In this week's installment of Raw Science, we link to recent papers in the fields of marine science, human ecology, synthetic chemistry, and infectious disease epidemiology.
By the Light of the Moon
Marine scientists review the various mechanisms by which fish are able to align their reproductive cycles with phases of the moon.
“External and internal controls of lunar-related reproductive rhythms in fishes,” Journal of Fish Biology (2010) 76, 7 – 26. A. Takemura, M. S. Rahman and Y. J. Park.
Jetson Yourself
Human ecologists develop a simple, portable system for creating three-dimensional scans of the body.
“A portable stereo vision system for whole body surface imaging,” Image and Vision Computing 28 (2010) 605–613. Wurong Yu, Bugao Xu.
Brewing Bigleaf
Chemists synthesize two compounds, which are found naturally in the root bark of the Japanese Bigleaf Magnolia tree, that have shown the ability to increase the biosynthesis of a neurotransmitter that gets lost in Alzheimer’s disease.
"Biomimetic Syntheses of the Neurotrophic Natural Products Caryolanemagnolol and Clovanemagnolol," OrganicLetters (2010) Vol. 12, No. 6 1304-1307. Xu Cheng, Nicole L. Harzdorf, Travis Shaw, and Dionicio Siegel.
Leave Those Kids Alone
Biologists and public health scientists explore why the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza (“swine flu”) struck school-age children more often than adults.
"The Shifting Demographic Landscape of Pandemic Influenza," PLoS one 5(2): e9360. Shweta Bansal, Babak Pourbohloul, Nathaniel Hupert, Bryan Grenfell, Lauren Ancel Meyers.
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