By JAMES WARREN It’s a function of fiscal dehydration and desperation that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is drooling over the prospect of casino revenues. The Missile thus might find that a Northwestern University professor is underscoring the obvious in a study, “A Mouth-Watering Prospect: Salivation to Material Reward,” because it links a vivid physiological response to the mere thought of money. This study is relevant in a week in which the Missile, aldermen and the city’s inspector general are entangled in budgetary skirmishing and reveries. It inspires my new Pavlov’s Law of Government Salivation, namely that the political class will drool at the thought of financial sources, even imaginary ones. In the Northwestern study, David Gal, who teaches marketing at the university’s Kellogg School of Management, sought to go beyond the well-documented reality of salivary secretions being tied to hunger and the craving for food. That’s why Mr. Gal beckoned a few hundred Northwestern students to test whether we also might salivate to distinctly material incentives, notably money and sports cars. The 169 men and women who participated in the first stage of the experiment were told that researchers were interested in responses to food stimuli and that participants would view images of different food items but also some nonfood items, in particular money and office supplies. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 15867 - Posted: 10.01.2011

Caitlin Stier, video intern Most people would agree that the static disc in this video is covered with a black-and-white pattern. But once the disc starts spinning, many viewers see colourful swirls appear. This classic illusion, invented by English toymaker Charles Benham in 1895, is still puzzling scientists today. The colours perceived seem to vary from person to person, as well as with lighting and rotation speed, and there is still no clear explanation for why this happens. However, a recent functional MRI study by Hiroki Tanabe and his team from the National Institute for Physiological Sciences in Japan is giving some insight. Brain scans of volunteers looking at Benham's disc showed activity in the same areas of the brain as people watching a spinning coloured disc. But viewers of the illusion had stronger connections between certain regions in the visual cortex, suggesting that a few different areas cooperate to produce the effect. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 15866 - Posted: 10.01.2011

by Andy Coghlan TWIN studies have shown that people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have changes in gene activity caused by their environment. The finding provides the strongest evidence yet that such gene changes might cause the conditions. Jonathan Mill at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, and colleagues scanned the genome of 22 pairs of identical twins - chosen because one twin in each pair was diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. As expected, the twins had identical DNA. However, they showed significant differences in chemical "epigenetic" markings - changes that do not alter the sequence of DNA but leave chemical marks on genes that dictate how active they are. These changes were on genes that have been linked with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Mill's team scanned for differences in the attachment of chemical methyl groups at 27,000 sites in the genome. Methylation normally switches genes off, and de-methylation turns them on. Regardless of which condition the twin had, the most significant differences, with variations of up to 20 per cent in the amount of methylation, were in the promoter "switch" for a gene called ST6GALNAC1, which has been linked with schizophrenia. Although the function of the gene isn't fully established, it is thought to add sugars to proteins, which could alter the speed or specificity of their usual function. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15865 - Posted: 10.01.2011

by Andy Coghlan Video: Meek mouse yields in dominance duel Dominant mice can be humbled and wimps made mighty by altering the strength of electrical connections in their brain. The crucial connections dictating a mouse's place in the social hierarchy appear to sit in the part of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), responsible for emotion and decision-making. To investigate the impact of the mPFC on social ranking, Hailan Hu of the Chinese Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai and her colleagues first worked out the social hierarchy of mice through challenges between pairs of the animals in transparent tubes. When the mice came face to face, the subordinate animal would retreat and back out of the tube. The team then injected a virus into some of the mice that inserts a gene called GluR4 into mPFC neurons. GluR4 amplifies transmission of electrical signals – a key step in strengthening connections. When the dominance tests were repeated, previously subordinate mice that had received the virus were propelled to the top of the social ladder. "These mice also tended to gain more food in competition with their cage-mates, mark more territories and sing more courtship songs than their subordinate counterparts," says Hu. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Aggression; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 15864 - Posted: 10.01.2011

