cues

The nervous system and the immune system have something in common. Each has evolved to react quickly to environmental cues.

Because the nervous system is able to detect some of these cues at a distance, it sometimes can sense trouble earlier than the immune system, which has to wait until the pathogen invades the organism.

Now, geneticists have shown that, indeed, the two systems talk to one another.

Researchers have come up with a control system that allows a robot to pick up on cues that the leader is about to turn, predict where it is going and follow it.

Flies, unlike humans, can't manipulate the temperature of their surroundings so they need to pick the best spot for flourishing.

New research in Nature reveals that they have internal thermosensors to help them.

New drug research suggests that teens may get addicted and relapse more easily than adults because developing brains are more powerfully motivated by drug-related cues.

This conclusion has been reached by researchers who found that adolescent rats given cocaine -- a powerfully addicting stimulant -- were more likely than adults to prefer the place where they got it.

Just like people who are looking for a perfect place to live, some female bees search for the ideal place to build their nests.

Entomologists are discovering more about the "nesting cues" that influence wild bees' house-hunting decisions. It's information that may help entice more of the hardworking pollinators to take up residence in new, ready-to-occupy nesting structures that growers and beekeepers provide.

Television, not the sun, determines sleep schedules in America. American's natural timing cues -- the circadian rhythms determined by the sun -- seem to have lost out to the man-made cues brought on within the last century, mainly by the creation of time zones and the television broadcast schedule.

In this relatively brief time, they find, the markers for how we structure our day have been dramatically altered.