ScienceDaily Environment Headlines
for Friday, October 31, 2008
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Mysterious Bat Disease Decimates Colonies: Newly Identified Fungus Implicated In White-nose Syndrome (October 31, 2008) -- White-nose syndrome in bats is a disease that is decimating bat populations in the northeast U.S. A previously undescribed, cold-loving fungus has been linked to white-nose syndrome, a condition associated with the deaths of over 100,000 hibernating bats in the northeastern United States. ... > full story
One In 17 Men In Mediterranean Basin May Have A Phoenician As Direct Male-line Ancestor (October 31, 2008) -- The Phoenicians gave the world the alphabet and a love of the color purple, and a new study shows that they left some people their genes as well. The study finds that as many as one in 17 men in the Mediterranean basin may have a Phoenician as a direct male-line ancestor. ... > full story
EPA's Stormwater Program Needs Significant Overhaul (October 31, 2008) -- Radical changes to the US Environmental Protection Agency's stormwater program are necessary to reverse degradation of fresh water resources and ensure progress toward the Clean Water Act's goal of "fishable and swimmable" waters, says a new report. Increased water volume and pollutants from stormwater have degraded water quality and habitats in virtually every urban stream system. ... > full story
Probing Antarctic Glaciers For Clues To Past And Future Sea Level (October 30, 2008) -- Scientists believe the barely observed Aurora Subglacial Basin, which lies in East Antarctica, could represent the weak underbelly of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, the largest remaining body of ice on Earth, holding clues about how Earth's climate changed in the past and how future climate change will affect global sea level. ... > full story
Eating Red Meat Sets Up Target For Disease-causing Bacteria, Study Finds (October 30, 2008) -- Offering another reason why eating red meat could be bad for you, researchers have uncovered the first example of a bacterium that causes food poisoning in humans when it targets a non-human molecule absorbed into the body through red meats such as lamb, pork and beef. ... > full story
Do Dams Make A Difference? Similar Survival Rates For Pacific Salmon In Fraser And Columbia Rivers (October 30, 2008) -- Canadian and US researchers have made a surprising discovery that some endangered Pacific salmon stocks are surviving in rivers with hydroelectric dams as well as or better than in rivers without dams. ... > full story
Hazardous Levels Of Metal Ions Found In Many Commercial Table Wines, Study Suggests (October 30, 2008) -- Potentially hazardous levels of metal ions are present in many commercially available wines. An analysis of reported levels of metals in wines from 16 different countries found that only those from Argentina, Brazil and Italy did not pose a potential health risk owing to metals. ... > full story
Significant Fossil Discovery In Utah Shows Land Plants Of 200 Million Years Ago (October 30, 2008) -- The importance of a new archeological site in St George, Utah, U.S. was recently highlighted. The site is significant because it is the only early Jurassic land flora known in the western United States. It provides evidence that a variety of land plants were present in the area about 200 million years ago. ... > full story
Powered By Olive Stones? Turning Waste Stones Into Fuel (October 30, 2008) -- Olive stones can be turned into bioethanol, a renewable fuel that can be produced from plant matter and used as an alternative to petrol or diesel. This gives the olive processing industry an opportunity to make valuable use of 4 million tons of waste in olive stones it generates every year and sets a precedent for the recycling of waste products as fuels. ... > full story
Common Cold Symptoms Caused By Immune System -- Not The Cold Virus (October 30, 2008) -- Scientists confirm that it is how our immune system responds, not the rhinovirus itself, that causes cold symptoms. Of more than 100 different viruses that can cause the common cold, human rhinoviruses are the major cause. ... > full story
World's Smallest Hand-held Instrument For Detecting Health And Safety Threats (October 30, 2008) -- Researchers in Indiana are describing development of the world's smallest complete mass spectrometer (MS), a miniature version of a standard lab device -- some of which would dominate a living room -- to identify tiny amounts of chemicals in the environment. ... > full story
Predicting Boom And Bust Ecologies (October 30, 2008) -- While scholars may be a long way from predicting the ins and outs of the economy, biologists have uncovered fundamental rules that may govern population cycles in many natural systems. ... > full story
