ScienceDaily: Top Environment News |
- Scientists reveal genetic mutation depicted in van Gogh's sunflower paintings
- Measuring the cosmic dust swept up by Earth
- Increasing water scarcity in California's Bay-Delta will necessitate trade-offs; 'Hard decisions' needed to balance various environmental risks
- Carbon dioxide was hidden in the ocean during last Ice Age
- Plant research reveals new role for gene silencing protein
- Weakness can be an advantage in surviving deadly parasites, a new study shows
- How bees are harmed by common crop pesticides
- Forest-destroying avalanches on the rise due to clear-cut logging
- Divergent evolution illuminated: Light shed on reasons behind genome differences between species
- Rare animal-shaped mounds discovered in Peru
- Why some animals live longer than others
- New insights into how cells duplicate their DNA
- Scientists clone 'survivor' elm trees
- Mites form friendly societies: Predatory mites who stick with familiar individuals are more efficient at finding food
- Dolphins cultivate loose alliances
- Met office to provide space weather warnings for planet Earth and forecasts for exoplanets
| Scientists reveal genetic mutation depicted in van Gogh's sunflower paintings Posted: 29 Mar 2012 07:52 PM PDT Scientists reveal the mutation behind the distinctive, thick bands of yellow "double flowers" that Vincent van Gogh painted more than 100 years ago.  |
| Measuring the cosmic dust swept up by Earth Posted: 29 Mar 2012 07:51 PM PDT Although we think of space as being empty, there is more out there than meets the eye – dust, for example, is everywhere. If all the material between the Sun and Jupiter were compressed together it would form a moon 25 km across. Now a new research program will try to see how much of this dust enters the Earth's atmosphere. Metals from the cosmic dust play a part in various phenomena that affect our climate. An accurate estimate of dust would also help us understand how particles are transported through different layers of the Earth's atmosphere.  |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2012 11:20 AM PDT Simultaneously attaining a reliable water supply for California and protecting and rehabilitating its Bay-Delta ecosystem cannot be realized until better planning can identify how trade-offs.  |
| Carbon dioxide was hidden in the ocean during last Ice Age Posted: 29 Mar 2012 11:20 AM PDT Why did the atmosphere contain so little carbon dioxide during the last Ice Age 20,000 years ago? Why did it rise when the Earth's climate became warmer? Processes in the ocean are responsible for this, says a new study based on newly developed isotope measurements.  |
| Plant research reveals new role for gene silencing protein Posted: 29 Mar 2012 11:19 AM PDT A DICER protein, known to produce tiny RNAs in cells, also helps complete an important step in gene expression, according to research on Arabidopsis thaliana. The expression of a gene requires activation via a promoter or an external trigger. Plant research to be published in Science helps to show that later stages of transcription are just as important. This is likely to apply to other organisms, including humans.  |
| Weakness can be an advantage in surviving deadly parasites, a new study shows Posted: 29 Mar 2012 11:19 AM PDT When battling an epidemic of a deadly parasite, less resistance can sometimes be better than more. A new study suggests that a lake's ecological characteristics influence how freshwater zooplankton Daphnia dentifera evolve to survive epidemics of a virulent yeast parasite Metschnikowia bicuspidate. The study found that Daphnia populations evolved either enhanced resistance or susceptibility to infection depending on the nutrient concentration and predation levels in the lake.  |
| How bees are harmed by common crop pesticides Posted: 29 Mar 2012 11:19 AM PDT A widely used insecticide can threaten the health of bumblebee colonies and interfere with the homing abilities of honeybees, according to a pair of new studies. Researchers have proposed multiple causes for these declines, including pesticides, but it's been unclear exactly how pesticides are inflicting their damage.  |
| Forest-destroying avalanches on the rise due to clear-cut logging Posted: 29 Mar 2012 09:47 AM PDT Scientists have been studying the impact of clear-cut logging on avalanche terrain in British Columbia. Understanding avalanche behavior and its destructive potential is an important factor in assessing risk of clear-cut logging of mature forest timber. A new article presents data collected from locations where avalanches have been released due to clear-cut logging; These data demonstrate the adverse effects of poor logging practices.  |
| Divergent evolution illuminated: Light shed on reasons behind genome differences between species Posted: 29 Mar 2012 09:46 AM PDT A new study explains the divergent evolution of the genomes of different groups of species. The connection between the function of enzymes and the composition of the genomes shed light on the evolution and structure of genes, and explains differences between archaebacteria, bacteria and eukaryotes.  |
| Rare animal-shaped mounds discovered in Peru Posted: 29 Mar 2012 08:22 AM PDT For more than a century and a half, scientists and tourists have visited massive animal-shaped mounds, such as Serpent Mound in Ohio, created by the indigenous people of North America. But few animal effigy mounds had been found in South America until an anthropology professor recently identified numerous earthen animals rising above the coastal plains of Peru, a region already renowned for the Nazca lines, the ruined city of Chan Chan, and other cultural treasures.  |
| Why some animals live longer than others Posted: 29 Mar 2012 08:21 AM PDT Scientists have developed a new method to detect proteins associated with longevity, which helps further our understanding into why some animals live longer than others.  |
| New insights into how cells duplicate their DNA Posted: 29 Mar 2012 07:19 AM PDT Scientists have discovered new insights into how cells duplicate their DNA. They used an imaging method known as cryo-electron microscopy to take extremely high resolution images of how the right proteins come together at the right point on the DNA strands, forming a structure called an "origin recognition complex" (ORC). The lab's first-of-a-kind images (taken using yeast cells, which are also eukaryotes), showed how the shape of the complex changes as it sets the DNA up for duplication.  |
| Scientists clone 'survivor' elm trees Posted: 29 Mar 2012 07:18 AM PDT Scientists have found a way to successfully clone American elm trees that have survived repeated epidemics of their biggest killer -- Dutch elm disease. The breakthrough is the first known use of in vitro culture technology to clone buds of mature American elm trees.  |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2012 07:16 AM PDT For plant-inhabiting predatory mites, living among familiar neighbors reduces stress. This allows individuals to focus on other tasks and be more productive, in particular while they are foraging. The new study supports the theory that so-called 'social familiarity' reduces the cognitive, physiological and behavioral costs of group-living, leading to increased efficiency in other tasks.  |
| Dolphins cultivate loose alliances Posted: 29 Mar 2012 07:15 AM PDT Dolphins behave uniquely. On the one hand, male dolphins form alliances with others; on the other hand, they live in an open social structure. Anthropologists from the University of Zurich detected this unusual behavior in the animal kingdom in dolphins in Shark Bay, Australia.  |
| Met office to provide space weather warnings for planet Earth and forecasts for exoplanets Posted: 28 Mar 2012 05:37 PM PDT The UK Met Office's weather and climate model is being adapted to help understand space weather at Earth and the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars.  |
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