ScienceDaily: Top Environment News

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• Spayed or neutered dogs live longer
• Bear baiting may put hunting dogs at risk from wolves
• Hydrogen sulfide greatly enhances plant growth: Key ingredient in mass extinctions could boost food, biofuel production
• Going places: Rat brain 'GPS' maps routes to rewards
• Coelacanth genome surfaces: Unexpected insights from a fish with a 300-million-year-old fossil record
• Family ties: Completion of zebrafish reference genome yields strong comparisons with human genome
• Fishing for solutions: Examining function of all genes in the zebrafish genome to benefit human health
• Clenbuterol in livestock farming may affect results of doping controls in sport
• Parents tend to share more bacteria with family dogs than children
• Helping to forecast earthquakes in Salt Lake Valley
• Towards the origin of America's first settlers
• Green tourism: Reducing the carbon footprint of holidaymakers

Spayed or neutered dogs live longer Posted: 17 Apr 2013 03:59 PM PDT Many dog owners have their pets spayed or neutered to help control the pet population, but new research suggests the procedure could add to the length of their lives and alter the risk of specific causes of death.

Bear baiting may put hunting dogs at risk from wolves Posted: 17 Apr 2013 03:55 PM PDT Wisconsin permits bear baiting for much longer than Michigan does. Wisconsin also pays reparations for wolf attacks on hunting dog, but Michigan doesn't. These factors make Wisconsin's risk of wolf attacks up to 7 times higher.

Hydrogen sulfide greatly enhances plant growth: Key ingredient in mass extinctions could boost food, biofuel production Posted: 17 Apr 2013 03:55 PM PDT In low doses, hydrogen sulfide, a substance implicated in several mass extinctions, could greatly enhance plant growth, leading to a sharp increase in global food supplies and plentiful stock for biofuel production, new research shows.

Going places: Rat brain 'GPS' maps routes to rewards Posted: 17 Apr 2013 10:18 AM PDT Studying rats' ability to navigate familiar territory, scientists found that the hippocampus uses remembered spatial information to imagine routes the rats then follow. Their discovery has implications for understanding why hippocampal damage disrupts specific types of memory and learning in people with Alzheimer's disease and age-related cognitive decline. And because these mental trajectories guide the rats' behavior, the research model may be useful in future studies on higher-level tasks, such as decision-making.

Coelacanth genome surfaces: Unexpected insights from a fish with a 300-million-year-old fossil record Posted: 17 Apr 2013 10:18 AM PDT An international team of researchers has decoded the genome of the African coelacanth. The species was once thought to be extinct, but a living coelacanth was discovered off the African coast in 1938. Coelacanths today closely resemble the fossilized skeletons of their more than 300-million-year-old ancestors. Its genome confirms what many researchers had long suspected: genes in coelacanths are evolving more slowly than in other organisms.

Family ties: Completion of zebrafish reference genome yields strong comparisons with human genome Posted: 17 Apr 2013 10:17 AM PDT Researchers demonstrate today that 70 per cent of protein-coding human genes are related to genes found in the zebrafish and that 84 per cent of genes known to be associated with human disease have a zebrafish counterpart. Their study highlights the importance of zebrafish as a model organism for human disease research.

Fishing for solutions: Examining function of all genes in the zebrafish genome to benefit human health Posted: 17 Apr 2013 10:17 AM PDT Equipped with the zebrafish genome, researchers have designed a method to assay the function of each and every gene and to explore the effects genetic variation has on zebrafish. So far the team has generated one or more mutations in almost 40% of all zebrafish genes.

Clenbuterol in livestock farming may affect results of doping controls in sport Posted: 17 Apr 2013 08:40 AM PDT The illegal use of clenbuterol in livestock farming may affect the results of doping controls in sport, a new study concludes.

Parents tend to share more bacteria with family dogs than children Posted: 17 Apr 2013 06:21 AM PDT As much as dog owners love their children, they tend to share more of themselves, at least in terms of bacteria, with their dogs.

Helping to forecast earthquakes in Salt Lake Valley Posted: 17 Apr 2013 06:21 AM PDT Salt Lake Valley, home to the Salt Lake City segment of the Wasatch fault zone and the West Valley fault zone, has been the site of repeated surface-faulting earthquakes (of about magnitude 6.5 to 7).

Towards the origin of America's first settlers Posted: 17 Apr 2013 06:20 AM PDT The international scientific community faces the exciting challenge of discovering the origin of America's first settlers. A new publication shapes some alternatives to the hypothesis of a single migration movement. The study also identifies lineage which has not been described to date in North and Central American populations

Green tourism: Reducing the carbon footprint of holidaymakers Posted: 17 Apr 2013 06:19 AM PDT Each year our desire to get away from it all contributes to around 5% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. Ignoring the impact of tourism on the environment would be equivalent to ignoring the carbon emissions of a developed industrialised nation.

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