 |
|
Nature press release for 26 July issue
July 26, 2001[412452] LIFELINES: ANTIBACTERIAL HITS A PUNCH (pp452–455; N&V)
With the rise of antibiotic resistance, there is enormous interest in finding alternatives to overused drugs — and one such solution is offered in this week’s Nature.
Naturally alluring as potential alternatives to conventional antibiotics, peptides — molecules to combat bacterial infections — are produced by a wealth of plants and animals. But unlike antibiotics, peptides are large and don’t get transported to the site of infection, making them all but useless as drugs.
Reza Ghadiri and colleagues at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, now describe a synthetic peptide with powerful antibiotic properties that overcomes this problem. The team synthesized rings of amino acids, the building blocks of peptides, which stack up to form tubes in bacterial cell walls. These "self-assembling peptide nanotubes" cleared infections of the antibiotic-resistant bug Staphylococcus aureus in mice, even when injected far from the site of infection.
The tubes are effectively punching holes in the bacterial cell, allowing the contents to leak out, think the researchers, and hence killing the bacterium. It’s an “exciting advance” in the quest for antibiotic alternatives, writes Thomas Ganz at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, in an accompanying News and Views article.
CONTACT:
Reza Ghadiri tel +1 858 784 2710, e-mail ghadiri@scripps.edu
[412405] EVOLUTION: FLIGHT OF THE BRONTOSAURUS (pp405–408, 429–433, 402-403)
If birds evolved from dinosaurs, why aren’t there blackbirds the size of brontosauruses? Three independent reports in this week’s Nature ask why, if dinosaurs got so huge, modern birds are tiny.
Dinosaurs put on an early growth spurt after hatching, conclude Kevin Padian of the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues, in a Progress article — unlike the gradual growth of modern reptiles. The first birds stayed small by curtailing this early growth, while lengthening the subsequent maturation phase. Modern birds, meanwhile, have returned to a strategy of rapid growth. This may explain why some older specimens of the primitive bird Archaeopteryx are twice the size of younger ones, whereas a flock of starlings of various ages seem to be all the same size.
Dinosaurs had a unique pattern of growth that linked growth rates with mass, show Gregory Erickson of the Florida State University, Tallahassee, and colleagues, in a separate report. Small dinosaurs tended to grow more slowly than large ones — the largest dinosaurs piled on the pounds like a whale. Bird evolution involved a modification of growth rates to produce small sizes. In a second phase, modern birds have evolved the highest growth rates of any vertebrate.
A growth slowdown in some primitive birds could be due to the origin of flight, suggest Anusuya Chinsamy of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and Andrzej Elzanowski of the University of Wroclaw, Poland, in a Brief Communication. Flight is easier for small animals than large ones — for example, large, flightless birds such as ostriches tend to grow rapidly, like non-avian dinosaurs.
CONTACT:
Kevin Padian / Armand de Ricqles (co-author) (both at a meeting in Jena from 21/7 but will respond to messages left on +49 3641 941871/876, fax +49 3641 941872)
Gregory M. Erickson tel +1 850 645 4991, e-mail gerickson@bio.fsu.edu
Andrzej Elzanowski tel +48 71 225041, e-mail elzanowski@biol.uni.wroc.pl
[412411] SPACE: TRACES OF MARTIAN ICE AGE (pp411–414)
Hummocky ground on Mars, suggesting that shallow ice reservoirs exist below the surface, have been discovered by John Mustard and his colleagues at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Their finding may shed light on water storage and flux during a changing martian climate.
A unique type of planetary terrain was spotted using high-resolution images from the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, the team report in this week’s Nature. The morphology — a smooth surface broken up into a pitted pattern — may reveal regions where dust has been permeated and cemented by ice.
The estimated thickness of the ice-set soil, and the latitude in which it lies, indicate the vastness of the ice reservoir, equivalent to a thin layer of water across the entire planet. Changing climate during Mars’s orbit less than 100,000 years ago could have created the ice pack, suggest the team — which would be evidence for modern martian ice ages.
