ScienceDaily: Top Environment News

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• For Midwesterners, more boxcars mean cleaner air
• Paleoclimate record points toward potential rapid climate changes
• More shrubbery in a warming world
• Discovery on how sugars are moved throughout a plant
• Decisions, decisions: House-hunting honey bees work like complex brains
• Birds caught in the act of becoming a new species
• Law enforcement vital for great ape survival: Greatest decrease in African great ape populations in areas with no protection from poaching
• How Salmonella forms evil twins to evade the body's defenses
• Evolution reveals missing link between DNA and protein shape
• Addressing pain and disease on the fly: How fruit flies can teach us about curing chronic pain and halting mosquito-borne diseases

For Midwesterners, more boxcars mean cleaner air Posted: 08 Dec 2011 02:37 PM PST Shifting a fraction of truck-borne freight onto trains would have an outsized impact on air quality in the Midwest, according to researchers.

Paleoclimate record points toward potential rapid climate changes Posted: 08 Dec 2011 02:36 PM PST New research into the Earth's paleoclimate history suggests the potential for rapid climate changes this century, including multiple meters of sea level rise, if global warming is not abated.

More shrubbery in a warming world Posted: 08 Dec 2011 12:20 PM PST Scientists have used satellite data to confirm that more than 20 years of warming temperatures in northern Quebec, Canada, have resulted in an increase in the amount and extent of shrubs and grasses.

Discovery on how sugars are moved throughout a plant Posted: 08 Dec 2011 11:20 AM PST Food prices are soaring at the same time as the Earth's population is nearing 9 billion. As a result the need for increased crop yields is extremely important. New research into the system by which sugars are moved throughout a plant -- from the leaves to the harvested portions and elsewhere -- could be crucial for addressing this problem.

Decisions, decisions: House-hunting honey bees work like complex brains Posted: 08 Dec 2011 11:19 AM PST Researchers have found a signal, overlooked until now, that plays a role when honey bees split off from their mother colony and go scouting for a new home. Called the "stop signal," it is a very short buzz delivered by a scout bee while butting her head against a dancing honey bee, and is similar to signals that occur between neurons in the brains of monkeys making decisions.

Birds caught in the act of becoming a new species Posted: 08 Dec 2011 09:14 AM PST A study of South American songbirds has shown that these birds differ dramatically in color and song yet show very little genetic differences which indicates they are on the road to becoming a new species.

Law enforcement vital for great ape survival: Greatest decrease in African great ape populations in areas with no protection from poaching Posted: 08 Dec 2011 07:12 AM PST A recent study shows that, over the last two decades, areas with the greatest decrease in African great ape populations are those with no active protection from poaching by forest guards.

How Salmonella forms evil twins to evade the body's defenses Posted: 08 Dec 2011 06:27 AM PST To swim or not? The same biological control that determines which capability genetically identical Salmonella will have impacts the virulence of the food pathogen. Swimmers do better in the gut, but non-motile Salmonella avoid triggering killer cells. An unusual protein turns on or off the manufacture of swimming apparatus in each new bacterium.

Evolution reveals missing link between DNA and protein shape Posted: 07 Dec 2011 02:56 PM PST Using evolutionary genetic information, an international team of researchers has taken major steps toward solving a classic problem of molecular biology: Predicting how a protein will fold in three dimensions.

Addressing pain and disease on the fly: How fruit flies can teach us about curing chronic pain and halting mosquito-borne diseases Posted: 06 Dec 2011 12:15 PM PST Studies of a protein that fruit flies use to sense heat and chemicals may someday provide solutions to human pain and the control of disease-spreading mosquitoes. Researchers have discovered how fruit flies distinguish the warmth of a summer day from the pungency of wasabi by using TRPA1, a protein whose human relative is critical for pain and inflammation.

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