by Chelsea Whyte A new strain of mice engineered to lack a gene with links to autism displays many of the hallmarks of the condition. It also responds to a drug in the same way as people with autism, which might open the way to new therapies for such people. It's not the first mouse strain to have symptoms of autism, and previous ones have already been useful models for studying the condition. Daniel Geschwind at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues tried a fresh approach, however. Rather than simply examining existing strains to identify mice with autistic-like behaviour, they engineered mice to lack a gene called Cntnap2, which had already been implicated in autism. Cntnap2 is the largest gene on the genome, clocking in at 2.5 million bases, and is responsible for regulating brain circuits involved in language and speech. Geschwind was initially sceptical that the modified mice would display the behaviour typical of autism in humans, because the neural pathways in the two species are thought to be fairly different. "One has to be cautious," he says. "What is an autistic mouse going to look like?" Surprisingly, he says, it turns out to be a lot like a human with autism. "Knockout" mice lacking the gene were less vocal than their genetically unaltered littermates, and less social as well. They also showed repetitive behaviour such as grooming which was "wild almost to the point of self-injury", says Geschwind. These three symptoms are the ones normally used to diagnose autism in humans. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15863 - Posted: 10.01.2011

By Cassie Rodenberg According to recent headlines, we might be poisoning ourselves and our kids with pain pills, yet we’re afraid to tell doctors we’re depressed. Anti-depressants are the second most prescribed kind of medication in the U.S., and an estimated one in 10 Americans reports suffering from depression. This class of drugs has become about as common as table salt in American households, yet enough stigma (and fear of side effects) still exists to make patients feel uncomfortable telling their doctors if they’re experiencing symptoms of depression. In a recent study, 23 percent of people polled said they kept their symptoms of depression a secret because they feared their doctors would prescribe anti-depressants. And in fact, disclosing depression might be more of a societal than personal problem, with anxieties that insurance premiums will rise or colleagues at work will find out.1 Is this such a thing to be ashamed of? Funny how chronic pain is acceptable, eliciting the most sympathetic of nods from acquaintances and colleagues alike, yet the equally chronic debilitation of depression is taboo. It makes me wonder: do we avoid treatment for chronic depression and instead overuse and abuse supposedly sensible, necessary pain pills to self medicate? Do we subconsciously favor physical over mental pain? An op-ed in the Archives of Internal Medicine (subscription required) noted that little research has been done on long-term effects of opioids (a common type of prescribed pain pill), including the drugs’ effects on patients with psychological disorders and depression. This is alarming when 30-50% of those taking opioids suffer from symptoms of depression and anxiety, and as seen above, many more are likely undiagnosed. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Depression; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 15862 - Posted: 10.01.2011

By Matt Blake Forty-five years after Timothy Leary, the apostle of drug-induced mysticism, urged his hippie followers to "turn on, tune in and drop out", researchers have found that magic mushrooms do change a user's personality – for the better. The fungi have long been known for their psychedelic effects, but far from damaging the brain, the hallucinogenic drug they contain enhances feelings and aesthetic sensibilities, scientists say. The study, at Johns Hopkins University of Medicine in Baltimore, found that a single dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, was enough to cause positive effects for up to a year. "Psilocybin can facilitate experiences that change how people perceive themselves and their environment," said Roland Griffiths, a study author and professor of psychiatry and behavioural science at Johns Hopkins. "That's unprecedented." Users who had a "mystical experience" while taking the drug showed increases in a personality trait dubbed "openness", one of the five major traits used in psychology to describe human personality. Openness is associated with imagination, artistic appreciation, feelings, abstract ideas and general broad-mindedness. None of the other four traits – extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness and conscientiousness – was altered. Under controlled scientific conditions, researchers gave 51 adults either psilocybin or a placebo in up to five eight-hour sessions. They were told to lie on a sofa with their eyes covered and listen to music while focusing on an "inner experience". ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Emotions
Link ID: 15861 - Posted: 10.01.2011

