Latest Rod cell Stories
German-led scientists say they have discovered an important element of DNA that creates good night vision in nocturnal mammals. Ludwig-Maximilians University researchers in Munich said they discovered the DNA within the photoreceptor rod cells responsible for low light vision turns the rod cell nuclei themselves into tiny light-collecting lenses, with millions of them in every nocturnal eye. The conventional architecture seen in almost all nuclei is invariably present in the rod cells of...
A team of Johns Hopkins neuroscientists has worked out how some newly discovered light sensors in the eye detect light and communicate with the brain. The report appears online this week in Nature.These light sensors are a small number of nerve cells in the retina that contain melanopsin molecules. Unlike conventional light-sensing cells in the retina"”rods and cones"”melanopsin-containing cells are not used for seeing images; instead, they monitor light levels to adjust the body's clock...
The Olympic athletes have been parading around like fashionistas in an array of colorful outfits, and we, their adoring public, can't resist commenting on the style and color of their high-end athletic wear. My favorite was the faux silk, faux embroidered, slinky red leotards of the Chinese women's gymnasts. Apparently, as researchers have recently discovered, the choice of red for those leotards might also have given the Chinese gymnasts an advantage. But why is the...
Not so long ago, before electric lights, farmers relied on moonlight to harvest autumn crops. With everything ripening at once, there was too much work to to do to stop at sundown. A bright full moon -- a "Harvest Moon" -- allowed work to continue into the night.The moonlight was welcome, but as any farmer could tell you, it was strange stuff. How so? See for yourself. The Harvest Moon of 2006 rises on October 6th, and if you pay attention, you may notice a few puzzling things:1....
Johns Hopkins scientists have uncovered new details of how smelly things create signals in the nose that eventually go to the brain. The findings raise issues about how the process involved has been described for many years in biology textbooks.The textbooks say that our sense of smell converts odors into brain signals just like our vision converts light into brain signals. But the new work shows that while a key protein pathway is used in both, it behaves quite differently in the nose than...
