ScienceDaily: Top Environment News

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• Bioprinting methods on 2-D surfaces to link 3-D cellular structures
• Guide to household water conservation provided by experts
• Real price of steak: Comparing environmental costs of livestock-based foods
• Climate: Meat turns up the heat as livestock emit greenhouse gases
• More than glitter: How gold nanoparticles easily penetrate cells, making them useful for delivering drugs
• Mammals metabolize some pesticides to limit their biomagnification
• Insights into birds' migration routes
• Storm-triggered landslides: Examining causes of devastating debris flow
• Replacing coal, oil with natural gas will not help fight global warming, expert argues
• Process to purify water using seed extracts now simplified
• New meteorological insight into mid-level clouds
• Economic territory of Upper Palaeolithic groups is specified by flint
• Genes that contribute to radiation resistance identified
• Seals forage at offshore wind farms
• Science and art bring back to life 300-million-year-old specimens of a primitive reptile-like vertebrate
• Refined biological evolution model proposed
• Human platelets successfully generated using next-generation bioreactor
• Technology tracks the elusive Nightjar
• Fecal transplants let packrats eat poison
• When temperatures get cold, newly-discovered process helps fruit flies cope
• Healing the heart with fat? 18-HEPE might help, study suggests
• Size and age of plants impact their productivity more than climate
• Sea level rising in western tropical Pacific anthropogenic as result of human activity, study concludes
• A noble gas cage: New material traps gases from nuclear fuel better and uses less energy than currently available options
• Marmoset sequence sheds new light on primate biology and evolution
• Scientists map one of most important proteins in life -- and cancer
• Mixing it up: Study provides new insight into Southern Ocean behavior
• Oceans vital for possibility for alien life
• Speedy computation enables scientists to reconstruct an animal's development cell by cell
• NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2: Data to lead scientists forward into the past
• Effect on pregnancy of receiving antiretroviral therapy for prevention of HIV
• Management of South Florida coastal environments
• Dog food goes gourmet: Nine emerging trends in pet food
• Eight ways zinc affects the human body
• Tiniest catch: Scientists' fishing expedition reveals viral diversity in sea

Bioprinting methods on 2-D surfaces to link 3-D cellular structures Posted: 21 Jul 2014 12:19 PM PDT New research focuses on the development of a novel, matrix-free method for generating 3-D cell spheroids that are combining knowledge from bioprinting methods on 2-D surfaces to link 3-D cellular structures.

Guide to household water conservation provided by experts Posted: 21 Jul 2014 12:19 PM PDT Households can reduce water use substantially by simple actions such as installing more efficient appliances and changing day-to-day habits involving water consumption, experts explain in a new article. "As water availability is expected to become an increasingly urgent issue in the coming decades," they write, "it is heartening to find that substantial reductions in household water use are readily available to U.S. households."

Real price of steak: Comparing environmental costs of livestock-based foods Posted: 21 Jul 2014 12:19 PM PDT New research reveals the comparative environmental costs of livestock-based foods. While we are told that eating beef is bad for the environment, do we know its real cost? Are the other animal or animal-derived foods better or worse? New research compared the environmental costs of various foods and came up with some surprisingly clear results. The findings will hopefully not only inform individual dietary choices, authors say, but also those of governmental agencies that set agricultural and marketing policies.

Climate: Meat turns up the heat as livestock emit greenhouse gases Posted: 21 Jul 2014 09:40 AM PDT Eating meat contributes to climate change, due to greenhouse gasses emitted by livestock. New research finds that livestock emissions are on the rise and that beef cattle are responsible for far more greenhouse gas emissions than other types of animals. "That tasty hamburger is the real culprit," the lead researcher said. "It might be better for the environment if we all became vegetarians, but a lot of improvement could come from eating pork or chicken instead of beef."

