack, 0.5 Gram, 10-Count Boxes (Pack of 10) by First Aid Only Use this triple antibiotic ointment pack to treat all kinds of minor cuts, burns and abrasions. Helps prevent infection while it promotes healing. May be applied 2 to 3 times daily as the condition indicates. Active ingredients: neomycin and polymyxin B sulfates and bacitracin zinc ointment USP. |
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