ScienceDaily: Top Environment News

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• Arid areas absorb unexpected amounts of atmospheric carbon
• Key cells in touch sensation identified: Skin cells use new molecule to send touch information to the brain
• Zombie cancer cells eat themselves to live
• Does a junk food diet make you lazy? Psychology study offers answer
• The long and the short of telomeres: Loneliness impacts DNA repair, parrot study shows
• Synthetic genetic clock keeps accurate time across a range of temperatures
• In mice, obese dads produce heavier daughters with epigenetically altered breast tissue
• Key component of cellular protein transport system decoded
• What's going on under the ice? Researchers take a peek
• Tracking the transition of early-universe quark soup to matter-as-we-know-it

Arid areas absorb unexpected amounts of atmospheric carbon Posted: 06 Apr 2014 01:24 PM PDT Researchers have found that arid areas, among the biggest ecosystems on the planet, take up an unexpectedly large amount of carbon as levels of carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere. The findings give scientists a better handle on the earth's carbon budget -- how much carbon remains in the atmosphere as CO2, contributing to global warming, and how much gets stored in the land or ocean in other carbon-containing forms.

Key cells in touch sensation identified: Skin cells use new molecule to send touch information to the brain Posted: 06 Apr 2014 01:22 PM PDT Biologists have solved an age-old mystery of touch: how cells just beneath the skin surface enable us to feel fine details and textures. Touch is the last frontier of sensory neuroscience. The cells and molecules that initiate vision -- rod and cone cells and light-sensitive receptors -- have been known since the early 20th century, and the senses of smell, taste, and hearing are increasingly understood. But almost nothing is known about the cells and molecules responsible for initiating our sense of touch.

Zombie cancer cells eat themselves to live Posted: 05 Apr 2014 08:38 PM PDT A new study shows that the cellular process of autophagy in which cells 'eat' parts of themselves in times of stress may allow cancer cells to recover and divide rather than die when faced with chemotherapies.

Does a junk food diet make you lazy? Psychology study offers answer Posted: 04 Apr 2014 07:19 PM PDT A new psychology study provides evidence that being overweight makes people tired and sedentary, rather than vice versa. Life scientists placed 32 female rats on one of two diets for six months. The first, a standard rat's diet, consisted of relatively unprocessed foods like ground corn and fish meal. The ingredients in the second were highly processed, of lower quality and included substantially more sugar -- a proxy for a junk food diet.

The long and the short of telomeres: Loneliness impacts DNA repair, parrot study shows Posted: 04 Apr 2014 07:17 PM PDT Scientists examined the telomere length of captive African grey parrots. They found that the telomere lengths of single parrots were shorter than those housed with a companion parrot, which supports the hypothesis that social stress can interfere with cellular aging and a particular type of DNA repair. It suggests that telomeres may provide a biomarker for assessing exposure to social stress.

Synthetic genetic clock keeps accurate time across a range of temperatures Posted: 04 Apr 2014 11:04 AM PDT A long-standing challenge in synthetic biology has been to create gene circuits that behave in predictable and robust ways. Mathematical modeling experts and experimental biologists have now created a synthetic genetic clock that keeps accurate time across a range of temperatures.

In mice, obese dads produce heavier daughters with epigenetically altered breast tissue Posted: 04 Apr 2014 11:02 AM PDT Obese male mice and normal weight female mice produce female pups that are overweight at birth and in childhood, and have increased number of 'terminal end buds' in their breast tissue -- the site where breast cancer often develops in rodents. 'Researchers traditionally study the maternal link to weight and cancer risk. This unusual study demonstrates a potential paternal link as well,' says the study author.

Key component of cellular protein transport system decoded Posted: 04 Apr 2014 11:00 AM PDT In their research on cellular protein transport, scientists have succeeded in characterizing the structure and function of an important element of this complex transport system. At center stage is the signal recognition particle, or SRP, the molecular "postman" for the sorting and membrane insertion of proteins.

What's going on under the ice? Researchers take a peek Posted: 04 Apr 2014 10:59 AM PDT Most people are fed up with winter, but some scientists love it. Ice and snow give them a chance to do something few others can: Study the Great Lakes under a cover of ice. The GLRC's under-ice observatory is collecting data for scientists to analyze.

Tracking the transition of early-universe quark soup to matter-as-we-know-it Posted: 04 Apr 2014 10:58 AM PDT By smashing together ordinary atomic nuclei at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, scientists recreate the primordial soup of the early universe thousands of times per second. Using sophisticated detectors to track what happens as exotic particles emerge from the collision zone and "freeze out" into more familiar forms of matter, they are turning up interesting details about how the transition takes place.

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