ScienceDaily: Top Environment News

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• Hyenas that think outside the box solve problems faster
• Test vaccine successfully protects monkeys from Nipah virus
• Shark teeth help scientists uncover predator's history
• Early human ancestors had more variable diet
• New atmospheric compound tied to climate change, human health
• Hibernation altered by climate change takes a toll on Rocky Mountain animal species
• New Kenyan fossils shed light on early human evolution
• Physics and math shed new light on biology by mapping the landscape of evolution
• Diversity keeps grasslands resilient to drought, climate change
• July 2012 marked hottest month on record for contiguous U.S.; Drought expands to cover nearly 63 percent of the Lower 48
• Unusual weather events identified during 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, Australia
• Molecular economics: New computer models calculate systems-wide costs of gene expression
• New global warming culprit: Methane emissions jump dramatically during dam drawdowns

Hyenas that think outside the box solve problems faster Posted: 08 Aug 2012 01:32 PM PDT Innovative problem solving requires trying many different solutions. That's true for humans, and now Michigan State University researchers show that it's true for hyenas, too.

Test vaccine successfully protects monkeys from Nipah virus Posted: 08 Aug 2012 11:21 AM PDT Researchers have successfully tested in monkeys a vaccine against Nipah virus, a human pathogen that emerged in 1998 during a large outbreak of infection and disease among pigs and pig farmers in Southeast Asia. This latest advance builds upon earlier work by the scientists, who found that the same vaccine can protect cats from Nipah virus and ferrets and horses from the closely related Hendra virus.

Shark teeth help scientists uncover predator's history Posted: 08 Aug 2012 11:19 AM PDT Biologists are studying living great whites and other sharks – as well as fossilized shark teeth – to gain insight into shark behavior and ancestry using the latest in computed tomography scans to analyze shark tooth anatomy, development and evolution.

Early human ancestors had more variable diet Posted: 08 Aug 2012 10:27 AM PDT New research sheds more light on the diet and home ranges of early hominins belonging to three different genera, notably Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Homo -- that were discovered at sites such as Sterkfontein, Swartkrans and Kromdraai in the Cradle of Humankind, about 50 kilometers from Johannesburg. Australopithecus existed before the other two genera evolved about 2 million years ago.

New atmospheric compound tied to climate change, human health Posted: 08 Aug 2012 10:27 AM PDT Scientists have discovered a surprising new chemical compound in Earth's atmosphere that reacts with sulfur dioxide to form sulfuric acid, which is known to have significant impacts on climate and health. The new compound, a type of carbonyl oxide, is formed from the reaction of ozone with alkenes, which are a family of hydrocarbons with both natural and human-made sources.

Hibernation altered by climate change takes a toll on Rocky Mountain animal species Posted: 08 Aug 2012 10:27 AM PDT Climate change is causing a late wake-up call from hibernation for a species of Rocky Mountain ground squirrel and the effect is deadly. Biologists have examined data on a population of Columbian ground squirrels and found a trend of late spring snow falls has delayed the animals' emergence from hibernation by 10 days over the last 20 years.

New Kenyan fossils shed light on early human evolution Posted: 08 Aug 2012 10:27 AM PDT Exciting new fossils discovered east of Lake Turkana confirm that there were two additional species of our genus -- Homo -- living alongside our direct human ancestral species, Homo erectus, almost two million years ago.

Physics and math shed new light on biology by mapping the landscape of evolution Posted: 08 Aug 2012 10:24 AM PDT Researchers capture evolutionary dynamics in a new theoretical framework that could help explain some of the mysteries of how and why species change over time.

Diversity keeps grasslands resilient to drought, climate change Posted: 08 Aug 2012 09:19 AM PDT Grasslands should come out as the winner with increased periods and intensity of drought predicted in the future.

July 2012 marked hottest month on record for contiguous U.S.; Drought expands to cover nearly 63 percent of the Lower 48 Posted: 08 Aug 2012 08:50 AM PDT According to NOAA scientists, the average temperature for the contiguous U.S. during July was 77.6°F, 3.3°F above the 20th century average, marking the hottest July and the hottest month on record for the nation. The previous warmest July for the nation was July 1936 when the average U.S. temperature was 77.4°F. The warm July temperatures contributed to a record-warm first seven months of the year and the warmest 12-month period the nation has experienced since recordkeeping began in 1895.

Unusual weather events identified during 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, Australia Posted: 08 Aug 2012 07:45 AM PDT Research has revealed that the extremely hot, dry and windy conditions on Black Saturday in the Australian state of Victoria combined with structures in the atmosphere called 'horizontal convective rolls' -- similar to streamers of wind flowing through the air -- which likely affected fire behavior.

Molecular economics: New computer models calculate systems-wide costs of gene expression Posted: 08 Aug 2012 06:39 AM PDT Bioengineers have developed a method of modeling, simultaneously, an organism's metabolism and its underlying gene expression. In the emerging field of systems biology, scientists model cellular behavior in order to understand how processes such as metabolism and gene expression relate to one another and bring about certain characteristics in the larger organism.

New global warming culprit: Methane emissions jump dramatically during dam drawdowns Posted: 08 Aug 2012 05:14 AM PDT Researchers have documented an underappreciated suite of players in global warming: dams, the water reservoirs behind them, and surges of greenhouse gases as water levels go up and down. In separate studies, researchers saw methane levels jump 20- and 36-fold during drawdowns.

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