Children and teens who go to bed late and wake up late are more likely to be overweight than their peers who go to bed early and rise early, Australian researchers suggest. For the study, 2,200 Australians aged nine to 16 kept track of their bedtimes, wake times as well as time spent watching TV, playing videogames or using computers. They also wore pedometers to record their physical activity levels, and weights were measured. When they went to sleep was key to the results. Those who went to bed late and got up late were 1.5 times more likely to become obese than those who went to bed early and got up early, even when they got the same amount of sleep, Carol Maher, a post-doctoral fellow with the University of South Australia, and her co-authors reported in Saturday's issue of the journal Sleep. The late-nighters were almost twice as likely to be physically inactive and nearly three times more likely to sit in front of screens for more than guidelines recommend, racking up nearly an hour more of these sedentary activities. "This study shows that the teenagers that have that pattern of late to bed, late to wake up don't have as good health outcomes," Maher told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.The time teens go to bed is linked to their risk of being overweight. The findings contradict opinions that it is normal for teenagers to get into a sleeping pattern of staying up late and sleeping in, or advisable to adjust school times to fit in with a teenager's sleep patterns, she said. © CBC 2011

Keyword: Sleep; Obesity
Link ID: 15860 - Posted: 10.01.2011

By Lonnae O’Neal Parker, That morning, I noticed first that I couldn’t spit. I was brushing my teeth, but I couldn’t close my lips around the toothbrush, and my mouth didn’t seem to work right. Weird, I thought, but I quickly put it out of my mind. I was on assignment for The Post and probably I was just tired from the overnight drive from Prince George’s County to Greensboro, N.C. Perhaps it was the two glasses of wine a couple of nights before. Maybe it was the flu. Whatever it was, I was sure I didn’t have time for it. I was traveling to Atlanta with two guys I was writing about, and as we grabbed breakfast before the second leg of our drive, my weird-face feeling intensified. Then my right eye began to ache, and a sudden fear iced my spine. I stepped outside the restaurant to stare at my reflection in the car window, and I couldn’t process what I was seeing. I couldn’t move the right side of my face, and my eye ached because I couldn’t close it. The parking lot started to swim, and I willed myself not to faint. “Something’s wrong with my face,” I told the guys haltingly. “I have to go to the emergency room when we get to Atlanta.” But they insisted on taking me immediately in Greensboro. I’m glad they did. “My face is paralyzed, and I can’t blink. I think I’m having a stroke,” I told the receptionist at the Moses Cone Urgent Care Center, though it all felt so surreal. I’m only 44, and I’m healthy! © 1996-2011 The Washington Post

Keyword: Movement Disorders
Link ID: 15859 - Posted: 10.01.2011

By Leila Battison Science reporter Bats are able to locate their prey using echolocation produced by a special kind of "superfast" muscle, scientists have found. These specially adapted muscles can contract 100 times quicker than most of the muscles in human bodies. This is the first time such muscles have been seen in mammals, although they had previously been found in rattlesnakes, some fish and birds. The Danish findings are published in the journal Science. Bats use echolocation to navigate in total darkness, as well as to catch flying insects in mid air. In order to pinpoint the insects with enough accuracy and speed to catch them before they fly away, the bats need to make a lot of calls in rapid succession. As the bat approaches its prey target, the frequency of calls increases up to about 190 calls per second, creating what is known as the "terminal buzz". Researchers at the University of Southern Denmark, led by Prof Coen Elemans, designed tests to investigate just how fast the terminal buzz could be. They discovered that the maximum frequency of the buzz was not limited by the echo return time, but was controlled by the muscles in a bat's throat. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 15858 - Posted: 10.01.2011

Jonathan Weitzman As an identical twin, I have always been fascinated by what determines who we are. Nature's clones are never truly identical, so what explains the differences between my brother and myself? How much of our identity is inherited; how much acquired by interacting with the environment? The field of epigenetics, standing at the interface between our environment and our genes, is beginning to offer answers. Epigenetics explores how genetically identical entities, whether cells or whole organisms, display different characteristics, and how these are inherited. The past century witnessed amazing advances in our understanding of genetics, but secrets remain hidden within the genome. Epigenetics research is now blossoming, offering a potential panacea for these post-genome blues. Two timely books open up this emergent field: Epigenetics by Richard Francis and The Epigenetics Revolution by Nessa Carey offer very different takes. Francis's thoughtful and succinct book focuses on the narrative and the excitement of discovery, rather than on the nitty-gritty details at the molecular level. His personal tour includes anecdotes from his travels around the world and allusions to popular culture. Carey's book is more DNA-centric, focusing on epigenetic mechanisms and the chemistry of chromatin, which defines how DNA is packaged around proteins in the nucleus. Her book combines an easy style with a textbook's thoroughness. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15857 - Posted: 09.29.2011