CONTACT:
John Mustard tel +1 401 863 1264, e-mail: john_mustard@brown.edu
[412445] BRAIN: TOUCHY FEELY IN A VIRTUAL HOLE (pp445–448; N&V)
Force is more important than form when it comes to touch, show brain researchers in this week’s Nature.
Running fingers over an object’s surface tells us what’s underneath — from the geometry, the path taken by the fingers, and the force exerted by the object on our fingertips. An ingenious experiment designed by Gabriel Robles-De-La-Torre and Vincent Hayward of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, separates these two influences on touch or ‘haptic’ perception.
Subjects moved a robotic ‘manipulandum’ over a surface and said whether they felt it pass over a bump or hole. The authors also created virtual bumps and holes by simulating the horizontal forces such a feature would exert, without the vertical movement. The force cues of a virtual bump can override geometry of a hole, they found, when the two were combined.
Three-dimensional shapes could feel real in virtual reality by using such forces, suggest Randall Flanagan and Susan Lederman in a related News and Views article. The findings could also help untangle the brain-wiring beneath touch.
CONTACT:
Gabriel Robles-De-La-Torre (currently in Mexico) tel +1 525 688 7255, e-mail roblesg@cim.mcgill.ca or
RoblesGabriel@hotmail.com
J. Randall Flanagan tel +1 613 533 6007, e-mail flanagan@psyc.queensu.ca
[412417] PHYSICS: ENTANGLED LASERS MAKE THE MEASURE (pp417–419)
Estimates of the distance to remote objects and the accuracy of surveying procedures could be improved by quantum mechanics, say Seth Lloyd and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, USA, in this week’s Nature. Their proposed form of laser ranging, employing entangled laser pulses, could help to make positioning and distance measurements more accurate.
In conventional laser ranging, a laser pulse is fired at the distant object and the rebound timed. Using the speed of the light the distance travelled can be calculated, but accuracy is limited by the measurement of time.
Lloyd and colleagues propose using laser pulses of photons whose frequencies are entangled. Entanglement is a quantum-mechanical property that makes the state of one quantum object (in this case a photon) dependent on that of another.
In such a pulse, the photons no longer arrive at a detector independently: their travel times get bunched together, reducing the uncertainty in timing. Using several frequency-entangled pulses greatly improves accuracy.
Making entangled photons is possible, but at present very difficult. Even so, a host of new high-precision quantum measurement technologies, such as ‘quantum radar’ and ‘quantum positioning systems’ could one day arise, the researchers hope.
CONTACT:
Seth Lloyd tel +1 617 252 1803, email slloyd@mit.edu
[412423] CHEMISTRY: CLEAN-UP REACTION (pp423–425; N&V)
Chemistry goes green this week, with the discovery of a new catalyst that cuts unwanted by-products of an industrial chemical reaction.
Environment and economics are often hard to reconcile in industrial organic chemistry, where product formation often involves multi-step reactions that generate large amounts of waste. Appropriate catalysts can clean up the process, Avelino Corma of the Universidad Politecnica in Valencia, Spain, and colleagues, show in Nature this week.
The Baeyer–Villiger oxidation, first reported more than 100 years ago, transforms cheap and readily available ketones to lactones and esters. These are made into a range of valuable products by plastic, pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries. Incorporating tin in ‘zeolite beta’, a synthetic porous material, makes for an efficient and reusable catalyst, the researchers found. This can be achieved with hydrogen peroxide as the oxidant, which, in contrast to traditionally used peracids, makes only water as a waste product.
If the process can be scaled up, “it may prove to be a powerful tool in matching economic interests with sensible use of the environment,” says Giorgio Strukul of the University of Venice in Italy, in a related News and Views article.
CONTACT:
Avelino Corma tel +34 96 387 70 00/01, e-mail acorma@itq.upv.es
Giorgio Strukul tel +39 041 2578551, e-mail strukul@unive.it
[412436] ECOLOGY: BUFFER BIRDS (pp436-438)
UK estuaries are supporting large increases in groups of wintering waders. Jennifer Gill of the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, and colleagues, traced changes in the numbers of black-tailed godwits wintering in sites around the UK.
