New research from the Universities of Portsmouth and Leicester has identified a small fossil fragment at the Natural History Museum, London as being part of a giant pterosaur – setting a new upper limit for the size of winged and toothed animals.
Dr David Martill from the University of Portsmouth and Dr David Unwin from the University of Leicester examined the fossil - which consisted of the tip of a pterosaur snout that had been in the Museum collections since 1884.
At least 20 million people survive heart attacks and strokes every year, according to World Health Organisation estimates, but many have poor life expectancy and require continual costly clinical care. The use of patient's own stem cells may repair heart attacks, although their benefit may be limited due to scarce availability and ageing. The researchers have found heart muscle-like cells grown using stem cells from human umbilical cord blood could help repair heart muscle cells damaged by a heart attack.
The highly social cichlid fish Neolamprologus pulcher, endemic to Lake Tanganyika in Africa, live in social groups consisting of a dominant breeding pair and between 1 and 15 subordinates of both sexes that perform brood care, territory defence and maintenance. Subordinates are often distantly related or unrelated to the dominants.
The species of legume known as 'Tallante's chickpea', which has not been seen for nearly a century, has finally been studied in detail. The species is thought to be in critical danger of extinction given that the only known population in the whole world is in Tallante, Murcia (Spain).
A study reveals its characteristics and the reasons as to why the Astragalus nitidiflorus legume, or Tallante's chickpea, remains critically endangered. Researchers wants to restore this floral plant which is unique to the region of Murcia, Spain and, up until recently, was thought to be extinct.
No one is in a better position to monitor environmental conditions in remote areas of the natural world than the people living there. But many scientists believe the cultural and educational gulf between trained scientists and indigenous cultures is simply too great to bridge -- that native peoples cannot be relied on to collect reliable data.
Thanks to Hollywood, piranhas have a bad reputation and it would be a brave scientist that chose to plunge their hand into a tank of them. But that didn't deter Sandie Millot, Pierre Vandewalle and Eric Parmentier from the University of Liège, Belgium. 'You just have to pick them up and they make sounds,' says Parmentier. However, it wasn't clear when and why piranhas produce sounds naturally.
New research to be published Oct. 13 confirms The Beatles' lyrical hypothesis and finds that "the kind of thing that money just can't buy" is a happy and stable marriage.
Scholars at Brigham Young University studied 1,734 married couples across the country. Each couple completed a relationship evaluation, part of which asked how much they value "having money and lots of things."
Particular types of mouth bacteria, some of which are found in gum disease, are associated with the development of pancreatic cancer, indicates a small study published online in the journal Gut.
The finding opens up the possibility of curbing the progress of one of the most difficult cancers to treat, by altering the balance of bacteria, say the authors.Pancreatic cancer usually spreads very quickly, and only around one in 20 patients is still alive five years after diagnosis.
Proper protein intake crucial for moderating energy intake, keeping obesity at bay
Body language of both speaker and listener affects success in virtual reality communication game
Modern technology allows us to communicate in more ways than ever before, but this virtual communication usually lacks the body gestures so common in face-to-face interactions.
New research, published Oct. 12 in the online journal PLoS ONE, finds that the lack of gestural information from both speaker and listener limits successful communication in virtual environments.
Cichlid male nannies help out, especially if they've been sneaking
The highly social cichlid fish Neolamprologus pulcher displays cooperative breeding behavior, where non-parents contribute to rearing the offspring of the dominant breeding pair. Until now, it was assumed that male subordinates never gained paternity in the field. A new study published Oct. 12, in the online journal PLoS ONE, reveals that some offspring from this domestic arrangement are actually fathered by subordinate members of the group, and when this happens these fish increase investment.
In a new study just published in the journal PLoS One, a team of scientists led by Professor John R. Hutchinson of The Royal Veterinary College, London, and Peter Makovicky, PhD, curator of dinosaurs at The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago applied cutting edge technology and computer modeling to "weigh" five Tyrannosaurus rex specimens, including The Field Museum's iconic SUE skeleton. Their results reveal that T. rex grew more quickly and reached significantly greater masses than previously estimated.
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Plants do not have eyes or legs, yet they are able to "see" and move toward and away from light. This ability, called phototropism, is controlled by a series of molecular-level signals between proteins inside and between plant cells. In a paper published in The Plant Cell, University of Missouri scientists report for the first time the elusive role a critical protein plays in this molecular signaling pathway that regulates phototropism in plants.
African-American patients with resected stage II and stage III colon cancer experienced worse overall and recurrence-free survival compared to whites, but similar recurrence-free intervals, according to a study published Oct. 12 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
The problem is stark: One billion people on earth don't have enough food right now. It's estimated that by 2050 there will be more than nine billion people living on the planet.
Meanwhile, current agricultural practices are amongst the biggest threats to the global environment. This means that if we don't develop more sustainable practices, the planet will become even less able to feed its growing population than it is today.