Credit: Picture: Jane Fenelon
Scientists from the University of Melbourne and University of Queensland have revealed the mystery behind the unique reproductive parts of the much-loved echidna.
In the paper, The Unique Penile Morphology of the Short-Beaked Echidna, Tachyglossus aculeatus , the team detail how the male monotreme s testes never descend, have no scrotum, and when not in use, their penis is stored internally.
They also detail how the echidna penis has four heads, which are actually rosette-like glans at the end. Just two of the four glans ever become functional during erection and which glans are functional appears to alternate between subsequent erections.
Credit: Eivind Senneset
Smoking in early puberty in boys may have negative consequences for their future generations of offspring, a study from the University of Bergen (UiB) shows.
By continued analysis of data gathered in the large international RHINESSA, RHINE and ECRHS studies, researchers have found that the health of future generations depends on actions and decisions made by young people today. This is particularly relevant for boys in early puberty and mothers/grandmothers both pre-pregnancy and during pregnancy, the study shows.
The paper Prenatal and prepubertal exposures to tobacco smoke in men may cause lower lung function in future offspring: a three-generation study using a causal modelling approach was recently published in the
One of the first studies to examine telomere length (TL) in childhood finds that the initial setting of TL during prenatal development and in the first years of life may determine one s TL throughout childhood and potentially even into adulthood or older age. The study also finds that TL decreases most rapidly from birth to age 3, followed by a period of maintenance into the pre-puberty period, although it was sometimes seen to lengthen.
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Pregnant women made only modest dietary changes after being diagnosed with gestational diabetes, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health. Women with gestational diabetes are generally advised to reduce their carbohydrate intake, and the women in the study did cut their daily intake of juice and added sugars. They also increased their intake of cheese and artificially sweetened beverages. However, certain groups of women did not reduce their carbohydrate intake, including women with obesity, had more than one child, were Hispanic, had a high school degree or less, or were between the ages of 35-41 years.
In the earliest stage of life, animals undergo some of their most spectacular physical transformations. Once merely blobs of dividing cells, they begin to rearrange themselves into their more characteristic forms, be they fish, birds or humans. Understanding how cells act together to build tissues has been a fundamental problem in physics and biology.