https://phys.org/biology-news/biology-other en-us The latest news on biology, natural sciences, environment It has long been known that there is a complex interplay between genetic factors and environmental influences in shaping behavior. Recently it has been found that genes governing behavior in the brain operate within flexible and contextually responsive regulatory networks. However, conventional genome-wide association studies (GWAS) often overlook this complexity, particularly in humans where controlling environmental variables poses challenges. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-linking-environmental-genetic-human-behavior.html Other Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 27 Feb 2024 14:00:01 EST news628247420 A systematic analysis of 40 years of studies on public crop breeding programs found that cereal grains receive significantly more research attention than other crops important for food security, such as fruits and vegetables; only 33% of studies sought input from both men and women household members; and there is significantly less research in South America, the Middle East and North Africa than in sub-Saharan Africa. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-years-crop-inequities.html Other Agriculture Thu, 22 Feb 2024 11:31:03 EST news627823861 The editors at the journal Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology have retracted a paper after it was pointed out to them by readers that supporting images had been generated improperly by an AI image generator. In their retraction, the editors report that the reason for the retraction was that "concerns were raised regarding the nature of its AI-generated figures." https://phys.org/news/2024-02-ai-generated-disproportioned-rat-genitalia.html Other Mon, 19 Feb 2024 11:11:41 EST news627563496 Biodiversity data collection is growing exponentially. The increase is driven in part by international commitments to conservation, market investments and technological advances, and the growing urgency of human impacts including climate change. Nations increasingly rely on biodiversity data in order to strategically meet global conservation targets for the coming decades. But not all data is collected equally. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-social-equity-biodiversity-interdisciplinary-policy.html Ecology Other Tue, 16 Jan 2024 16:07:02 EST news624643620 Watching someone cry often evokes an emotional response—but according to a new study published Thursday, human tears themselves contain a chemical signal that reduces brain activity linked to aggression. https://phys.org/news/2023-12-whiff-male-aggression.html Other Mon, 25 Dec 2023 08:50:02 EST news622397748 A Hobart-based solicitor built his reputation as "the foremost scientist in the colony" in the mid-1800s, despite limited contributions to scientific knowledge. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-solicitor-19th-century-tasmania-human-aboriginal.html Plants & Animals Other Tue, 28 Nov 2023 19:00:01 EST news620411401 For the first time, researchers have developed a model to estimate how much energy the original colonizers of New Zealand expended to maintain their body temperatures on the cold, harrowing ocean journey from Southeast Asia. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-larger-body-sizes-colonizers-zealand.html Other Thu, 13 Jul 2023 05:41:27 EDT news608445678 Many Americans can trace some lines of their family tree back to the 1600s. However, African Americans descended from enslaved Africans, who began arriving in North America in 1619, lack ancestral information spanning several centuries. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-centuries-identity-lost-slavery.html Biotechnology Other Thu, 06 Jul 2023 11:00:01 EDT news607842703 New research, undertaken by an interdisciplinary team of Stanford Law and Stanford Medicine students, looks at the overlap between biomedical research paper authors and those authors who go on to be named inventors of their research on patents. Among the findings is a gender discrepancy between male and female authors, with male authors receiving patents more frequently. