Futurity.org » University of Texas at Austin

How ‘camo’ fish hide in plain sight

Daniel Oppenheimer-U. Texas — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 15:11:06 +0000

U. TEXAS-AUSTIN (US) — The lookdown fish can camouflage itself in the ocean by manipulating how light reflects off its skin.

Scientists say the discovery overturns 40 years of conventional wisdom about fish camouflage and could someday lead to the development of new camouflage materials for use in the ocean.

Map shows where entrepreneurs thrive in US

Michelle Bryant-U. Texas — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 14:53:11 +0000

U. TEXAS-AUSTIN (US) — Researchers have identified regions in the United States where a feeling of entrepreneurial spirit is “most at home.”

Founders of successful companies tend to exhibit personality traits that make them more socially engaging, creative, and able to handle stress than non-entrepreneurs, according to new research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The team of researchers in the US and Germany analyzed the personalities of more than 500,000 US citizens, in addition to approximately 20,000 German and 15,000 British citizens. The psychologists correlated their findings with economic data derived from various regions within each country.

Permafrost microbe loves salty Arctic ‘veins’

Katherine Gombay-McGill — Fri, 24 May 2013 15:39:28 +0000

MCGILL (CAN) — Scientists have discovered a bacterium in the Canadian High Arctic that thrives at -15º Celsius—temperatures nearly as cold as the surface of Mars.

The temperature in the permafrost on Ellesmere Island is the coldest ever reported for bacterial growth. The bacterium offers clues about some of the necessary preconditions for microbial life on both the Saturn moon Enceladus and Mars, where similar briny subzero conditions are thought to exist.

The team of researchers, led by Professor Lyle Whyte and postdoctoral fellow Nadia Mykytczuk, both from the department of natural resource sciences at McGill University, discovered Planococcus halocryophilus OR1 after screening about 200 separate High Arctic microbes looking for the microorganism best adapted to the harsh conditions of the Arctic permafrost.

Biology can’t run on genes alone

Pat Bailey-UC Davis — Tue, 21 May 2013 17:57:00 +0000

UC DAVIS (US) — Don’t lose the organism in the excitement over its genes, say biologists, who caution against straying too far from the actual plants, animals, and microorganisms.

The team suggests that decades of focus on genes have led the scientific community away from a balanced exploration of the organisms that those genes define.

‘Crazy ant’ invaders make fire ants seem polite

Daniel Oppenheimer-U. Texas — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:48:02 +0000

U. TEXAS-AUSTIN (US) — Invasive “crazy ants” are displacing fire ants across the southeastern United States and may have dramatic effects on the region’s ecosystem, researchers say.

The ecologically dominant crazy ants are reducing diversity and abundance across a range of ant and arthropod species—but their spread can be limited if people are careful not to transport them inadvertently.

Bacteria help trace how alcohol binds to brain

Daniel Oppenheimer-U. Texas — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 17:12:53 +0000

U. TEXAS – AUSTIN (US) — Bacteria that grows only on rocks in the Swiss Alps has helped researchers identify how alcohol might affect key brain proteins.

“Now that we’ve identified this key brain protein and understand its structure, it’s possible to imagine developing a drug that could block the binding site,” says Adron Harris, professor of biology and director of the Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction at the University of Texas at Austin.

Harris and Rebecca Howard, an assistant professor at Skidmore College, co-author the paper that was recently published in Nature Communications. It describes the structure of the brain protein, called a ligand-gated ion channel, which is a key enabler of many of the primary physiological and behavioral effects of alcohol.

Dead zebras help detect how anthrax spreads

Daniel Oppenheimer-U. Texas — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 10:34:43 +0000

U. TEXAS – AUSTIN (US) — Scavengers might not play as key a role in spreading anthrax through wildlife populations as scientists previously thought.

Wildlife managers currently spend large amounts of money and time to control anthrax outbreaks by preventing scavengers from feeding on infected carcasses. The effort might be ill spent, according to results of a small study published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Carrion produced by anthrax deaths feeds many scavengers, including jackals, hyena, vultures, marabou storks, and occasionally even lions. These scavengers have evolved to be able to digest infected carrion without contracting the infection. Herbivorous animals more vulnerable to anthrax include zebra, springboks, elephants, and wildebeest.

Algorithm ‘learns’ to fix up grainy photos

David Ochsner-Texas — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 20:41:25 +0000

U. TEXAS – AUSTIN (US) — A new, free website provides tools to “de-noise” photos, such as removing imperfections from low light, and to enlarge images without losing picture quality.

“The free image-processing website allows users to upload as many as 1,000 images daily,” says Wilson Geisler, director of the Center for Perceptual Systems and professor in the department of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Cold prompts ‘power stroke’ in tiny swimmers

Lee Clippard-Texas — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:14:10 +0000

U. TEXAS -- AUSTIN (US) — To escape from predators in cold, viscous water, marine copepods switch up their swimming method, say researchers.

Copepods are tiny crustaceans found in nearly every aquatic environment on Earth. By some estimates, they are the most abundant animals on the planet. Their change in stroke in cold water helps them escape a slew of predators, from larval fish to crabs, oysters, and jellyfish.

Super-thin ‘metascreen’ cloaks 3D objects

Adrienne Lee-U. Texas — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:34:50 +0000

U. TEXAS-AUSTIN (US) — A new invisibility cloak is just micrometers thick and can hide 3D objects from microwaves in their natural environment, in all directions, and from all of the observers’ positions.

Until now, the invisibility cloaks put forward by scientists have been bulky devices—an obvious flaw for those interested in Harry Potter-style applications.

For the study, which is published in the New Journal of Physics, the researchers used a new, ultrathin layer called a “metascreen.”