Innovative Visualizations Shed Light on Avian Nocturnal Migration

Innovative Visualizations Shed Light on Avian Nocturnal Migration

Globally, billions of flying animals undergo seasonal migrations, many of which occur at night. The temporal and spatial scales at which migrations occur and our inability to directly observe these nocturnal movements makes monitoring and characterizing this critical period in migratory animals' life cycles difficult. Remote sensing, therefore, has played an important role in our understanding ...

Quantum dots shed light on diagnoses.

Featured article: Kim S, Lim YT, Soltesz EG, De Grand AM, Lee J, Nakayama A, Parker JA, Mihaljevic T, Laurence RG, Dor DM, Cohn LH, Bawendi MG, Frangioni JV. Near-infrared fluorescent type II quantum dots for sentinel lymph node mapping. Nat Biotechnol 2004;22:93–7. Near-infrared (NIR) (700 –2500 nm) in vivo imaging with semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) can offer nonradioactive extraction of me...

Genotype networks shed light on evolutionary constraints.

An evolutionary constraint is a bias or limitation in phenotypic variation that a biological system produces. One can distinguish physicochemical, selective, genetic and developmental causes of such constraints. Here, I discuss these causes in three classes of system that bring forth many phenotypic traits and evolutionary innovations: regulatory circuits, macromolecules and metabolic networks....

Studies shed light on sunscreen efficacy.

Flight Behaviour of Passerines on Nocturnal Migration

Many passerines migrate during the night and at high altitudes, making their migration difficult to observe. By using tracking radars we have been able to make exact observations of the flight behaviour of passerines on nocturnal migration, which has enabled us to test several hypotheses about adaptive values and constraints regarding migratory behaviour in different ecological contexts. We hav...