Numbers of godwits in Britain have increased fourfold since the 1970s, but rates of change have varied across estuaries. Poor-quality feeding and breeding sites are thought to take population overflow when conditions are changing; good ones, meanwhile, are more stable.
In estuaries that started with few birds, numbers have soared, the team showed, confirming that large-scale buffer effects come into play. The overflow pushes out less-hardy birds, they found, who show poorer survival and later summer migration to Iceland.
CONTACT:
Jennifer Gill tel +44 1603 593 421, e-mail j.gill@uea.ac.uk
[412409] SPACE: HIDDEN OCEAN ON JUPITER’S MOON (pp409-411; N&V)
One of Jupiter’s moons, Callisto, may hide a deep ocean beneath its pockmarked surface.
The first clue to Callisto’s ocean came a few years ago when the spacecraft Galileo detected a magnetic field around the moon that fluctuates with Jupiter’s rotation. An ocean of salt water was conducting an electric current in Callisto, researchers thought, giving rise to the magnetic field. But calculations seemed to show that any subterranean ocean would have frozen long ago. Not so, suggests an analysis in this week’s Nature.
By considering how ice transmits heat when it is subjected to stresses, Javier Ruiz of the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Spain, has shown that Callisto’s subterranean ocean actually won’t conduct heat out as rapidly as previously thought — this makes the presence of liquid water likely.
“With this work, Ruiz makes a rarely attempted, profound leap in planetary modelling,” says Kristin Bennett of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in an accompanying News and Views article. “He offers a new and remarkable insight into the icy rock world.”
CONTACT:
Javier Ruiz tel +34 916 138 145 e-mail jaruiz@eucmax.sim.ucm.es
Kristin Bennett tel +1 505 665 4047 e-mail bennett@lanl.gov
[412403] ECOLOGY: CHILLIES MAKE UNWELCOME DINERS SWEAT (pp403-404)
Chilli plants use their heat to deter predators that don’t spread seeds. The presence of capsaicin — the chemical that makes chillies taste hot — in the fruit selectively turns off those that are poor seed dispersers, while encouraging chilli-loving seed scatterers to dine.
Josh Tewksbury of the University of Montana, Missoula and Gary Nabhan of the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, Tucson, discovered that cactus mice and packrats are put off by the heat of fruits of Capsicum annuum var. glabrinsculum — a chilli species that inhabits southern Arizona. This suits the pepper plant, as very few seeds ingested by small mammals germinate after passing through, write the researchers in a Brief Communication.
However, curve-billed thrashers (Toxostoma curvorostre) show no such aversion, which is good news for the plant. Seeds ingested by these birds thrive — and birds tend to deposit seeds in prime sites for future dispersal.
CONTACT:
Josh Tewksbury (currently at the University of Florida, Gainesville) tel. +1 803 725 1769, e-mail jtewksbury@zoo.ufl.edu
[412401] BRAIN: LOOK AGAIN FOR LASTING MEMORIES (p401)
Repeated viewing makes a memory last, reports David Melcher of Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. Visual memories of scenes are formed cumulatively, even if other scenes are viewed during the memory-building process.
Melcher showed subjects computer-generated virtual rooms containing 12 objects, for a cumulative duration of 1 to 4 seconds. The scenes were viewed either continuously or interspersed with other virtual scenes. However, recall by subjects of the rooms’ contents improved with total viewing duration, regardless of interruption, he reports in a Brief Communication.
New objects seen against previously viewed backgrounds were less well remembered than those in novel settings. Subjects formed representations of the entire scene rather than memorizing simple lists of their contents, the research suggests.
Memories were lost from day to day, although the time between scenes was short. Melcher terms the phenomenon ‘medium-term’ or ‘disposable’ memory. It may allow people to keep track of objects when performing spatial tasks, he suggests.
CONTACT:
David Melcher tel +1 732 445 2086, e-mail melcher@ruccs.rutgers.edu
[412439] ECOLOGY: FISH GO FOR FILTERED WATER (pp439–441; N&V)
Drink makers use canny ‘crossflow filtration’ to make clear wines, beers and juices. Certain fish species do the same to filter out food, show S. Laurie Sanderson of the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, and colleagues.