Methane Gas Levels Begin To Increase Again (October 30, 2008) -- The amount of methane in Earth's atmosphere shot up in 2007, bringing to an end a period of about a decade in which atmospheric levels of the potent greenhouse gas were essentially stable, according new research. ... > full story
Programmable Genetic Clock Made Of Blinking Florescent Proteins Inside Bacteria Cells (October 30, 2008) -- Bioengineers have created the first stable, fast and programmable genetic clock that reliably keeps time by the blinking of fluorescent proteins inside E. coli cells. The clock's blink rate changes when the temperature, energy source or other environmental conditions change, a fact that could lead to new kinds of sensors that convey information about the environment through the blinking rate. ... > full story
New Chemical Key Could Unlock Hundreds Of New Antibiotics (October 30, 2008) -- Chemistry researchers have found a novel signaling molecule that could be a key that will open up hundreds of new antibiotics unlocking them from the DNA of the Streptomyces family of bacteria. ... > full story
Catching Earthquake Details With Ordinary Laptop Computers (October 30, 2008) -- Inside your laptop is a small accelerometer chip, there to protect the delicate moving parts of your hard disk from sudden jolts. It turns out that the same chip is a pretty good earthquake sensor, too -- especially if the signals from lots of them are compared, in order to filter out more mundane sources of laptop vibrations, such as typing. ... > full story
Pervasive Network Discovered Driving Protein Production And Placement In Cells (October 30, 2008) -- Researchers have uncovered what appears to be an extensive, but until now barely noticed, network of regulatory interactions that influence what proteins are made inside a cell, and when and where. ... > full story
Why Some Marine Algae Are Shaped Like Crumpled Paper (October 30, 2008) -- What is the connection between crumpled paper and marine algae? Saddle-like shapes similar to those found in an Elizabethan "ruff" collar, say physicists in a new article. ... > full story
Climate Change Seeps Into The Sea (October 30, 2008) -- Good news has turned out to be bad. The ocean has helped slow global warming by absorbing much of the excess heat and heat-trapping carbon dioxide that has been going into the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution. All that extra carbon dioxide, however, has been a bitter pill for the ocean to swallow. It's changing the chemistry of seawater, making it more acidic and otherwise inhospitable, threatening many important marine organisms. ... > full story
Global Warming Is Killing Frogs And Salamanders In Yellowstone Park, Researchers Say (October 29, 2008) -- Frogs and salamanders, those amphibious bellwethers of environmental danger, are being killed in Yellowstone National Park. The predator, Stanford researchers say, is global warming. One biology graduate student spent three summers in a remote area of the park searching for frogs and salamanders in ponds that had been surveyed 15 years ago. Almost everywhere she looked, she found a catastrophic decrease in the population. ... > full story
'Cheshire Cat' Escape Strategy In Response To Marine Viruses (October 29, 2008) -- A novel defense strategy displayed in response to marine viruses by some of the most abundant unicellular organisms found in our oceans has recently been demonstrated. The results enable a clearer understanding of the origin of, and reasons for, sexual reproduction in eukaryotes. ... > full story
Virtual Screening Leads To Real Progress In Drug Design (October 29, 2008) -- Around 150 thousand people per year get the parasitic disease African sleeping sickness, but the only medicines to treat it are either difficult to administer, expensive, or toxic. Now a team of scientists has put computers to work to find a solution. ... > full story
Amphibians' Ability To Predict Changes In Biodiversity Confirmed By New Study (October 29, 2008) -- Biologists have long suspected that amphibians, whose moist permeable skins make them susceptible to slight changes in the environment, might be good bellwethers for impending alterations in biodiversity during rapid climate change. ... > full story
How Toxic Environmental Chemical DBT Affects The Immune System (October 29, 2008) -- Scientists have issued a report on the mechanism of toxicity of a chemical compound called Dibutyltin (DBT). DBT is part of a class of high toxic and widely distributed chemical compounds called organotins, DBT is most commonly used as an anti-fouling agent in paint, for example in the fishing and shipbuilding industries. It is also used in the production of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic tubes and bottles. ... > full story
Pregnant Women Consuming Flaxseed Oil Have High Risk Of Premature Birth (October 29, 2008) -- The risks of a premature birth quadruple if flaxseed oil is consumed in the last two trimesters of pregnancy, according to a new study. ... > full story
