(Photo: guy_incognito Via Creative Commons @ Flickr)

Like a neon sign designed to attract customers, flowers emit electrical signals which help draw bees on the hunt for nectar.

While factors such as bright colors, patterns and tempting fragrances play a role in helping bees with their nectar-gathering duties, a study in Science Express reveals electrical signals from the blooms also help bees find and distinguish their targeted flowers.

Researchers from Bristol University’s School of Biological Sciences found that patterns of electrical signals emitted by flowers communicate information to the little pollinators.

Plants commonly emit weak and negatively-charged electric fields.  As they fly through the air, bees pick up positive electrical charges. Usually when a negative electrical signal meets a positive one, sparks can fly, but in the case of the bee and the bloom, nothing is exchanged except helpful information.

(Photo: BitHead Via Creative Commons @ Flickr)

“The co-evolution between flowers and bees has a long and beneficial history,” said Daniel Robert, the study’s lead author. “So perhaps it’s not entirely surprising that we are still discovering today how remarkably sophisticated their communication is.”

Another study on bees, from the University of Cambridge, suggests the contrast between flowers and their background is more important to bees than the colored vein patterns on pale flowers.

While flowers with patterns of varied color are more attractive to bees and provide them with guidance as to where to find nectar, researchers found little evidence to suggest bees specifically prefer the striped flowers.

The study revealed that solid red flowers reflect very little light and aren’t as interesting for the bees.

A bee grabs some nectar from a daisy (Photo: quas Via Creative Commons @ Flickr)

When compared with red blooms, researchers found flowers with an ivory background seemed to have the greatest effect on the bees. They think that’s because the ivory color contrasted better with the background than the red flowers.

The study also points out that bees were able to tell the difference between solid ivory and veined flowers, but had no preference between the two.  But, the researchers did find that both the solid ivory and veined flowers were much more popular with bees than the solid red flowers.

“Venation patterns (the distribution or arrangement of a system of veins on a flower) might be prevalent in nature because they can be useful nectar guides, particularly when they also increase flower visibility. But it appears that the color contrast of a flower with its background has a greater influence on bee preference,” the research team concluded in a released statement.

Thousands of years after first becoming domesticated, the house cat remains a beloved family pet. (Photo: Dave Morris/Flickr via Creative Commons)

Most people view cats as harmless pets, but for birds and small mammals, the domesticated feline can be a deadly killer.

A new study in Nature Communications finds bird and mammal mortality caused by outdoor cats is much higher than has been previously reported. Annual bird deaths in the United States are now estimated to be 1.4 to 3.7 billion, while mammal mortality runs from 6.9 to 20.7 billion individual animals.

Stray cats, as opposed to those that are owned and cared for by humans, cause the majority of these deaths, according to researchers from the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, who conducted the study.

The study, by two of the world’s leading science and wildlife organizations, offers the one of the most comprehensive analyses on outdoor cat predation.

The ancient Egyptians may have been the first to domesticate the cat more than 4,000 years ago. The animal became a favored household pet over the centuries, in large part due to their natural ability to hunt and eradicate household pests and vermin, such as mice and rats.

But that natural hunting ability could be a key reason cats are listed as one of the 100 worst non-native invasive species in the world, according to the Global Invasive Species Database, which was published in 2000.

A cat with its catch, a bird called the American Coot (Photo: Debi Shearwater)

A separate 2011 study found free-ranging cats have caused or contributed to 14 percent of modern bird, mammal and reptile extinctions on islands. The same report also found that feral cats cause a substantial proportion of total wildlife mortality.

Dr. George Fenwick, president of American Bird Conservancy, a group which has called for action on this issue for many years, reacted to this latest report. “This study, which employed scientifically rigorous standards for data inclusion, demonstrates that the issue of cat predation on birds and mammals is an even bigger environmental and ecological threat than we thought. No estimates of any other anthropogenic [human-caused] mortality source approach the bird mortality this study calculated for cat predation.”

However, the Humane Society of the United States questioned the report’s numbers.  “The HSUS values both cats and wildlife. There is a legitimate issue with free-roaming cats preying on birds and other wildlife, and we are working to change that in a meaningful way,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the US. “Despite the scientific rigor with which this report was prepared, like others recently published, it tries to attach a number to something that is almost impossible to credibly quantify.”

