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Spiders are usually thought of as lone creatures eating everything in their vicinity up to and including members of their own species. Some spiders even show cannibalistic tendencies towards their own offspring, their mother or towards males after or even during copulation. However, not all spiders fit this stereotypic view. The social spider Stegodyphus dumicola lives in southern Africa in colonies of up to a few hundred individuals with many more female than male spiders. Male and females mate within the colony thus leading to a high degree of inbreeding and genetic relatedness. More than half of the females do not get any offspring of their own. Mor Salomon and Yael Lubin from the Ben-Gurion University in Israel found that these non-breeding females act as helpers in the colony.

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A photo of the flight simulator in the Biofutures Group at the University of Ulm

Most of us may remember from the school’s biology lessons that the small fruit fly, with the characteristic red eyes, is an important model organism in genetics. Fruit flies, however, are also excellent model organisms in other areas of life science. In this article, we will look at how fruit flies can be used to understand the role of the visual system in flying insects. Apart from increasing our knowledge about the most species rich group of animals, it is important to know more about the role of vision in insects as it might give new insights into the interaction between motion control and vision in humans. The gained knowledge can, furthermore, prove valuable in the development of biologically inspired flying robots.

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Ingroup and outgroup moral - Double standards as biological principle. Will global human rights always remain an utopia? Actual political conflicts considered with the concepts of sociobiology. 

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Glia cell in cell culture from neonatal mouse brain, green: glia cell, red peroxisome (Courtesy of Max-Planck-Institute for experimental medicine, Goettingen, Germany).

Glia cells have been known to play a protective role for the cells of the nervous system, the neurons. Until now glia cells were known as myelin structures which form the layer around the axons, the connections between nerve cells. Likewise an isolation in an electrical cable the myelin which consists of gliacells gives electrical protection for the currents between axons and nerve cells. Researchers of the Max-Planck Institute in Goettingen, Germany, showed in genetically disabled lab mice (knock-out-mice) for the production of peroxisomes (small cell organells), that a lack of these peroxisomes in gliacells caused subsequently a degeneration in the axons.

 

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Viruses cause diseases by penetrating the host cell membrane and transferring its genetic material to the cell compartment to hijack its cellular machinery. Some viruses are protected by an envelope, which allows the virus to bind to specific target cells and via proteins to fusion the envelope with the cell membrane and thus deliver its genome. However, it remains poorly understood how non-enveloped virus, such as the polio virus, which in severe cases where the central nervous system becomes infected results in paralysis, penetrates the cell membrane.

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