Dinosaur Smelling Skills Open New Angle On Bird Evolution (October 29, 2008) -- Scientists are providing new insight into the sense of smell of carnivorous dinosaurs and primitive birds. Researchers found that Tyrannosaurus rex had the best nose of all meat-eating dinosaurs, and their results tone down the reputation of T. rex as a scavenger. ... > full story
Role Of Soil Microbes In Global Warming Clarified (October 29, 2008) -- Current models of global climate change predict warmer temperatures will increase the rate that bacteria and other microbes decompose soil organic matter, a scenario that pumps even more heat-trapping carbon into the atmosphere. But a new study shows that while the rate of decomposition increases for a brief period in response to warmer temperatures, elevated levels of decomposition don't persist. ... > full story
Light Shortens The Life Of Supermarket Vegetables (October 29, 2008) -- Exposure to light reduces the quality of cauliflower, broccoli, chard, leeks and asparagus, which have been processed for sale. New research shows that the useful life of chard is reduced by 11 days if it is exposed to light instead of keeping it in the dark, even though it has been covered in the best protective wrap. ... > full story
Stress During Pregnancy Has Detrimental Effect On Offspring (October 29, 2008) -- That stress during a mother's pregnancy can cause developmental and emotional problems for offspring has long been observed by behavioral and biological researchers, but the objective measuring and timing of that stress and its results are difficult to prove objectively in humans. New experimental work has demonstrated the relationship between maternal stress and impairment of offspring in rats. ... > full story
Mapping The Boreal Forest (October 29, 2008) -- How best to map 'boreal' or northern forest with space-borne radar is the focus of an ESA campaign currently underway in northern Sweden. Covering about 15% of the Earth’s land surface, boreal forest plays an important role in the global cycling of energy, carbon and water. ... > full story
New Cell Division Mechanism Discovered (October 29, 2008) -- A novel cell division mechanism has been discovered in a microorganism that thrives in hot acid. The finding may also result in insights into key processes in human cells, and in a better understanding of the main evolutionary lineages of life on Earth. ... > full story
Neighborhood Greenness Has Long Term Positive Impact On Kids' Health (October 29, 2008) -- In the first study to look at the effect of neighborhood greenness on inner city children's weight over time, researchers report that higher neighborhood greenness is associated with slower increases in children's body mass over a two year period, regardless of residential density. ... > full story
Nitrous Oxide Emissions Respond Differently To No-till Depending On The Soil Type (October 29, 2008) -- The practice of no-till has gained in popularity as it creates a soil less prone to erosion and more rich in organic matter, but a new study raises questions about its influence on net greenhouse gas emissions. While scientists have been documenting the benefits of carbon sequestration in no-till crops, researchers have found that an increased amount of nitrous oxide emissions may offset the benefits of the carbon dioxide sink created, depending on soil type. ... > full story
Soybeans No Longer 'A Musical Fruit?' (October 28, 2008) -- Soybeans may drop off the list of musical fruit. Scientists in Singapore are reporting victory over some consumers' No. 1 complaint about soy products -- the "flatulence factor" caused by indigestible sugars found in soy. ... > full story
Snakes, Salamanders And Other Creatures Thrive In Areas With Higher Deer Populations (October 28, 2008) -- Reducing the number of deer in forests and parks may unexpectedly reduce the number of reptiles, amphibians and insects in that area, new research suggests. A recent study found that higher deer activity is modifying forest ecosystems in unexpected ways. Out of several species of snakes, salamanders, and invertebrates studied, a greater diversity of animals were found in areas with deer populations than were in areas with no deer activity. ... > full story
Novel Genetic Screens Provide Panoramic Views Of Cellular Systems (October 28, 2008) -- Researchers often use the technique of RNA interference to identify genes involved in particular biological processes by knocking them down, one at a time, and observing the result. But this approach fails to capture some key players because many genes are redundant. Thus, cells can mask their distress when they lose a single gene by turning to fail-safes with the same function. A team has now overcome this obstacle, using RNAi to systematically knock down pairs of genes in fruit fly cells. ... > full story