More than glitter: How gold nanoparticles easily penetrate cells, making them useful for delivering drugs Posted: 21 Jul 2014 09:39 AM PDT A special class of tiny gold particles can easily slip through cell membranes, making them good candidates to deliver drugs directly to target cells. Scientists can now explain how gold nanoparticles easily penetrate cells, making them useful for delivering drugs.

Mammals metabolize some pesticides to limit their biomagnification Posted: 21 Jul 2014 09:39 AM PDT The concentrations of many historically used, and now widely banned, pesticides and other toxic chemicals -- called legacy contaminants -- can become magnified in an animal that eats contaminated food. However, a new study has found that Arctic mammals metabolize some currently used pesticides, preventing such 'biomagnification.'

Insights into birds' migration routes Posted: 21 Jul 2014 09:39 AM PDT By tracking hybrids between songbird species, investigators have found that migration routes are under genetic control and could be preventing interbreeding. The research was conducted using geolocators that, like GPS, record the position of a bird and allow its long distance movement to be tracked.

Storm-triggered landslides: Examining causes of devastating debris flow Posted: 21 Jul 2014 09:39 AM PDT Storm-triggered landslides cause loss of life, property damage, and landscape alterations. For instance, the remnants of Hurricane Camille in 1969 caused 109 deaths in central Virginia, after 600 mm of rain fell in mountainous terrain in 6 hours. More recently, on 8 August 2010, a rainstorm-induced landslide devastated the Chinese county of Zhouqu, causing more than 1000 deaths. A new modeling study examines the multiple factors, both natural and human caused, that came together to produce this event.

Replacing coal, oil with natural gas will not help fight global warming, expert argues Posted: 21 Jul 2014 09:39 AM PDT Both shale gas and conventional natural gas have a larger greenhouse gas footprint than do coal or oil, especially for the primary uses of residential and commercial heating. "While emissions of carbon dioxide are less from natural gas than from coal and oil, methane emissions are far greater. Methane is such a potent greenhouse gas that these emissions make natural gas a dangerous fuel from the standpoint of global warming over the next several decades," said the author of a new article.

Process to purify water using seed extracts now simplified Posted: 21 Jul 2014 09:38 AM PDT Researchers have streamlined and simplified a process that uses extracts from seeds of Moringa oleifa trees to purify water, reducing levels of harmful bacteria by 90 percent to 99 percent. The hardy trees that are drought resistant are cultivated widely throughout many countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

New meteorological insight into mid-level clouds Posted: 21 Jul 2014 09:38 AM PDT At medium altitudes ranging from 6,000 feet to 20,000 feet above mean sea level, water droplets in altocumulus clouds can remain in a supercooled liquid phase that cannot be reasonably resolved in current atmospheric models. New meteorological research characterizes mid-level, mixed phase altocumulus clouds in unprecedented detail.

Economic territory of Upper Palaeolithic groups is specified by flint Posted: 21 Jul 2014 09:38 AM PDT New research has determined, on the basis of the Ametzagaina site, in San Sebastian, the mobility patterns and management of lithic resources.

Genes that contribute to radiation resistance identified Posted: 21 Jul 2014 09:38 AM PDT Forty-six genes in Escherichia coli have been discovered that are necessary for its survival at exceptionally high levels of radiation, researchers report in a new article. "The research has revealed new pathways of cellular self-repair, including DNA pathways that in humans that may help protect us from cancer," says a corresponding author.

Seals forage at offshore wind farms Posted: 21 Jul 2014 09:38 AM PDT By using sophisticated GPS tracking to monitor seals' every movement, researchers have shown for the first time that some individual seals are repeatedly drawn to offshore wind farms and pipelines. Those human-made structures probably serve as artificial reefs and attractive hunting grounds, according to a study.

Science and art bring back to life 300-million-year-old specimens of a primitive reptile-like vertebrate Posted: 21 Jul 2014 09:37 AM PDT Paleontologists have recreated the cranial structure of a 308-million-year-old lizard-like vertebrate that could be the earliest example of a reptile and explain the origin of all vertebrates that belong to reptiles, birds and mammals.