The larger issue, according to the humane society,  is finding practical and humane actions to mitigate the impact of cats in communities.

Current policies for managing feral cat populations and regulating pet ownership usually focus more on animal welfare rather than ecological impacts, according to authors of the latest study.

The domesticated cat’s natural hunting abilities help homeowners keep their homes pest and vermin free. (Photo: Cobalt123/Flickr via Creative Commons)

One of the more popular forms of managing free-ranging cats includes Trap-Neuter-Vaccinate and Return colonies,  a method of humanely trapping feral cats, spaying or neutering them as needed, vaccinating the animals for diseases like rabies, and then releasing them back to the same location where they were collected.

The study asserts these methods of managing feral cats are employed throughout the US without widespread public knowledge, consideration of scientific evidence, or the environmental review processes typically required for actions with harmful environmental concerns.

The researchers recommend scientifically sound conservation and policy intervention to reduce the negative impact of feral cats on wildlife.

British scientists have found you can lose weight without dieting – by replacing high-fat foods with their low-fat counterparts.

Writing in the British Medical Journal,  researchers from the University of East Anglia found that people who switched out high-fat foods with low-fat substitutes lost about 1.6 kg over six months without any additional dieting.

They also found lowering fat in your diet provides additional health advantages, such as lowering blood pressure and bad cholesterol levels.

The researchers believe their findings could play a role in dietary recommendations to help in the worldwide battle against obesity. The WHO and other public health organizations say obesity is a major risk factor for high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, some cancers and musculoskeletal disorders, such as the highly disabling degenerative disease of the joints, osteoarthritis.

A display of high fat foods such as cheeses, chocolates, lunch meat, french fries, pastries, doughnuts, etc. (Photo: US National Cancer Institute)

Looking to update its guidelines on total fat intake, the WHO recently commissioned a study to evaluate the relationship between the amount of fat and fatty products  consumed in daily diets and various indicators of body fatness such as total weight, waist size and/or body mass index (BMI).

For their study, the researchers evaluated 33 trials in North America, Europe and New Zealand, involving 73,589 participants of various ages and states of health.

Researchers compared the waistline measurements and weight of participants who ate a reduced-fat diet with those whose diet included the usual amounts of fat for at least six months.

Along with the loss of 1.6 kg of bodyweight, they also found that the participants reduced their total BMI by 0.56kg/m² – kg per square meter -and cut their waist circumference by 0.5cm.

Nutritionists recommend foods with protein (eggs/lean meat), whole grains, and fruits (or vegetables) for a healthy breakfast (Photo: Kenji Ross via Flickr/Creative Commons)

Wondering if the weight reduction by those in the group that consumed few fats was due in part to the additional time, attention and support they received, compared to those in the normal fat intake group, researchers looked to studies where both groups were given equal time and attention and found that the weight reduction did not disappear suggesting that the weight loss was really due to lower fat intake.

“The effect isn’t dramatic, like going on a diet. The research specifically looked at people who were cutting down on fat, but didn’t aim to lose weight, so they were continuing to consume a normal amount of food,” said Dr. Lee Hooper, who led the research. “What surprised us was that they did lose weight, their BMI decreased and their waists became slimmer. On top of this, they kept their weight down over at least seven years. There isn’t a specific goal, the more fat you cut down, the more your weight falls.”

Rush hour in Atlanta, Georgia (Photo: Matt Lemmon via Flickr/Creative Commons)

Traffic noise can be hazardous to your health, according to the results of a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Researchers studied noise pollution in Fulton County, Georgia. Their findings suggest  many of the community’s residents are exposed to high levels of noise from local road traffic which affects their psychological well being and can disturb their sleep, both of which can have serious health consequences.

Too much noise! (Photo: Rogiro via Flickr/Creative Commons)

Last year, the World Health Organization (WHO) also weighed in on the health hazards of environmental noise, saying  it can cause adverse psychosocial and physiological effects on public health.  WHO research in Western Europe showed that traffic-related noise was responsible for taking more than one million healthy years of life per year because of ill health, disability or early death.

Fulton County, where the study took place, is an urban area which includes the city of Atlanta and its surrounding suburbs. Like most large American cities, Fulton County is surrounded and crisscrossed with a network of major roadways and interstate highways carrying thousands of motorists each day.