Removal Of 'Super-polluters' Could Reduce Pollution From Nanoparticles By 25% (October 28, 2008) -- If the "super-polluters", the high-polluting vehicles, such as certain buses and transport trucks in a poor condition, were removed, pollution from nanoparticles could be reduced by up to 25% and 48%, depending on the parameter analyzed. These minute particles may cause serious health problems. ... > full story
Fight Obesity With New Antibody That Degrades Appetite Stimulant? (October 28, 2008) -- Scientists have discovered a catalytic antibody that degrades a known appetite stimulant. The antibody works against the gastric hormone ghrelin, which has been linked to weight gain and fat storage through its metabolic actions. ... > full story
Models Help Assess Biofuels' Sustainability (October 28, 2008) -- Many agricultural products can be converted into feedstocks for alternative fuel. Now analysis from the Agricultural Research Service suggests that they can be used this way without reducing the nation's food supply, soil production capacity or environmental quality. ... > full story
Fire Out Of Africa: A Key To The Migration Of Prehistoric Humans (October 28, 2008) -- The ability to make fire millennia ago was likely a key factor in the migration of prehistoric hominids from Africa into Eurasia, according to an archaeologist studying the findings at the Gesher Benot Ya'aqov archaeological site in Israel. ... > full story
Masks, Hand Washing, Prevent Spread Of Flu-like Symptoms By Up To 50 Percent (October 28, 2008) -- Wearing masks and using alcohol-based hand sanitizers may prevent the spread of flu symptoms by as much as 50 percent, a new study suggests. ... > full story
Honing In On New Strategy To Treat Common Infection (October 28, 2008) -- Researchers have successfully tested a genetic strategy designed to improve treatment of human infections caused by the yeast Candida albicans, ranging from diaper rash, vaginitis, oral infections (or thrush which is common in HIV/AIDS patients), as well as invasive, blood-borne and life-threatening diseases. ... > full story
North Pole Exploration: Large Sliding Masses Close Beneath The Seafloor Of East-Siberian Continental Shelf Discovered (October 28, 2008) -- RV Polarstern has returned to Bremerhaven from the Arctic Sea. It has cruised both the Northeast and the Northwest Passages and thereby circled the North Pole. The third part of the research vessel's 23rd Arctic expedition started its journey on Aug. 12 in Reykjavik and ended it on Oct. 17 in Bremerhaven. The ship traveled a distance of 20,000 km. ... > full story
Bacteria Cause Old Buildings To Feel Off-color (October 28, 2008) -- The assumption that time, weather, and pollution are what cause buildings to decline is only partly true. Bacteria are also responsible for the aging of buildings and monuments -- a process known as biodeterioration. Scientists have just isolated five new strains of bacteria that degrade old buildings. ... > full story
Exposing Chicks To Maternal Stress Leads To Long-term Reproductive Success (October 28, 2008) -- Exposure to maternal stress during pre-natal development has negative impacts, so why doesn't natural selection work to block it? European starling sons exposed to the stress hormone corticosterone experienced increased mortality. But those that survived were of better quality. The mothers began later broods in better condition, had increased future reproduction, and increased survival compared to "stressed" mothers that raised "normal" offspring that were not exposed to corticosterone. ... > full story
Scientists Unwrap The Elements Of Life (October 28, 2008) -- Researchers have taken a step forward in our understanding of how the fundamental building blocks of life are put together. They have revealed a mechanism that ensures the right metal goes to the right protein. Proteins are essential and involved in just about every process in living cells. ... > full story
Role Of Slave Trade In Evolution Of American Wild Rice Species (October 28, 2008) -- Rice is the world’s foremost cereal crop as a human food source. Today’s cultivated varieties derive from the species Oryza sativa and Oryza glaberrina, domesticated respectively in Asia and West Africa. Besides these two domestic taxa, there are around 20 species of wild rice of the genus Oryza, all located in the tropics. Their common ancestor appears to have emerged from Eurasia about 50 million years B.P. ... > full story
Revealing Secrets Of 'African Sleeping Sickness' (October 28, 2008) -- Scientists have identified a long-sought chink in the armor of the parasite that causes African sleeping sickness, a parasitic disease that kills at least 50,000 people each year. ... > full story
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