In crossflow filtration, fluid flows parallel to, not through, the filter surface. Particles in the fluid move away from the filter, allowing the liquid to filter through.
By inserting a fibre-optic endoscope into the mouths of goldfish and other filter feeders, the group tracked the progress of potential foods. Rows of comb-like gill rakers at the back of the throat had been thought to sieve out the bits. But a tasty slurry collects, they found, without ever touching the gill rakers. The crossflow mechanism ensures the food filter doesn’t get clogged up, they propose.
Discovery of “the fundamentally new mechanism of suspension feeding in fishes” could have broad ecological implications, says Elizabeth Brainerd of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst in an accompanying News and Views article. By working out which sizes of plankton are eaten or rejected, models of freshwater and marine ecosystems may be improved.
CONTACT:
Laurie Sanderson tel +1 757 221 2123, e-mail slsand@wm.edu
[412433] …AND FINALLY: SNUG AS A BUG IN A BUG (pp433–436)
A bug inside a bug inside an insect — not a horror movie, but an intimate bacterial relationship, revealed for the first time by Carol von Dohlen and colleagues of Utah State University, Logan, in this week’s Nature.
Aphids, whiteflies, psyllids and mealybugs use metabolic products of bacteria inside their cells to supplement a poor diet of plant sap. Squeezed into mucus-filled packets, the bacteria gain food and shelter. Such intimate ‘endosymbiotic’ relationships date back to early evolutionary history.
Prising open the bacterial packets in mealybugs revealed the relationship to be a threesome, von Dohlen and her colleagues discovered — the first report of such a bizarre liaison. How the hidden bacteria got there and what they get from the relationship remains to be revealed.
CONTACT:
Carol von Dohlen tel +1 435 797 2549, e-mail cvond@biology.usu.edu
Nature Publishing Group Reference
Hummocky ground on Mars, suggesting that shallow ice reservoirs exist below the surface, have been discovered by John Mustard and his colleagues at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Their finding may shed light on water storage and flux during a changing martian climate.
A unique type of planetary terrain was spotted using high-resolution images from the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, the team report in this week’s Nature. The morphology — a smooth surface broken up into a pitted pattern — may reveal regions where dust has been permeated and cemented by ice.
The estimated thickness of the ice-set soil, and the latitude in which it lies, indicate the vastness of the ice reservoir, equivalent to a thin layer of water across the entire planet. Changing climate during Mars’s orbit less than 100,000 years ago could have created the ice pack, suggest the team — which would be evidence for modern martian ice ages.
CONTACT:
John Mustard tel +1 401 863 1264, e-mail: john_mustard@brown.edu
[412445] BRAIN: TOUCHY FEELY IN A VIRTUAL HOLE (pp445–448; N&V)
Force is more important than form when it comes to touch, show brain researchers in this week’s Nature.
Running fingers over an object’s surface tells us what’s underneath — from the geometry, the path taken by the fingers, and the force exerted by the object on our fingertips. An ingenious experiment designed by Gabriel Robles-De-La-Torre and Vincent Hayward of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, separates these two influences on touch or ‘haptic’ perception.
Subjects moved a robotic ‘manipulandum’ over a surface and said whether they felt it pass over a bump or hole. The authors also created virtual bumps and holes by simulating the horizontal forces such a feature would exert, without the vertical movement. The force cues of a virtual bump can override geometry of a hole, they found, when the two were combined.
Three-dimensional shapes could feel real in virtual reality by using such forces, suggest Randall Flanagan and Susan Lederman in a related News and Views article. The findings could also help untangle the brain-wiring beneath touch.
