The cow whisperer By Silvia SanidesRelated Articles: Feature: What's in your milk? Slideshow: From feed to bottle Milk: It's electric Dairy economics: Milking blood from a stone Milk and human health: What's the state of the evidence linking milk to human disease? Infographic: What's in your milk? A selected list of hormones, growth factors and other substances found in an 8-ounce glass of milk. Peter-Christian Sch?n is an engineer with a heart - an

Credit: COURTESY OF JIM MCQUAID" /> Credit: COURTESY OF JIM MCQUAID In the tiny village of Wankama, Niger, sits a rounded thatched hut. Except for its solar panels, it looks much like the twenty or so other huts that blend into the stark desert of the Sahel. Woven from brown straw, the hut measures about five meters in diameter. It is 1.5 meters high at the wall and reaches a height of three meters at the apex. The floor is plain soil. A floppy lean-to door covers the entran

For birds, getting hauled out of a nest by a scientist and poked with a needle ? an increasingly common occurrence in this season of bird flu ? is pretty stressful. Some German ornithologists who study terns worried that such unpleasant encounters were biasing their research results. So taking a cue from nature, they put a tropical blood-sucking bug, Dipetalogaster maximus, on the job to do their dirty work for them.

It was during a walk along the coast that Ravi Naidu found the answer to his problem: "Seaweed! The idea just popped up." The ubiquitous and cheap plant material held the solution to his biore-mediation experiments DDT-contaminated soils. He and colleague Mallavarapu Megharaj of the University of South Australia found that sodium enhances bacteria's ability to degrade DDT in anaerobic environments. Throwing in some organic matter as fertilizer further accelerated the process. "Seaweed contains s

When physicians examined members of a Swiss expedition to Mount Everest in the 1980s, they discovered widespread damage to the climbers' muscles. Mito-chondrial volume had decreased by 20% and there was evidence of cell deterioration in tissue samples. However, their guides, the indigenous Tibetan Sherpas, were not affected.Now a Swiss-Italian team has found that several antioxidant enzymes seem to shield the Tibetans from the insults of oxygen deficiency at high altitudes.1 "Hypoxia leads to th

Mary OsbornCourtesy of Mary OsbornMary Osborn helped pioneer immunofluorescence microscopy, and in her images, the three-dimensional cells dance across a black screen in flecks of colored light, helping scientists see new aspects to diseases such as muscular dystrophy and cancer. Her diligence and focus in pursuing this technology for understanding cell structures has provided her a place among Europe's most prominent scientists: She ranked among the most highly cited researchers during the earl

At first glance, it seems like a paper worthy of an Ig Nobel Prize. Roland Ennos, University of Manchester, has examined why fingernails, when nibbled or torn, tend to rip in a transverse direction, not longitudinally toward the nail bed.1 Using 3 mm-long snippets of undergraduates' nails, he found that it took twice the energy (6kJm-2) to cut them lengthwise as crosswise (3kJm-2). "And that's a good thing," he says. "Otherwise, we would be in agony throughout our lives, because every tear would

Courtesy of Martin Lockey, University of ColoradoIt's a slab of rock, two-by-two feet square, which tells a 75-million-year-old story. Imprinted in one part is a footprint indentation (below the coin) of a tiny mammal and the impressions of a leaf; on another part are marks typically left by raindrops."It looks like the animal took cover underneath some type of leaf that protected the surface from raindrops," says Martin Lockley, University of Colorado, Denver, who discovered the fossilized trac

It creeps like a worm, crawls like a snail, slithers like a snake and inches along like an inchworm. But the critter Lakshmi-narayanan Mahadevan and colleagues have designed is merely a filament of cylindrical hydrogel with a 2 mm radius measuring 2 cm long.1 By vibrating the glass plate on which the artificial animal rests and subjecting it to different oscillation patterns, the researchers induced the gel to execute different gaits."Our simple system suggests that there's an underlying unity i

Frontlines | Trilobites: Living on the Edge Courtesy of The Yoho-Burgess Shale Foundation The most familiar and abundant species of trilobites in North America may have followed an exotic survival strategy. Elrathia kingii, found in Middle Cambrian formations in Utah, lived exclusively in low-oxygen environments, according to geologist Robert Gaines of Pomona College, Claremont, Calif.1 "Elrathia occurs typically in monospecific communities, with as many as 500 individuals per square

Frontlines | Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon: Equals in the Hunt The hunting prowess of the Neanderthal matched those who supplanted them, the Cro-Magnon, say researchers who have examined ungulate teeth and bones found in a cave in which both types of hominids lived.1 The Grotte XVI in southwestern France contains remains dated from about 65,000 to 12,000 years ago. The study adds to a growing body of evidence that questions the idea that Cro-Magnon displaced Neanderthal because of their super

Frontlines | A Discriminating, yet Artificial Palate Erica P. Johnson Researchers are developing artificial tongues that eventually could detect aromas of cassis and smoky oak in a glass of cabernet. The device uses ultrathin films of conducting polymers as sensing units, which mimic the human taste buds for salty, sour, bitter, sweet, and umami (glutamate, the "fifth taste"). "When immersed in a test solution, each [sensing] unit provides a distinct electrical signal. The electrical respo

The science circulatory system that sends so many European researchers to the United States flows in two directions, as most European governments run programs to attract US researchers as well. As science has become truly international, and projects exceedingly expensive, cross-border flow of scientists has become vital to research progress. While European leaders of science are anxious to build one Europe by sponsoring partnerships with former Soviet Union satellites, they also encourage col

Frontlines | Birds of a Feather, Banking Together More than fluff makes a feather. Tucked away in its vane and shaft is a surprising amount of valuable data. Thanks to recent technology breakthroughs, researchers can glean a lot of information about a bird's diet, mating behavior, and migratory habits by merely examining its plumage. "With improved PCR-based genetics, stable isotope analysis, and trace element fingerprinting, feathers have become a great research tool," says Keith Hobson o

It's a day neurobiologist Oliver Bruestle remembers well. He dropped the letter into the mailbox in August, two years ago. Addressed to the German Research Society, Germany's main funding organization for biomedical research, the envelope contained a grant proposal for work on human embryonic stem cells (ESCs), to be imported from Israel. "I knew this would generate some waves," relates Bruestle, "but I definitely did not count on a tempest of these proportions." His proposal, routine by mos