Refined biological evolution model proposed Posted: 21 Jul 2014 07:03 AM PDT Models for the evolution of life try to clarify the long term dynamics of an evolving system of species. A recent model accounts for species' interactions with various degrees of symmetry, connectivity, and species abundance. This is an improvement on previous, simpler models, which apply random fitness levels to species. The findings demonstrate that the resulting replicator ecosystems do not appear to be a self-organized critical model, unlike the so-called Bak Sneppen model.

Human platelets successfully generated using next-generation bioreactor Posted: 21 Jul 2014 07:03 AM PDT A scalable, next-generation platelet bioreactor has been created to generate fully functional human platelets in vitro. The work is a major biomedical advancement that will help address blood transfusion needs worldwide.

Technology tracks the elusive Nightjar Posted: 21 Jul 2014 07:01 AM PDT Bioacoustic recorders could provide us with vital additional information to help us protect rare and endangered birds such as the European nightjar, new research has shown. The study found that newly developed remote survey techniques were twice as effective at detecting rare birds as conventional survey methods.

Fecal transplants let packrats eat poison Posted: 21 Jul 2014 07:00 AM PDT Woodrats lost their ability to eat toxic creosote bushes after antibiotics killed their gut microbes. Woodrats that never ate the plants were able to do so after receiving fecal transplants with microbes from creosote-eaters, biologists found.

When temperatures get cold, newly-discovered process helps fruit flies cope Posted: 21 Jul 2014 06:59 AM PDT Cold-blooded animals cannot regulate their body temperature, so their cells are stressed when facing temperature extremes. Worse still, even at slightly colder temperatures, some biological processes in the cell are slowed down more than others, which should throw the cells' delicate chemical balance out of whack. Yet, those cells manage to keep their biological processes coordinated. Now researchers have found out how they do that.

Healing the heart with fat? 18-HEPE might help, study suggests Posted: 21 Jul 2014 06:59 AM PDT Too much dietary fat is bad for the heart, but the right kind of fat keeps the heart healthy, according to a new paper. Scientists in Japan have shown that mice engineered to produce their own EPA are protected against heart disease and have improved cardiac function. One particular EPA metabolite, called 18-hydroxyeicosapentaenoic acid (18-HEPE), was required for this protection.

Size and age of plants impact their productivity more than climate Posted: 20 Jul 2014 05:43 PM PDT The size and age of plants has more of an impact on their productivity than temperature and precipitation, according to a landmark study. They show that variation in terrestrial ecosystems is characterized by a common mathematical relationship but that climate plays a relatively minor direct role. The results have important implications for models used to predict climate change effects on ecosystem function and worldwide food production.

Sea level rising in western tropical Pacific anthropogenic as result of human activity, study concludes Posted: 20 Jul 2014 05:43 PM PDT Sea levels likely will continue to rise in the tropical Pacific Ocean off the coasts of the Philippines and northeastern Australia as humans continue to alter the climate, a study concludes. The study authors combined past sea level data gathered from both satellite altimeters and traditional tide gauges as part of the study. The goal was to find out how much a naturally occurring climate phenomenon called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or PDO, influences sea rise patterns in the Pacific.

A noble gas cage: New material traps gases from nuclear fuel better and uses less energy than currently available options Posted: 20 Jul 2014 05:42 PM PDT A new material called CC3 effectively traps xenon, krypton, and radon. These gases are used in industries such as lighting or medicine and, in the case of radon, one that can be hazardous when it accumulates in buildings. New research shows how: by breathing enough to let the gases in but not out. The results might lead to cheaper, less energy intensive ways to extract these gases.

Marmoset sequence sheds new light on primate biology and evolution Posted: 20 Jul 2014 05:42 PM PDT Scientists have completed the genome sequence of the common marmoset -- the first sequence of a New World Monkey -- providing new information about the marmoset's unique rapid reproductive system, physiology and growth, shedding new light on primate biology and evolution.

