A few years ago, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) researchers discovered that soil-dwelling and above-ground insects are able to communicate with each other using the ragwort plant as a kind of telephone.

Insects eating plant roots change the chemical composition of the leaves, causing the plant to release volatile signals into the air. This can convince aboveground insects to select another food plant in order to avoid competition and to escape from poisonous defense compounds in the plant.

 Apparently the communication doesn't stop there.

Bloggers like Orac (his first post, his second post, his third post), Emily Willingham, Autismum and others have covered Autism One's latest quack cure, MMS, in detail.

At Science 2.0, we often joke that biologist Neil Shubin from the University of Chicago can make anything about fish. That's because we've never heard him not able to make anything about fish. His books, talks and research methods show great examples of multidisciplinary research - biology tells us what should have existed, geology tells us the conditions where something might be found and paleontology finds it.

A spine with multiple segments is a feature of land-dwelling animals but the discovery of the same anatomical feature in a 345-million-year-old eel suggests that this complex anatomy arose separately from, and perhaps before, the first species to walk on land.

Results from the first feasibility study of an advanced first-generation artificial pancreas system were presented at the American Diabetes Association Meeting in Philadelphia and findings from the study indicated that the Hypoglycemia-Hyperglycemia Minimizer (HHM) System was able to automatically predict a rise and fall in blood glucose and correspondingly increase and/or decrease insulin delivery safely. Currently the most effective method of measuring blood glucose levels is with a blood glucose meter from Dexcom or other suppliers.

The HHM System included a continuous, subcutaneous insulin pump, a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) and special software used to predict changes in blood glucose.

The International Conference on New Frontiers in Physics (ICFP) 2012 started today with a rich program of experimental and theory talks. I should be swimming in the Cretan sea in front of the nice conference venue (which is 40 meters away from the water), but my sense of duty forces me to give you some impressions of the presentations I heard.

New chemical compounds that can make key modifications to common sugar molecules - glycans - which are found on the surface of all cells in our body are new tools for investigating treatments for chronic inflammation, autoimmune diseases, cancer metastasis and related conditions.

A new study describes compounds that selectively block the attachment to the cell of two types of sugar building blocks, sialic acid and fucose, which are found at the tips of cell surface glycans and can be critical to cell function. 

The CERN average of searches for rare B decays to muon pairs has been shown yesterday in a talk given by Mitesh Patel at the "Physics at the LHC" conference, which is being held in Vancouver (BC) this week. And the results are not very encouraging for supporters of Supersymmetry: the data is compatible with a Standard Model signal, but there is almost no space left for additional contributions due to the exchange of virtual SUSY particles in the loops producing the decays.

The fourth FQXi essay contest “Which of Our Basic Physical Assumptions Are Wrong?” is underway.

 

A major function of microRNAs is to inhibit messenger RNA (mRNA) translation by binding to a specific 3’ untranslated region (UTR) through sequence complementation. In a recent study published in the March 2012 issue of Cell Stem Cell, Boutet et al. discovered that Pax3 transcripts in muscle stem cells in vivo can have both long and short 3’UTRs, an effect controlled by differential poly-adenylation patterns during the course of development. While Pax3 transcripts with long 3’UTRs are susceptible to translational inhibition by miR-206, transcripts with short 3’UTR are profoundly resistant to miR-206. 

In the last few weeks there has been a sugar tsunami in the media. CBS reported about sugar toxicity. Mayor Bloomberg banned the serving of sugary drinks greater than 16 fluid ounces in New York City. The FDA turned down a request from the Corn Industry to re-name high fructose corn syrup as "corn sugar". And then there is that huge advertising campaign that denies that sweetened beverages are driving the obesity epidemic.