JoVE Monthly Highlights: April 2017

Abstract

Here's a look at what's coming up in the April 2017 issue of JoVE: The World's Premier Video Journal The plight of the honeybee holds our first spotlight this month. Pesticides brought back to colonies by workers foraging on contaminated flowers can be spread throughout honeybee colonies, severely impacting health of larvae and adults, and potentially causing colony collapse. In JoVE Environment, our Authors describe feeding methods in which an insect growth regulator and commonly used pesticide - PPN - is fed both to individual honeybees and an entire colony, in a manner that can be applied to any potentially harmful chemicals or pathogens. A technique enabling a better understanding of the challenges facing these critical pollinators leaves us buzzing. From food-producing pollinators to clean water...in JoVE Bioengineering this month, our Authors present methods to prepare low-cost, efficient membranes for water purification. Here, zwitterionic hydrogels are produced using SBMA* crosslinked to polyethylene glycol diacrylate to improve mechanical strength. When impregnated into a highly porous hydrophobic support, the resultant tightly bound layers prevent antifouling of the membranes by physically preventing attachment to the surface. These properties combined allow for production of energy efficient and long lasting filters to meet increasing demand for clean water. Something we can all toast to, cheers! In JoVE Behavior, our Authors demonstrate a procedure of exposure manipulation involving sorting novel and familiar objects paired with an acoustic signal, to reveal the powerful shaping role of experience in recognizing human language. At 3-4 months infants broadly recognize both human and nonhuman primate vocalizations as cues to support object categorization, but by 6-to 7-months only human vocalizations are utilized. This method shows that merely exposing infants to nonhuman primate vocalizations can preserve this early-established link, whereas the same effect is not observed when the child is exposed to backwards speech. Finally, as the first buds of spring emerge, our last video highlight this month gives a fascinating glimpse into the private life of plants. In JoVE Developmental Biology, our Author uses confocal microscopy to show how the intricate inflorescences of the Arabidopsis plant develop in real time. Moreover, the demonstrated procedure allows expression of multiple genes to be visualized at once, aiding in the elucidation of the complex genetic networks, which unravel simultaneously to specify the identities of the different floral organs. Blooming marvelous! You've just had a sneak peek of the April 2017 issue of JoVE. Visit the website to see the full-length articles, plus many more, in JoVE: The World's Premier Video Journal.