CONTACT:
Gabriel Robles-De-La-Torre (currently in Mexico) tel +1 525 688 7255, e-mail roblesg@cim.mcgill.ca or
RoblesGabriel@hotmail.com
J. Randall Flanagan tel +1 613 533 6007, e-mail flanagan@psyc.queensu.ca
[412417] PHYSICS: ENTANGLED LASERS MAKE THE MEASURE (pp417–419)
Estimates of the distance to remote objects and the accuracy of surveying procedures could be improved by quantum mechanics, say Seth Lloyd and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, USA, in this week’s Nature. Their proposed form of laser ranging, employing entangled laser pulses, could help to make positioning and distance measurements more accurate.
In conventional laser ranging, a laser pulse is fired at the distant object and the rebound timed. Using the speed of the light the distance travelled can be calculated, but accuracy is limited by the measurement of time.
Lloyd and colleagues propose using laser pulses of photons whose frequencies are entangled. Entanglement is a quantum-mechanical property that makes the state of one quantum object (in this case a photon) dependent on that of another.
In such a pulse, the photons no longer arrive at a detector independently: their travel times get bunched together, reducing the uncertainty in timing. Using several frequency-entangled pulses greatly improves accuracy.
Making entangled photons is possible, but at present very difficult. Even so, a host of new high-precision quantum measurement technologies, such as ‘quantum radar’ and ‘quantum positioning systems’ could one day arise, the researchers hope.
CONTACT:
Seth Lloyd tel +1 617 252 1803, email slloyd@mit.edu
[412423] CHEMISTRY: CLEAN-UP REACTION (pp423–425; N&V)
Chemistry goes green this week, with the discovery of a new catalyst that cuts unwanted by-products of an industrial chemical reaction.
Environment and economics are often hard to reconcile in industrial organic chemistry, where product formation often involves multi-step reactions that generate large amounts of waste. Appropriate catalysts can clean up the process, Avelino Corma of the Universidad Politecnica in Valencia, Spain, and colleagues, show in Nature this week.
The Baeyer–Villiger oxidation, first reported more than 100 years ago, transforms cheap and readily available ketones to lactones and esters. These are made into a range of valuable products by plastic, pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries. Incorporating tin in ‘zeolite beta’, a synthetic porous material, makes for an efficient and reusable catalyst, the researchers found. This can be achieved with hydrogen peroxide as the oxidant, which, in contrast to traditionally used peracids, makes only water as a waste product.
If the process can be scaled up, “it may prove to be a powerful tool in matching economic interests with sensible use of the environment,” says Giorgio Strukul of the University of Venice in Italy, in a related News and Views article.
CONTACT:
Avelino Corma tel +34 96 387 70 00/01, e-mail acorma@itq.upv.es
Giorgio Strukul tel +39 041 2578551, e-mail strukul@unive.it
[412436] ECOLOGY: BUFFER BIRDS (pp436-438)
UK estuaries are supporting large increases in groups of wintering waders. Jennifer Gill of the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, and colleagues, traced changes in the numbers of black-tailed godwits wintering in sites around the UK.
Numbers of godwits in Britain have increased fourfold since the 1970s, but rates of change have varied across estuaries. Poor-quality feeding and breeding sites are thought to take population overflow when conditions are changing; good ones, meanwhile, are more stable.
In estuaries that started with few birds, numbers have soared, the team showed, confirming that large-scale buffer effects come into play. The overflow pushes out less-hardy birds, they found, who show poorer survival and later summer migration to Iceland.
CONTACT:
Jennifer Gill tel +44 1603 593 421, e-mail j.gill@uea.ac.uk
[412409] SPACE: HIDDEN OCEAN ON JUPITER’S MOON (pp409-411; N&V)
One of Jupiter’s moons, Callisto, may hide a deep ocean beneath its pockmarked surface.
The first clue to Callisto’s ocean came a few years ago when the spacecraft Galileo detected a magnetic field around the moon that fluctuates with Jupiter’s rotation. An ocean of salt water was conducting an electric current in Callisto, researchers thought, giving rise to the magnetic field. But calculations seemed to show that any subterranean ocean would have frozen long ago. Not so, suggests an analysis in this week’s Nature.
By considering how ice transmits heat when it is subjected to stresses, Javier Ruiz of the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Spain, has shown that Callisto’s subterranean ocean actually won’t conduct heat out as rapidly as previously thought — this makes the presence of liquid water likely.
