‘Disruptions to biological clock cause infertility’
Disruptions to the circadian rhythm or the body’s biological clock may cause fertility problems, a new study has claimed.
A team at Northwestern University in the US disrupted the circadian rhythms of female mice for five to six days after they mated. One group of 18 mice got an extra six hours of light, while another 18 mice lost daylight.
By the end of the experiment, only half of the mice with extra daylight had litters and mice that lost daylight fared worse — only 20 per cent gave birth. But 90 per cent of a control group exposed to a steady 12 hours of daylight gave birth, found the study published in the journal PLoS ONE.
Mammals, and even trees, are known to synchronise their internal clocks, which control metabolism and other functions, to cues of night and day.
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Dino with tiny arms unearthed in Argentina
Buenos Aires: Argentine experts have discovered the near-complete remains of a new species of Jurassic-era dinosaur that stood on its rear legs and had tiny arms, a leading paleontologist said on Thursday.
The find belongs to the Abelisaurus family, “the most common carnivorous species in the southern hemisphere during the Cretaceous Period,” some 70 to 100 million years ago, paleontologist Diego Pol said.
“However the fossils that we found are some 170 million years old,” from the earlier Jurassic Period, Pol said.
The creature looks a bit like a scaled-down Tyrannosaurus rex, but with even smaller arms.
The new species, baptised Eoabelisaurus mefi, predates the oldest known member of the Abelisauri lineage by more than 40 million years. — AFP
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