Environment
New evidence that chemical contaminants are finding their way into the deep-sea food web has been found in deep-sea squids and octopods, including the strange-looking "vampire squid". These species are food for deep-diving toothed whales and other predators.
In a study to be published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, Michael Vecchione of NOAA Fisheries' National Systematics Laboratory and colleagues Michael Unger, Ellen Harvey and George Vadas at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science of The College of William and Mary report finding a variety of chemical contaminants in nine…
New research from the American Museum of Natural History says that global warming is forcing species to move up tropical mountains. Christopher Raxworthy, Associate Curator in the Department of Herpetology, predicts that at least three species of amphibians and reptiles found in Madagascar's mountainous north could go extinct between 2050 and 2100 because of habitat loss associated with rising global temperatures.
These species, currently moving up-slope to compensate for habitat loss at lower and warmer altitudes, will eventually have no place to move to. The mountains can only go so high…
With the proper spin, forests can be the cause of global warming. They produce methane. American environmentalists have an irrational dislike of nuclear power so they forced America to use more coal so they can be blamed for the spike in CO2.
It takes understanding to go beyond perspective and detailed analysis of the forests impact on climate change is still sketchy. There are roughly 42 million square kilometers of forest on Earth, a swath that covers almost a third of the land surface, and those wooded environments play a key role in both mitigating and enhancing global warming.
The…
Conserving biodiversity must be considered when developing plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, researchers warn in a paper today.
The 2007 statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations indicate that from 1990 to 2005 the world lost 3% of its total forest area, some 13 million hectares per year. The greatest losses were in Latin American and the Caribbean ( 7 % over 15 years or about 16 million hectares per year) Africa (9% over 15 years or 4.4 million hectares per year). Land use change (mostly deforestation) accounts for 18-25% of global…
jcolman |
Long-tailed macaques eat mostly fruit — but when resources are scarce, they’ve been known to get creative with their cuisine. When living near humans, they raid gardens and learn to beg for food. Sometimes they even steal food from inside houses.
Now, for the first time, scientists have observed long-tailed macaques fishing with their bare hands.
Nature Conservancy scientist Erik Meijaard and other researchers are the first to scientifically document this rare conduct. In a recent article published in the International Journal of Primatology, Meijaard and his coauthors say that, while…
Marine bacteria have the capacity to take up and capture carbon dioxide with the help of sunlight, say researchers at Kalmar University in Sweden in collaboration with colleagues in Spain, Australia, and Russia.
This can be compared to a simple form of photosynthesis, where marine bacteria use energy from sunlight to absorb carbon dioxide. It was previously known that bacteria in oxygen-starved lakes can have this capacity, but it's new knowledge that bacteria in the open seas can do so as well. This challenges earlier knowledge that algae are the only organisms that capture carbon dioxide…
Millions of patients suffer from poorly healing large-area wounds caused by complaints such as diabetes, burns or bedsores. The wounds can be treated with conventional collagen dressings or polylactic acid dressings, but the success rate is not as good as it should be.
A new type of dressing made of silica gel fibers, developed by scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC in Würzburg, could solve the problem. This novel dressing has many advantages: it is shape-stable, pH-neutral and 100 percent bioresorbable.
Once applied it remains in the body, where it gradually…
Charlotte Eklund-Jonsson at the Department of Food Science, Chalmers University of Technology, in Sweden says the results of her doctoral dissertation could be a new vegetarian food that boosts the uptake of iron and offers a good set of proteins.
The food, called tempe, is a whole-grain product with high folate content. It is generally accepted in medicine that whole-grains reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, and it is also believed that it protects against age-related diabetes and certain forms of cancer. The B vitamin folate is the natural form of folic acid and, among other…
New research in the Society of Chemical Industry’s Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture shows that oregano oil works as well as synthetic insecticides to combat infestation by a common beetle, Rhizoppertha dominica, found in stored cereals.
Not only does oregano oil work as well as synthetic versions but it has none of the associated side effects of synthetic insecticides on the environment.
Growing resistance to synthetic insecticides combined with potential environmental damage and new government directives on changes to the way chemicals are registered means that scientists are…
Parental concerns in maintaining germ-free homes for their children have led to an ever-increasing demand and the rapid adoption of anti-bacterial soaps and cleaning agents. But the active ingredients of those antiseptic soaps now have come under scrutiny by the EPA and FDA, due to both environmental and human health concerns.
Two closely related antimicrobials, triclosan and triclocarban, are at the center of the debacle. Whereas triclosan (TCS) has long captured the attention of toxicologists due to its structural resemblance to dioxin (the Times Beach and Love Canal poison), triclocarban…