News by Subject Medicine & Health

In animal embryonic development a group of cells starts out all being the same. But then one cell puts the brake on its neighbors, sending inhibitory signals that stop their differentiation. The 'winning' cell, in the end, is different from its neighbors. Scientists at IST Austria now describe a new mechanism for lateral inhibition in a publication in today's edition of Cell: In zebrafish ovarian follicles, granulosa cells compete mechanically!

Sierra Leone has few doctors and even fewer surgeons to serve its seven million people. Since 2011, a non-profit group called CapaCare has been training community health officers to perform basic lifesaving surgeries. A new study shows the programme is working well when it comes to the most common surgery in the country -- Caesarean sections.

Proper development of the fetal penis requires not just testosterone from the testes, but a second hormone produced by other tissues, including the placenta, according to a new study publishing Feb. 14 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology from Paul Fowler of the University of Aberdeen, Michelle Bellingham of the University of Glasgow, and colleagues in the UK, France and Sweden. The results reveal a previously unknown pathway of masculinization of the external genitals.

Researchers at the University of Washington wanted to know how Magellanic penguin parents in South America balance the dietary demands of multiple chicks. As they report in a paper published Jan. 23 in the journal Animal Behaviour, when a Magellanic penguin parent returns to its nest with fish, the parent tries to feed each of its two chicks equal portions of food, regardless of the youngsters' differences in age or size.

Researchers found that if a squirrel inherits territory from a male rather than a female, it will have about 1,300 more cones in its midden. This stored energy will keep the squirrel alive an extra 17 days. For females it means she will enough food to breed earlier, resulting in her offspring leaving the nest earlier. This shows how the behavior of a complete stranger can impact the genetic contribution of another.

Does a drier and hotter climate present a threat to the meerkats in the Kalahari Desert? Researchers from UZH and Cambridge show that climate change is likely to impact meerkats, and seasonal rainfall and temperature will be the key factors.