The study focused on Interstate Highway 285, a large highway loop that encircles Atlanta, running around the heart of the county.

Researchers collected  data  from various points to get an estimate of road traffic noise exposure levels surrounding I-285.  This included specific physical and characteristics of the area, the level of vehicle traffic and speed, and the various types of vehicles that traveled the interstate.

Excessive traffic noise can play a role in sleep disturbance (Photo: Kamikaze Gecko via Flickr/Creative Commons)

Guided by the US Federal Highway Administration’s Traffic Noise Model, researchers created traffic noise maps of their study area for both day and night. They then examined and measured various parameters to determine the possibilities that certain percentages of the populace, who are exposed to varying levels of road traffic noise, would be become highly annoyed or have high levels of sleep disturbance, at any given time.

The small city of College Park, Georgia, about ten miles southwest of Atlanta and surrounded with highways,  came in first with the highest percentage of its population being at risk of being most affected by noise pollution.  About 11.3 percent of College Park’s daytime population and 3.7 percent of its nighttime population were estimated to be at risk for experiencing either annoyance or sleep disturbance.

Ironically, US Census Bureau data indicates that the greater Atlanta area had the lowest number of households – from among 38  metropolitan areas – reporting the presence of road traffic noise.

“It may be assumed that even more people would be affected in other densely populated areas of the US,” says the study’s co-investigator James  Holt,  of the U.S. Centers of Disease Control in Atlanta.

(Photo: spaceamoeba via Flickr/Creative Commons)

The brain isn’t always entirely accurate when it comes to processing language, according to a new study.

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) finds we may not be processing every word see hear or read.

This can mean our brain doesn’t pick up on changes made to key words in a sentence, even if they change its meaning.

Consider this  example: “After a plane crash, where should the survivors be buried?”

Many of us pick up on words like “plane crash” and “buried,” so we may think we’re being asked where those who died in the crash should be buried, rather than realizing the question is about those who actually survived the crash.

The study shows that roughly half the people asked this question answer it as if they are being asked about the victims and not the survivors.

Or try this: “Can a man marry his widow’s sister?”

According to the study, most people answer in the affirmative, not realizing they’re agreeing that a dead man can  marry his bereaved wife’s sister.

This has something to do with what are known as semantic illusions.

(Photo: Moritz Petersen via Flickr/Creative Commons)

These are words that may fit the general context of a sentence, even though they don’t actually make sense. They can challenge  traditional methods of language processing, which assumes we develop our understanding of a sentence by thoroughly weighing the meaning of each  word.

Instead, the researchers  found  these semantic illusions show that, rather than listening and analyzing each word, our language processing is based only on  shallow and incomplete interpretations of what we hear or read.

To find out what’s happening in our brains when we process sentences containing semantic illusions, Professor Hartmut Leuthold, from the Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging at the University of Glasgow, led his colleagues in research that used Electroencephalography (EEG) devices to read, measure and record ‘brain waves’.

Looking at the EEG patterns of volunteers who read or listened to sentences containing semantic anomalies, researchers found that when  volunteers were tricked by the semantic illusion,  their brains had not even noticed the unusual words.

Man wired up with electrodes for EEG monitoring (Photo: Douglas Myers via Wikimedia Commons)

The researchers’ analysis also showed that the volunteers used these shallow processing methods even more when they were stressed or faced more difficult or multiple tasks.

If you want to make sure that the correct message gets across to your listener or reader, the study suggests a few  tricks.

“We know that we process a word more deeply if it is emphasized in some way.  So, for example in a news story, a newsreader can stress important words that may otherwise be missed and these words can be italicized to make sure we notice them when reading,” says Leuthold.

The way we construct sentences can also help reduce misunderstandings.

“It’s a good idea to put important information first because we are more likely to miss unusual words when they are near the end of a sentence,” he says. “Also, we often use an active sentence construction such as ‘Bob ate the apple’ because we make far more mistakes answering questions about a sentence with a passive construction – for example ‘The apple was eaten by Bob’.”

Researchers believe the findings not only offer better insight into the various processes  used in our comprehension of language but also, according to  Leuthold, knowing what is happening in the brain when mistakes occur can help us to avoid the pitfalls – such as missing critical information in textbooks or legal documents – and to communicate more effectively.