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-gap-male-female-author-inventors-inventor.html Biotechnology Other Wed, 07 Jun 2023 10:32:22 EDT news605352739 Before any physical conflict, people assess their opponent's features to determine if the ideal tactical response is to fight, flee or attempt to negotiate. https://phys.org/news/2023-01-sizing-competition-based-sensitivity-pain.html Evolution Other Tue, 03 Jan 2023 16:40:52 EST news591986448 Hibernation is a state adopted by certain mammals as an adaptation to adverse winter conditions. Typical features of hibernation include greatly reduced metabolic activity and lowered body temperature. https://phys.org/news/2022-12-successful-hypothermia-nonhuman-primate-paves.html Other Molecular & Computational biology Fri, 23 Dec 2022 12:20:17 EST news591020413 A team of researchers at the University of Liverpool's Institute of Life Course & Medical Sciences, working with a colleague from Liverpool John Moores University, has discovered why people use more energy when walking on surfaces that deform (such as sand) than on hard, cement-like surfaces. In their study, published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, the group studied the behavior of muscles in the legs, feet and toes of volunteers walking on varied surfaces. https://phys.org/news/2022-12-deforming-surfaces-energy.html Other Thu, 01 Dec 2022 11:05:41 EST news589115111 A new study of thousands of people reveals a wide range in the amount of water people consume around the globe and over their lifespans, definitively spilling the oft-repeated idea that eight, 8-ounce glasses meet the human body's daily needs. https://phys.org/news/2022-11-cups-ocean-difference.html Other Fri, 25 Nov 2022 04:03:53 EST news588571424 Electronic music lovers know the drill: as soon as the DJ turns up the bass, the crowd goes wild and dances with heightened enthusiasm. But to what extent is this a conscious reaction? https://phys.org/news/2022-11-science-floor-bass.html Other Tue, 08 Nov 2022 04:04:26 EST news587102662 In much of the United States, there is a twice-yearly shift in timekeeping between standard time and daylight saving time, or DST, which delays both sunrise and sunset to make mornings darker and evenings brighter. Recently, scientists, policy experts, lawmakers and citizens have debated abandoning the twice-a-year switch and adopting either year-round standard time or DST. https://phys.org/news/2022-11-permanent-daylight-deer-vehicle-collisions.html Ecology Other Wed, 02 Nov 2022 11:00:02 EDT news586587940 Falls are a serious public health issue, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths annually and racking up billions of dollars in healthcare costs. While there has been extensive research into the biomechanics of falls, most current approaches study how the legs, joints, and muscles act separately to respond, rather than as a system. The ability to measure how these different levels relate to each other could paint a much clearer picture of why someone falls and precisely how their body compensates. Until recently, however, an integrated measuring approach has been elusive. https://phys.org/news/2022-07-framework-stability.html Other Fri, 29 Jul 2022 12:21:44 EDT news578316058 New research in biomechanics measures the impact of head-first, hand-first and feet-first diving and the likelihood of injury at different diving heights, providing data-driven recommendations for safe diving and a model for measuring the impact of different shapes as they plunge into water. https://phys.org/news/2022-07-safety-guidelines.html Other Wed, 27 Jul 2022 16:23:58 EDT news578157829 It's often said that people who click right away share "chemistry." https://phys.org/news/2022-06-friends-people-drawn.html Plants & Animals Other Fri, 24 Jun 2022 16:33:49 EDT news575307129 A trio of researchers at the University of Otago in New Zealand, has found that when it comes time to name a newly found species after someone, female honorees tend to be underrepresented. In their paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Robert Poulin, Cameron McDougall and Bronwen Presswell describe their analysis of thousands of newly named species and what it showed them about gender bias. https://phys.org/news/2022-05-gender-bias-species.html Plants & Animals Other Mon, 16 May 2022 10:37:37 EDT news571916254 When genes mutate, this can lead to severe diseases of the human nervous system. Researchers at Leipzig University and the University of Würzburg have now used fruit flies to demonstrate how, apart from the negative effect, the mutation of a neuronal gene can have a positive effect—namely higher IQ in humans. They have published the discovery in the journal Brain. https://phys.org/news/2022-05-gene-mutation-higher-intelligence.html Other Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 10 May 2022 15:20:43 EDT news571414828 For more than ten years now, scientists have been discussing the so-called reproducibility crisis: often, scientific findings cannot be reproduced at a later time and/or in other laboratories, although the studies are carried out under highly standardized conditions. Standardization includes for example the use of genetically identical animals, keeping the animals in identically equipped cages, and carrying out the experiments in exactly the same way. To uncover sources of poor reproducibility, researchers usually try to identify potential confounding factors in the experimental conditions. Confounding factor number one is the experimenter—in other