clhs sciblog

Just like men can use fast cars or showy clothes to impress the ladies, male Amazon river dolphins, or botos, carry natural objects such as sticks and rocks, sometimes throwing them or thrashing them against the surface, to lure females, says a new study. Read full article here. I think its awesome that dolphins think [...]

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Scientists from the University of Leeds, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the Galapagos National Park have discovered that while its mainland ancestors prefer the blood of mammals and the occasional bird, the Galapagos form of the black salt marsh mosquito (Aedes taeniorhynchus) has shifted its behaviour to feed mainly on reptiles – primarily [...]

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Right now, corals’ interesting systems of communications are being stressed by the global change. They are only able to survive because of their symbiotic relationships with algae that live within them. These disruptions are the cause of coral bleaching and collapse of coral reef ecosystems everywhere. Virginia Weis, a zoologist at Oregon State, says that [...]

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A study was conducted in which a dual x-ray absorptiometry was used to make direct measures of body composition in children at four years of age whose diets had been assessed when they were babies. The data showed that infants who had been breastfed for a longer period of time had a lower fat mass [...]

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A mineral found at health food stores could be the key to developing a new line of antibiotics for bacteria that commonly cause diarrhea, tooth decay and, in some severe cases, death!? Themineral selenium is found in a number of proteins in both bacteria  cells and human cells called selenoproteins. University of Central Florida Associate Professor [...]

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In Biological Psychiatry, there is a paper by Swiss researchers that have investigated the effects of oxytocin, the “love hormone,” on human couple interactions. They recruited adult couples who received oxytocin or placebo intranasally before engaging in a conflict discussion in the laboratory. Oxytocin increased positive communication behavior in relation to negative behavior and reduced salivary cortisol, [...]

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Herds of   packed wildebeests roaming the Serengeti . these images extend from Hollywood show  that  animal specis are doing fine . But the fact is all of the world’s large scale migrations hav been   cut. A quarter of the migrating species are  no longer migrating  at all because of human changes to the [...]

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