“With this work, Ruiz makes a rarely attempted, profound leap in planetary modelling,” says Kristin Bennett of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in an accompanying News and Views article. “He offers a new and remarkable insight into the icy rock world.”
CONTACT:
Javier Ruiz tel +34 916 138 145 e-mail jaruiz@eucmax.sim.ucm.es
Kristin Bennett tel +1 505 665 4047 e-mail bennett@lanl.gov
[412403] ECOLOGY: CHILLIES MAKE UNWELCOME DINERS SWEAT (pp403-404)
Chilli plants use their heat to deter predators that don’t spread seeds. The presence of capsaicin — the chemical that makes chillies taste hot — in the fruit selectively turns off those that are poor seed dispersers, while encouraging chilli-loving seed scatterers to dine.
Josh Tewksbury of the University of Montana, Missoula and Gary Nabhan of the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, Tucson, discovered that cactus mice and packrats are put off by the heat of fruits of Capsicum annuum var. glabrinsculum — a chilli species that inhabits southern Arizona. This suits the pepper plant, as very few seeds ingested by small mammals germinate after passing through, write the researchers in a Brief Communication.
However, curve-billed thrashers (Toxostoma curvorostre) show no such aversion, which is good news for the plant. Seeds ingested by these birds thrive — and birds tend to deposit seeds in prime sites for future dispersal.
CONTACT:
Josh Tewksbury (currently at the University of Florida, Gainesville) tel. +1 803 725 1769, e-mail jtewksbury@zoo.ufl.edu
[412401] BRAIN: LOOK AGAIN FOR LASTING MEMORIES (p401)
Repeated viewing makes a memory last, reports David Melcher of Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. Visual memories of scenes are formed cumulatively, even if other scenes are viewed during the memory-building process.
Melcher showed subjects computer-generated virtual rooms containing 12 objects, for a cumulative duration of 1 to 4 seconds. The scenes were viewed either continuously or interspersed with other virtual scenes. However, recall by subjects of the rooms’ contents improved with total viewing duration, regardless of interruption, he reports in a Brief Communication.
New objects seen against previously viewed backgrounds were less well remembered than those in novel settings. Subjects formed representations of the entire scene rather than memorizing simple lists of their contents, the research suggests.
Memories were lost from day to day, although the time between scenes was short. Melcher terms the phenomenon ‘medium-term’ or ‘disposable’ memory. It may allow people to keep track of objects when performing spatial tasks, he suggests.
CONTACT:
David Melcher tel +1 732 445 2086, e-mail melcher@ruccs.rutgers.edu
[412439] ECOLOGY: FISH GO FOR FILTERED WATER (pp439–441; N&V)
Drink makers use canny ‘crossflow filtration’ to make clear wines, beers and juices. Certain fish species do the same to filter out food, show S. Laurie Sanderson of the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, and colleagues.
In crossflow filtration, fluid flows parallel to, not through, the filter surface. Particles in the fluid move away from the filter, allowing the liquid to filter through.
By inserting a fibre-optic endoscope into the mouths of goldfish and other filter feeders, the group tracked the progress of potential foods. Rows of comb-like gill rakers at the back of the throat had been thought to sieve out the bits. But a tasty slurry collects, they found, without ever touching the gill rakers. The crossflow mechanism ensures the food filter doesn’t get clogged up, they propose.
Discovery of “the fundamentally new mechanism of suspension feeding in fishes” could have broad ecological implications, says Elizabeth Brainerd of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst in an accompanying News and Views article. By working out which sizes of plankton are eaten or rejected, models of freshwater and marine ecosystems may be improved.
CONTACT:
Laurie Sanderson tel +1 757 221 2123, e-mail slsand@wm.edu
[412433] …AND FINALLY: SNUG AS A BUG IN A BUG (pp433–436)
A bug inside a bug inside an insect — not a horror movie, but an intimate bacterial relationship, revealed for the first time by Carol von Dohlen and colleagues of Utah State University, Logan, in this week’s Nature.