by Sara Reardon Snuffling around in a Plexiglas box that it knows well, a black and white rat catches a whiff of chocolate cookies. It scampers toward them—but suddenly, it finds itself teleported into another, equally familiar box. One could hardly blame the poor rat for being confused and disoriented for at least a fraction of a second, and researchers have now figured out why: cells in the memory center of its brain compete over where it is for exactly one-eighth of a second. The "teleportation" effect in rats is similar to the momentary disorientation you feel when elevator doors open and you step out onto the wrong floor. It occurs because the place you expect to see and the place you actually do are "mutually exclusive," says Edvard Moser, a neuroscientist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. Normally, the brain orients itself gradually as you move. The hippocampus, the brain's memory center, contains neurons known as place cells, which record both your environment and your movement within it in order to form memories that ensure you always know where you are. To update the brain on your position, place cells fire in a rhythm called a theta oscillation, which repeats itself every 125 milliseconds and is especially prominent when you're moving. To teleport rats, Edvard Moser and his wife, neuroscientist May-Britt Moser, built two rat boxes connected by a tunnel. One box had a circle of white light-emitting diodes shining up through the clear floor, and the other had a row of green LEDs around the ceiling. The researchers let a rat run back and forth between the two boxes and forage for food until it became familiar with both. They also implanted an electrode array into the rat's hippocampus and recorded firing patterns from individual neurons while the rat was in each box. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 15856 - Posted: 09.29.2011

By Janet Raloff Not getting enough vitamin B12 may take a serious toll on the brain. Two new studies of the elderly link impairments of memory and reasoning with an indirect measure of vitamin B12 deficiency. Worse, brain scans reveal that those with signs of insufficient B12 are more likely to have shrinkage of brain tissue, vascular damage and patches of dead brain cells than are people with higher levels of the vitamin. A third, ongoing study is recording neural changes — a slowing in the electrical signals conveying visual information — among people with B12 deficiency. Conducted in seniors, mostly in their mid-70s to upper 80s (including a large group in Chicago), all three studies observed adverse changes even in people whose B12 levels in blood fall within the ostensibly normal, healthy range. While blood levels of B12 might have been normal, however, two biochemical markers of B12 deficiency often were not: Except in the visual study, brain problems largely correlated with rising blood concentrations of homocysteine and methylmalonic acid, or MMA, which accumulate in blood when cells of the body receive too little B12. “The message of this Chicago study is watch your B12. It’s important for the brain,” says David Smith of the University of Oxford in England, whose team has begun investigating whether vitamin supplementation can slow cognitive decline in the elderly. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Alzheimers; Attention
Link ID: 15855 - Posted: 09.29.2011

by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam With its expansive range and unprecedented potential for anonymity, 
the Internet gives voice to our deepest urges and most uninhibited thoughts. Inspired by the wealth of unfettered expression available online, neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam, who met as Ph.D. candidates at Boston University, began plumbing a few chosen search engines (including Dogpile and AOL) to create the world’s largest experiment in sexuality in 2009. Quietly tapping into a billion Web searches, they explored the private activities of more than 100 million men and women around the world. The result is the first large-scale scientific examination of human sexuality in more than half a century, since biologist Alfred Kinsey famously interviewed more than 18,000 middle-class Caucasians about their sexual behavior and published the Kinsey reports in 1948 and 1953. Building on the work of Kinsey, neuroscientists have long made the case that male and female sexuality exist on different planes. But like Kinsey himself, they have been hampered by the dubious reliability of self-reports of sexual behavior and preferences as well as by small sample sizes. That is where the Internet comes in. By accessing raw data from Web searches and employing the help of Alexa—a company that measures Web traffic and publishes a list of the million most popular sites in the world—Ogas and Gaddam shine a light on hidden desire, a quirky realm of lust, fetish, and kink that, like the far side of the moon, has barely been glimpsed. Here is a sampling of their fascinating results, selected from their book, A Billion Wicked Thoughts. Copyright © 2011, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 15854 - Posted: 09.29.2011

