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168,100 articles from ScienceDaily

Plants Recognize Siblings: ID System In Roots

Plants may not have eyes and ears, but they can recognize their siblings, and researchers have discovered how. The ID system lies in the roots and the chemical cues they secrete. The finding not only sheds light on the intriguing sensing system in plants, but also may have implications for agriculture and even home...

Rip Currents Pose Greater Risk To Swimmers Than To Shoreline, Study Suggests

Rip currents -- powerful, channeled currents of water flowing away from the shore -- represent a danger to human life and property. Rip currents are responsible for more than one hundred deaths on our nation's beaches each year, and if rip currents persist long enough they can cause beach erosion. However, researchers found that rip currents along at least one beach in Long Island, New York lasted...

Researchers Identify Workings Of L-form Bacteria

Researchers have for the first time identified the genetic mechanisms involved in the formation and survival of L-form bacteria. L-form bacteria, which were first discovered in the 1930s, are morphological variants of classical bacteria that lack a cell wall. These bacteria are believed to form in response to cell wall stress from certain antibiotics or the body's immune attack, and are suspected...

Absent Pheromones Turn Male Flies Into Lusty Lotharios

When researchers genetically tweaked fruit flies so that they didn't produce certain pheromones, they triggered a sexual tsunami in their laboratory. In fact, they produced bugs so irresistible that normal male fruit flies attempted to mate with pheromone-free males and even females from a different species -- generally a no-no in the fruit fly dating...

What Drives Our Genes? Researchers Map The First Complete Human Epigenome

Although the human genome sequence faithfully lists (almost) every single DNA base of the roughly 3 billion bases that make up a human genome, it doesn't tell biologists much about how its function is regulated. Now, researchers provide the first detailed map of the human epigenome, the layer of genetic control beyond the regulation inherent in the sequence of the genes...

Earlier Flu Viruses Provided Some Immunity To Current H1N1 Influenza, Study Shows

Researchers studying the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus, formerly referred to as "swine flu," have identified a group of immunologically important sites on the virus that are also present in seasonal flu viruses that have been circulating for years. These molecular sites appear to result in some level of immunity to the new virus in people who were exposed to the earlier influenza...

Gene Mingling Increases Sudden Death Risk

Medical researchers report that variations in the gene NOS1AP increase the risk of cardiac symptoms and sudden death in patients who have an inherited cardiac disease called congenital long-QT syndrome. The findings will help in assessing the risk of sudden death -- and assigning therapy -- in patients with this...


WEDNESDAY 14. OCTOBER 2009