Scientists map one of most important proteins in life -- and cancer Posted: 20 Jul 2014 05:42 PM PDT Scientists reveal the structure of one of the most important and complicated proteins in cell division -- a fundamental process in life and the development of cancer -- in a new research article. Images of the gigantic protein in unprecedented detail will transform scientists' understanding of exactly how cells copy their chromosomes and divide, and could reveal binding sites for future cancer drugs.

Mixing it up: Study provides new insight into Southern Ocean behavior Posted: 20 Jul 2014 05:35 PM PDT Turbulent mixing in the deep waters of the Southern Ocean, which has a profound effect on global ocean circulation and climate, varies with the strength of surface eddies -- the ocean equivalent of storms in the atmosphere -- and possibly also wind speeds. A new study is the first to link eddies at the surface to deep mixing on timescales of months to decades. This new insight into how the Southern Ocean behaves will allow scientists to build computer models that can better predict how our climate is going to change in the future.

Oceans vital for possibility for alien life Posted: 20 Jul 2014 05:34 PM PDT Researchers have made an important step in the race to discover whether other planets could develop and sustain life. New research shows the vital role of oceans in moderating climate on Earth-like planets Until now, computer simulations of habitable climates on Earth-like planets have focused on their atmospheres. But the presence of oceans is vital for optimal climate stability and habitability.

Speedy computation enables scientists to reconstruct an animal's development cell by cell Posted: 20 Jul 2014 05:34 PM PDT Researchers have developed a new computational method that can rapidly track the three-dimensional movements of cells in such data-rich images. Using the method, scientists can essentially automate much of the time-consuming process of reconstructing an animal's developmental building plan cell by cell.

NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2: Data to lead scientists forward into the past Posted: 20 Jul 2014 08:12 AM PDT NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, which launched on July 2, will soon be providing about 100,000 high-quality measurements each day of carbon dioxide concentrations from around the globe. Atmospheric scientists are excited about that. But to understand the processes that control the amount of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, they need to know more than just where carbon dioxide is now. They need to know where it has been. It takes more than great data to figure that out.

Effect on pregnancy of receiving antiretroviral therapy for prevention of HIV Posted: 19 Jul 2014 01:35 PM PDT Among heterosexual African couples in which the male was HIV positive and the female was not, receipt of antiretroviral pre-exposure preventive (PrEP) therapy did not result in significant differences in pregnancy incidence, birth outcomes, and infant growth compared to females who received placebo, according to a study.

Management of South Florida coastal environments Posted: 18 Jul 2014 10:15 AM PDT A unique formal process and modeling framework has been developed by researchers to help manage South Florida's economically important coastal marine environments. "One of the important aspects of this new suite of tools, which includes conceptual info-graphics, integrated ecosystem models and both human and ecological indicators, is that it's exportable technology," said one expert. "It can be applied directly to the management of other coastal ecosystems."

Dog food goes gourmet: Nine emerging trends in pet food Posted: 18 Jul 2014 08:45 AM PDT Four out of five pet owners now consider their pet a member of the family, and consumers are shifting their priorities when it comes to purchasing food for their pets accordingly. One expert writes about recent trends in gourmet pet food in a newly published article.

Eight ways zinc affects the human body Posted: 18 Jul 2014 08:45 AM PDT Zinc has been identified as one of the most important essential trace metals in human nutrition and lifestyle. Zinc is not only a vital element in various physiological processes; it is also a drug in the prevention of many diseases. The adult body contains about two to three grams of zinc. It is found in organs, tissues, bones, fluids, and cells.

Tiniest catch: Scientists' fishing expedition reveals viral diversity in sea Posted: 17 Jul 2014 03:04 PM PDT Using bacteria as bait, scientists caught wild ocean viruses and then deciphered their genomes. They learned that the genetic lines between virus types in nature are less blurred than previously thought. This enables scientists to recognize actual populations of viruses in nature for the first time.

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