eCosmology

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Unexpected viral 'fossils' found in vertebrate genomesThursday, July 29, 2010 @ 4:08PMOver millions of years, retroviruses, which insert their genetic material into the host genome as part of their replication, have left behind bits of their genetic material in vertebrate genomes. In a recent study, published July 29 in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens, a team of researchers have now found that human and other vertebrate genomes also contain many ancient sequences from ...

Discovered: Audubon's first engraving of a birdThursday, July 29, 2010 @ 11:38AMIn 1824, three years before he began to publish his famous "double elephant folio" The Birds of America, John James Audubon (1785-1851), the eminent artist of American birds and animals, created a drawing of a running grouse for use in the design for a New Jersey bank note. Although the artist mentions the drawing and the resulting engraved paper money in two separate diary entries, no one has ...

Dog brains in a spinWednesday, July 28, 2010 @ 9:41AMFor the first time, scientists have shown that selective breeding of domestic dogs is not only dramatically changing the way animals look but is also driving major changes in the canine brain.

New gov't rules allow unapproved iPhone appsMonday, July 26, 2010 @ 10:11AM(AP) -- Owners of the iPhone will be able to break electronic locks on their devices in order to download applications that have not been approved by Apple. The government is making that legal under new rules announced Monday.

Rediscovery: Scientists confirm role for mysterious cell component, the nucleolinusThursday, July 22, 2010 @ 1:41PMWhen searching for long-lost treasure, sometimes all you need is a good flashlight.

Wacky weather could squeeze Florida's citrus seasonWednesday, July 21, 2010 @ 4:14PMCitrus growers, beware. Florida winters are getting more extreme, causing plants to flower later and potentially shrinking the growing seasons for some of the state's most vital crops.

A mutation that frustrates DNA repair likely contributes to Fanconi anemiaWednesday, July 21, 2010 @ 11:13AM(PhysOrg.com) -- After more than a century of technological refinements, zippers still get stuck. So do the molecular machines that routinely unzip the double helix of DNA in our cells after billions of years of evolution, and the results can be lethal.

What causes hybrid vigor?Tuesday, July 20, 2010 @ 4:14PMPlant scientists at the John Innes Centre have provided a new solution to an old debate on why species hybrids can be more vigourous than their parents. In a study to be published online next week in the online open access journal PLoS Biology, the researchers found a type of genetic "noise" caused by a surprising degree of variation in gene activity even for highly similar traits in closely ...

Genetic mismatch keeps yeast species distinctTuesday, July 20, 2010 @ 4:14PMHow species form and what keeps them distinct from each other, even though they can interbreed, is a key question in evolution. Researchers from Taiwan, led by Dr. Jun-Yi Leu, an Assistant Research Fellow from the Institute of Molecular Biology at Academia Sinica, have recently identified genes in three closely-related yeast species that cause sterility, increasing our understanding of how ...