ScienceDaily: Top Environment News

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• Beneficial mold packaged in bioplastic
• Cell mechanism findings could one day be used to engineer organs
• Bowhead whales: Ancient DNA sheds light on Arctic whale mysteries
• Goodness, gracious, great balls of lightning!
• Solar power used to study elephants in Africa
• Forest fires linked to high temperatures two years before
• Evolution: New understandings of how populations change over time

Beneficial mold packaged in bioplastic Posted: 19 Oct 2012 10:06 AM PDT Aflatoxins are highly toxic carcinogens produced by several species of Aspergillus fungi. But not all Aspergillus produce aflatoxin. Some, in fact, are considered beneficial. One such strain, dubbed K49, is now being recruited to battle these harmful Aspergillus relatives, preventing them from contaminating host crops like corn with the carcinogen. Scientists have now devised a new method of applying K49 as a frontline defense against aflatoxin contamination in corn.

Cell mechanism findings could one day be used to engineer organs Posted: 19 Oct 2012 10:05 AM PDT Biologists have teamed up with mechanical engineers to conduct cell research that provides information that may one day be used to engineer organs.

Bowhead whales: Ancient DNA sheds light on Arctic whale mysteries Posted: 19 Oct 2012 10:05 AM PDT Scientists have published the first range-wide genetic analysis of the bowhead whale using hundreds of samples from both modern populations and archaeological sites used by indigenous Arctic hunters thousands of years ago.

Goodness, gracious, great balls of lightning! Posted: 19 Oct 2012 07:28 AM PDT Australian scientists have unveiled a new theory which explains the mysterious phenomenon known as ball lightning.

Solar power used to study elephants in Africa Posted: 19 Oct 2012 06:45 AM PDT A team of elephant researchers has transformed a remote corner of southern Africa into a high-tech field camp run entirely on sunlight. The seasonal solar-powered research camp gives scientists a rare opportunity to quietly observe, videotape and photograph wild elephants at Mushara waterhole, an isolated oasis in Etosha National Park in Namibia.

Forest fires linked to high temperatures two years before Posted: 19 Oct 2012 06:45 AM PDT Researchers analyzed the impact of interannual and seasonal climate variability on the fires occurred in Catalonia, Spain, last summer. The study concludes that summer fires, related to summer climate conditions, are correlated with antecedent climate conditions, especially winter and spring ones with a lag time of two years. The results suggest that precipitation and temperature conditions regulate fuel flammability and fuel structure. According to the correlations observed, the study provides a model to produce long-term predictions.

Evolution: New understandings of how populations change over time Posted: 19 Oct 2012 04:14 AM PDT Since 1859, when Darwin's classic work "On the Origin of Species" was published, we have known that populations change over the course of time.  The ability to adapt to changing surroundings is the basis for evolution and is crucial for animals and plants to come to terms with new environmental conditions, for example as a consequence of climate change.  Despite the obvious importance of the process, however, we still do not understand the underlying mechanisms.  It is clear that organisms change their DNA in response to selection pressures.  But how?

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