By Rachel Ehrenberg Scientists have finally explained how a little red berry makes just about anything, from the sourest lemon to the bitterest beer, taste as sweet as honey. A protein found in the fruit tickles the tongue’s sweet-sensing machinery, its effects intensifying in the presence of acidic flavors like citrus and carbonated drinks. Researchers and foodies alike have long known the effects of the miracle fruit (a.k.a. Richadella dulcifica). At flavor-tripping parties, guests will pop a berry then chew, chew and chew some more, letting the masticated fruit linger on the tongue. Then the sampling begins: Guinness tastes like a chocolate shake, Tabasco loses its sting and pickles their mouth-pinching tang. Lemons and limes gush with sweetness. While the active ingredient in miracle fruit — miraculin — has been known for decades, it hasn’t been clear exactly how the protein confers its sweetness. Now scientists in Japan and France report that miraculin’s interaction with the tongue’s sweet sensors depends on the acidity of the local environment. At a pH of 4.8 (water is neutral with a pH close to 7), the sweet-tasting cells respond twice as vigorously to miraculin than they do at a less acidic pH of 5.7. At closer-to-neutral pH levels of 6.7 and higher, the protein seems to slightly shift shape, blocking the sweet sensors but not activating them. This explains why under certain conditions sweet foods may taste less flavorful after eating the berry, researchers led by Keiko Abe of the University of Tokyo report online September 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 15853 - Posted: 09.29.2011

by Tiffany O'Callaghan It might taste good, but sugar is addictive and fuelling the obesity epidemic, says Robert Lustig Your lecture on sugar has been viewed more than 1.6 million times on YouTube. Why do you think it's had so much attention? The obesity epidemic just gets worse and people are looking for answers. Diet and exercise don't work and the idea that obesity is about personal responsibility has come into question. Many people have said sugar is bad, but they didn't supply the biochemistry. I supplied that. Do you think fructose - which along with glucose makes table sugar - drives obesity? I don't think fructose is the cause of obesity, but I do think it is the thing that takes you from obesity to metabolic syndrome, and that's where the healthcare dollars go - diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease. So the idea that "a calorie is a calorie" is wrong? As far as I'm concerned that's how we got into this mess. If a calorie is a calorie, the solution is eat less and exercise more. Except it doesn't work. And the reason is that fructose is toxic beyond its caloric equivalent, so if you consume it instead of glucose you get more of a negative effect even if the calories are the same. It's important that people recognise that the quality of our diet also dictates the quantity. In addition, "eat less" is a really crappy message that doesn't work. "Eat less sugar" is a message that people can get their heads around. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Obesity; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 15852 - Posted: 09.29.2011

Our brains followed a twisting path of development through creatures that swam, crawled and walked the Earth long before we did. Here are a few of these animals, and how they helped make us what we are. Our single-celled ancestors had sophisticated machinery for sensing and responding to the environment. Once the first multicellular animals arose, this machinery was adapted for cell-to-cell communication. Specialised cells that could carry messages using electrical impulses and chemical signals – the first nerve cells – arose very early on. The first neurons were probably connected in a diffuse network across the body of a creature like this hydra. This kind of structure, known as a nerve net, can still be seen in the quivering bodies of jellyfish and sea anemones

