Skeletal muscle is possibly one of the most abundant tissues on earth! From microscopic insects and acorn-sized mammals up to giant whales that cruise the planet's oceans, muscle is the ubiquitous tissue. Interest in skeletal muscle peaked in 1954 when Huxley developed the sliding filament theory to explain muscle's contractile function. Move forward half a century, and some said that the glamour of muscle had slipped a bit. Which made Hans Hoppeler and Bob Boutillier think that it was time muscle had a renaissance. In this special issue of the J. Exp. Biol. they have gathered together papers that discuss the smallest, the strongest, the fastest and the hottest muscles on the planet. Hoppeler and Boutilier believe that this collection will leave`everyone appreciating the malleable nature of muscle, and that the same principles underlie all skeletal muscle, despite the diversity.'
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August 2002
New funding schemes for junior faculty staff
In celebration of our 100th anniversary, JEB has launched two new grants to support junior faculty staff working in animal comparative physiology and biomechanics who are within five years of setting up their first lab/research group. Check out our ECR Visiting Fellowships and Research Partnership Kickstart Travel Grants.
JEB@100: an interview with Monitoring Editor Stuart Egginton
Stuart Egginton reveals how he overcame the challenges of being a comparative physiologist in a medical school and how he would tell his younger self to trust his instincts when pursuing new ideas.
Travelling Fellowships from JEB
Our Travelling Fellowships offer up to £3,000 to graduate students and post-doctoral researchers wishing to make collaborative visits to other laboratories. Next deadline to apply is 27 October 2023
Feedforward and feedback control in the neuromechanics
Auke J. Ijspeert and Monica A. Daley provide an overview of key knowledge gained from comparative vertebrate experiments and insights obtained from neuromechanical simulations and robotic approaches. Read the full Centenary Review Article here.
Light fine-tunes electric fish pulses to keep them in the shade
Weakly electric fish perceive their surroundings through electric chirrups and now Ana Camargo & colleagues have revealed that light fine-tunes the fish's electric pulses to ensure that they remain scheduled beneath the mats of vegetation they use for shelter, avoiding penetrating beams of light that could give them away.
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