Aphids, whiteflies, psyllids and mealybugs use metabolic products of bacteria inside their cells to supplement a poor diet of plant sap. Squeezed into mucus-filled packets, the bacteria gain food and shelter. Such intimate ‘endosymbiotic’ relationships date back to early evolutionary history.
Prising open the bacterial packets in mealybugs revealed the relationship to be a threesome, von Dohlen and her colleagues discovered — the first report of such a bizarre liaison. How the hidden bacteria got there and what they get from the relationship remains to be revealed.
CONTACT:
Carol von Dohlen tel +1 435 797 2549, e-mail cvond@biology.usu.edu
Nature Publishing Group Reference
Dinosaur Current Events and Dinosaur News RSSWarm-blooded dinosaurs worked up a sweat
Were dinosaurs "warm-blooded" like present-day mammals and birds, or "cold-blooded" like present day lizards? The implications of this simple-sounding question go beyond deciding whether or not you'd snuggle up to a dinosaur on a cold winter's evening.
The last European hadrosaurs lived in the Iberian Peninsula
Spanish researchers have studied the fossil record of hadrosaurs, the so-called 'duck-billed' dinosaurs, in the Iberian Peninsula for the purpose of determining that they were the last of their kind to inhabit the European continent before disappearing during the K/T extinction event that occurred 65.5 million years ago.
The humble beginnings of a king
Tyrannosaurus rex and related large carnivorous dinosaurs together form the family Tyrannosauridae. A long forgotten fossil skull in the collections of the Natural History Museum in London has now provided crucial clues to the early stages of the lengthy evolutionary history of these fearsome predators.
New dinosaur species from Montana
A husband and wife team of American paleontologists has discovered a new species of dinosaur that lived 112 million years ago during the early Cretaceous of central Montana.
New analyses of dinosaur growth may wipe out one-third of species
Paleontologists from the University of California, Berkeley, and the Museum of the Rockies have wiped out two species of dome-headed dinosaur, one of them named three years ago - with great fanfare - after Hogwarts, the school attended by Harry Potter.
Do 3 meals a day keep fungi away?
The fact that they eat a lot - and often - may explain why most people and other mammals are protected from the majority of fungal pathogens, according to research from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.
Crushed bones reveal literal dino stomping ground
Imagine the gruesome sound of bones snapping as a thirsty, 30-ton dinosaur tramples a heap of fresh carcasses on his way to a rapidly shrinking lake.
Chinese and American paleontologists discover a new Mesozoic mammal
An international team of paleontologists has discovered a new species of mammal that lived 123 million years ago in what is now the Liaoning Province in northeastern China.
Archaeopteryx was not very bird-like
New research published this week clips the wings of Archaeopteryx. First found in Germany in the 1860's and dating to 150 million years ago, Archaeopteryx has long been considered the iconic first bird.
Inside the first bird, surprising signs of a dinosaur
The raptor-like Archaeopteryx has long been viewed as the archetypal first bird, but new research reveals that it was actually a lot less "bird-like" than scientists had believed.