words, the person conducting the experiment. A team headed by behavioral biologists Dr. Vanessa von Kortzfleisch and Prof Helene Richter from the University of Münster (Germany) has now studied precisely this factor in behavioral experiments on mice carried out simultaneously at three different locations. Their study has now been published in the journal PLOS Biology. https://phys.org/news/2022-05-animal-experimenters-results-strong.html Plants & Animals Other Tue, 10 May 2022 10:27:23 EDT news571397239 Stanford University scientists have found that when recreational runners are left to their own devices and outfitted with a wearable fitness tracker, they prefer to run at the same calorie-saving pace, regardless of the distance ran—contrary to the explicit goals of competitive racing. https://phys.org/news/2022-04-runners-pace-distance.html Other Thu, 28 Apr 2022 11:00:10 EDT news570342235 Many consumers choose higher-priced steaks, burgers and other beef products from cattle that have been raised without antibiotics. The USDA approves meat labels with claims such as 'No Antibiotics Ever', 'No Added Antibiotics' and 'Raised without Antibiotics', but how confident can shoppers be that they are, in fact, getting what they paid for https://phys.org/news/2022-04-antibiotics-beef-cattle-lacks.html Other Agriculture Thu, 07 Apr 2022 14:00:05 EDT news568535677 A team of researchers from Australia, Germany and the U.S. has found evidence that the origin of human language was hand gestures rather than grunts. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group describes experiments that involved asking volunteers to attempt to describe words using only grunts or gestures. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-evidence-gestures-human.html Plants & Animals Other Tue, 15 Mar 2022 11:00:14 EDT news566559651 The first study ever to examine sleeping behavior in a wild group of primates has challenged a central tenet of sleep science: that we must make up for lost sleep. Even after sleeping poorly, wild baboons still spent time on other priorities, such as socializing with group-mates or looking out for predators, rather than catching up on lost sleep. The team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of California, Davis used non-invasive technology to monitor sleep patterns across almost an entire group of individuals at once. The findings lay bare the competing priorities that suppress sleep homeostasis in wild primate societies—raising the possibility that humans have navigated sleep deprivation throughout our evolutionary history. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-nap-nature.html Plants & Animals Other Tue, 01 Mar 2022 10:56:49 EST news565354604 With some home security software and a little ingenuity, researchers have developed an inexpensive device that will allow them to study the behavior and activity of insects in regions of the world where they're most diverse. https://phys.org/news/2022-02-device-enables-easily-track-elusive.html Ecology Other Thu, 24 Feb 2022 12:45:44 EST news564929139 Scientists from 17 countries have published their thoughts on ongoing UN policy discussions around the sharing of digital sequence information to support conservation efforts. https://phys.org/news/2022-02-genetic.html Other Molecular & Computational biology Wed, 23 Feb 2022 09:29:32 EST news564830969 A team of researchers at Texas Christian University has found that people perceived as more attractive by others tend to have a stronger immune system. In their study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group asked volunteers to rate the level of attractiveness of people in pictures. https://phys.org/news/2022-02-people-stronger-immune.html Other Thu, 17 Feb 2022 09:20:01 EST news564311455 The rhythms of activity in all biological organisms, both plants and animals, are closely linked to the gravitational tides created by the orbital mechanics of the sun-Earth-moon system. This truth has been somewhat neglected by scientific research but is foregrounded in a study by Cristiano de Mello Gallep at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, and Daniel Robert at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. An article on the study is published in the Journal of Experimental Botany. https://phys.org/news/2022-01-gravitational-action-sun-moon-behavior.html Plants & Animals Other Tue, 04 Jan 2022 14:46:24 EST news560529981 A trio of researchers at the University of Vienna has found that women with low 2D:4D ratios tend to have stronger grip strength than women with higher ratios. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Nora Bäck, Katrin Schaefer and Sonja Windhager describe measuring finger length and grip strength in volunteer women. https://phys.org/news/2021-12-women-2d4d-finger-ratios-tend.html Other Tue, 14 Dec 2021 09:40:02 EST news558697024