Articles by Bob Beale

Getty Images A bee arrives at a flowering bush, rapidly explores it and assesses which flowers to visit. For an insect with a tiny brain and a lifespan measured in weeks, it's an impressive display of navigational skill, learning, and selective perception. A growing body of research into insect vision and cognition has provided not only basic insights into biology and problem solving, but also some surprising robotics, aviation, and military applications as well. Bees and dragonflies use inge

Sex and the Single Bowerbird; Mind Over Machine; How Cancer Grows Glenn Threlfo BEHAVIOR | Sex and the Single Bowerbird How do extreme displays of male behavior evolve? While there's still no clear answer, the search for one has spawned a rich variety of studies on sexual selection. Using animatronics, one team is helping to explain how females choose males and why different females make different choices. Gerald Borgia and his University of Maryland colleagues are investigating the comple

Image: Courtesy of Umesh D. Parashar and Roger I. Glass HOMING IN ON THE TARGET: Rotavirus particles visualized by immune electron microscopy in stool filtrate from a child with acute gastroenteritis. The 70-nm particles possess a distinctive double-walled outer capsid. Ridding the world of smallpox was a triumph of 20th century medical science: Mass vaccinations directly averted some 350 million cases and saved 40 million lives. So, humanitarian hopes were similarly high when a rotaviru

Photo: Courtesy of Murdoch Childrens Research Institute If fate had been kinder to Ruth Bishop, she might have enjoyed the rare satisfaction of discovering what causes one of the world's deadliest infectious diseases, and the means to prevent it. She helped accomplish the first feat with remarkable ease almost 30 years ago, but as she nears the end of a distinguished medical research career, its sequel remains maddeningly elusive. Now 69, Bishop is self-effacing about the headway she and her

Image: Courtesy of Mark Neysmith, © Gregor Reid GUT REACTION: Researchers have found that Lactobacillus GR-1 and RC-14 can penetrate Escherichia coli biofilms, multiply, and survive. The human body plays host to a complex and thriving microbial ecosystem of vast numbers of tiny creatures. Some of these species, already well studied, can cause disease. But a renewed appreciation is growing for many lesser-known species called probiotics that help maintain health and may have the pote

The cry of "It's a boy" or "It's a girl" marks the newborn child's first and most basic label of personal identity. But researchers' understanding of sex is undergoing profound and surprising changes due to new insights gained from sociology, biology, and medicine. The differences between females and males, once believed black and white--or pink and blue--now appear like a blurred rainbow of confusion. Researchers are learning, for example, that the Y chromosome has degenerated over the centurie