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 15851 - Posted: 09.29.2011

by Linda Geddes AN ARTIFICIAL cerebellum has restored lost brain function in rats, bringing the prospect of cyborg-style brain implants a step closer to reality. Such implants could eventually be used to replace areas of brain tissue damaged by stroke and other conditions, or even to enhance healthy brain function and restore learning processes that decline with age. Cochlear implants and prosthetic limbs have already proved that it is possible to wire electrical devices into the brain and make sense of them, but such devices involve only one-way communication, either from the device to the brain or vice versa. Now Matti Mintz of Tel Aviv University in Israel and his colleagues have created a synthetic cerebellum which can receive sensory inputs from the brainstem - a region that acts as a conduit for neuronal information from the rest of the body. Their device can interpret these inputs, and send a signal to a different region of the brainstem that prompts motor neurons to execute the appropriate movement. "It's proof of concept that we can record information from the brain, analyse it in a way similar to the biological network, and return it to the brain," says Mintz, who presented the work this month at the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence meeting in Cambridge, UK. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 15850 - Posted: 09.29.2011

By Melinda Wenner Moyer On the surface, Tourette’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) seem to have little in common. Tourette’s is characterized by repetitive involuntary facial or vocal tics, whereas OCD sufferers have all-consuming thoughts and overwhelming urges to perform certain actions. But 50 to 70 percent of people with Tourette’s also have OCD, and recent studies suggest that the same genetic roots may underlie both conditions [see “Obsessions Revisited,” by Melinda Wenner Moyer; Scientific American Mind, May/June 2011]. Now a new study published in Neurology may help scientists further understand how the disorders overlap and differ by revealing several key differences in the brain activity of Tourette’s patients with and without OCD. Andrew Feigin and his colleagues at North Shore LIJ Health System in Manhasset, N.Y., scanned the brains of 12 unmedicated Tourette’s patients—some of whom also had OCD—and 12 healthy subjects using positron-emission tomography, which reveals patterns of brain activity. Compared with healthy controls, those who had Tourette’s exhibited more activity in the premotor cortex and cerebellum, regions that handle motor control, and less activity in the striatum and orbitofrontal cortex, areas involved in decision making and learning. These findings support the idea that the symptoms of the disorder may arise from the brain’s inability to suppress abnormal actions using decision-making skills. When the researchers compared the Tourette’s patients who had OCD with those who did not, they found that the patients who had both disorders exhibited greater activity in the primary motor cortex and precuneus, an area that plays a role in self-awareness. Previous research has suggested that in patients who suffer from both disorders, OCD might show up more in the form of compulsions than obsessions, and these findings support that idea: the increased activity of the precuneus may reflect individuals’ efforts and ability to resist obsessive thought, and the motor cortex may be more active because OCD is manifesting itself more physically than mentally. © 2011 Scientific American

Keyword: Tourettes; OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Link ID: 15849 - Posted: 09.29.2011

By Nick Bascom It’s the smell of food that gets male fruit flies in the romantic mood, says a new study exploring the sexual habits of Drosophila melanogaster. When trying to woo an attractive female the sexually excited male fruit fly becomes a kind of troubadour, playing a love song with one wing as it waltzes behind its object of desire. But what exactly provokes this courtly behavior has been a mystery. New experiments reported online September 28 in Nature show that removing the gene for an olfactory protein called IR84a makes male flies less apt to perform their song and dance. Found amid nerve cells that spur reproductive activity in fruit flies, the protein is primarily stimulated by two aromas — phenylacetic acid and phenylacetaldehyde. Strangely, these aphrodisiacal odors are given off not by femaleflies, but by the fruit and plant tissues the flies eat and use for laying eggs. Most insects become amorously inclined when they sense sex pheromones — a natural biochemical perfume — coming from a potential mate. Being turned on by the scent of food instead could provide an evolutionary advantage for a species whose newborn spend several days eating and growing before they leave home. “Fruit fly larvae eat constantly, and they need a good supply of food to support this growth,” says Richard Benton of the Center for Integrative Genomics in Lausanne, Switzerland, who performed the work with colleagues in Switzerland, France and England. Being sexually stimulated by food odors ensures that flies will couple near a nutrient source, enabling them to raise their offspring where the whole family will remain well-fed. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 15848 - Posted: 09.29.2011