More Dinosaur Current Events and Dinosaur News Articles
 |
Mattel SCREATURE Interactive Dinosaur by Mattel Your own prehistoric pal! Dare pet his head? More bite than roar! Can you master Screature, or will you be his prey? Lifelike and realistic with ferocious sounds, Screature uses an infrared sensor to sense and attack his prey with your help. If you can control Screature, he will respond loyally to your petting, but if you pet him in the wrong place, Screature attacks! Set him in room guard mode and Screaturewill guard all your prized treasures! Screature is a mean little predator with a big appetite. Try me, open tray package. 3x 'AA' batteries included, with minor assembly required. |
 |
Dozen Jumbo Dinosaurs up to 6 inches long by Toy C Set of 12 realistic toy dinosaur figures. Dinos are made from slightly flexible plastic, are hollow inside. Set includes: Ceratosaurus, Pachycephalosaurus, Stegosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Tyrannosaurus, Spinosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Velociraptor, Apatosaurus, Euoplocephalus, Triceratops, Styracosaurus. |
 |
My Big Dinosaur Book (My Big Board Books) by Roger Priddy (Author) |
 |
Scientific Explorer's My First Dinosaur Science Kit by Scientific Explorer With My First Dino Kit, You're a real paleontologist! Use excavation tools to dig up a dinosaur skeleton and then classify and display your findings. Build a glow in the dark model, or grow and shrink some giant dinos, all while you learn about the prehistoric past. Did some dinosaurs have feathers? Are crocodiles as ancient as the dinosaurs? You'll find out. Ages 4+ adult supervision required. |
 |
Melissa & Doug Dinosaur Stamp Set by Melissa and Doug Mix and match the 8-9 playfully detailed stamps to create hundreds of beautiful scenes, and then color in the pictures with the 5 colored pencils! Each themed set includes 2 colored inkpads. Ages 4+. Each set 8.75" x 8" x 2". |
 |
ZipBin Dinosaur Playset by Neat Oh ZipBin is more than great-looking storage. It's a portable play world that unzips to reveal space to play, create and imagine. And it's easy to clean up... in a zip! The Dinosaur storage bin's dramatic exterior theme identifies the contents and will look great in your child's room. When the bin is unzipped, it becomes a dinosaur island play mat, complete with a colorful island, a volcano, and oozing tar pit and a mysterious cave. When play is done, the play mat becomes the storage bin in a zip, capturing the toys inside. Includes four dinosaurs: Tyrannosaurus Rex, Saurolophus, Triceratops, and Compsognathus, 4-5" long. ZipBin measures approximately 16" x 13" x 9". |
 |
How Do Dinosaurs Play With Their Friends by Jane Yolen (Author) What if a dinosaur's friends come to play? Does he mope, does he pout if he can't get his way? Does he hide all his dump trucks, refusing to share? Does he throw his friends' coloring books up in the air? Time and time again, children are told to "play nice." This brilliantly illustrated board book is packed with rhymes that will teach children how. Mark Teague's laugh-aloud illustrations, along with Jane Yolen's playful text, will show children that "playing nice" can be easy and fun. Perfect for parents to read aloud with their children, this book is as humorous as it is instructive. |
 |
Dinosaur Starring: D.B. Sweeney, Julianna Margulies, Samuel E. Wright, Alfre Woodard, Ossie Davis Directed By: Eric Leighton, Ralph Zondag Also With: Ralph Zondag (Writer), John Harrison (Writer), Rhett Reese (Writer), Robert Nelson Jacobs (Writer), Shirley Pierce (Writer), Tamara Lusher (Writer) Join the action-packed adventure of a group of dinosaurs overcoming enormous challenges through courage, loyalty, and hope in Disney's DINOSAUR, a special effects phenomenon! Set 65 million years ago, DINOSAUR tells the compelling story of an iguanodon named Aladar, who is separated from his own kind and raised by a clan of lemurs, including the wisecracking Zini and the compassionate Plio. When a devastating meteor shower plunges their world into chaos, Aladar and his family follow a herd of dinosaurs heading for the safety of the "nesting grounds." Along the way, Aladar befriends Baylene, the dignified, elderly brachiosaur with a take-no-prisoners attitude; Eema, the unstoppable styrachosaur; and Neera, a feisty fellow iguanodon. Together, they must stand strong amid food and water... |
 |
Fisher Price Spike Jr. by Fisher Price Meet Spike Jr.! The little dinosaur that comes bigger than life. He walks, laughs and roars at the touch of a button. |
|
Fisher-Price Imaginext Ultimate Dino by Fisher-Price Meet Spike, the dinosaur that kids bring to life at the touch of a button. He walks, he stands on his hind legs, he blinks, his mouth opens and closes, and his spikes even light up. You make it all happen with the easy-to-use remote control! Spike also makes lots of fun sounds, too. He growls, snorts, roars and more. Requires 3 "AA" alkaline batteries, not included. Also uses rechargeable 9.6 Volt NiMH battery, included (a $25 retail value)! Spike stands 27" tall. |
| © 2009 BrightSurf.com |