Genetics reveal that reef corals and their algae live together but evolve independently
University Park PA (SPX) Jun 12, 2014 -
New research reveals that Caribbean corals and the algae that inhabit them form a remarkably stable relationship - new knowledge that can serve as an important tool in preserving and restoring vital reef-building corals. A scientific paper describing these new findings by a team of marine biologists at Penn State University will be published as a cover article in Molecular Ecology on 10 June 20 ...
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Football: Brazil's World Cup also a test bed for climate change
Paris (AFP) June 12, 2014 -
Beyond the spectacle of 32 nations battling for the greatest prize in football, the World Cup is also a test bed for tackling climate-damaging carbon emissions from major events.
The world's biggest sports fest is a major source of carbon, but FIFA says this year's event should break new ground in addressing the problem.
It describes the 2014 show as a "stepping stone" towards "sustaina ...
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Australia says pollution falling at Great Barrier Reef
Sydney (AFP) June 12, 2014 -
Australia on Thursday said it was confident the Great Barrier Reef would avoid a World Heritage downgrade after a new report card showed pollutants entering the water had been significantly reduced.
UNESCO had warned that without action on water quality and rampant coastal development, the reef - covering an area roughly the size of Japan - would be declared "World Heritage in Danger".
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EU to allow states to decide to grow GM foods
Luxembourg (AFP) June 12, 2014 -
The European Union will allow member countries to make their own decisions on growing genetically modified (GM) food in a compromise deal on Thursday that followed years of fraught discussions.
"All member states, with the exception of Belgium and Luxembourg, have given their agreement," Greek Agriculture Minister Ioannis Maniatis said after a meeting with his EU colleagues.
The key poin ...
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Climate change causes winners and losers in penguins
Paris (AFP) June 12, 2014 -
Penguin species in the Antarctic that once benefited from rising temperatures are now in decline due to warming gone too far, scientists said Thursday.
Previous scientific research was unable to determine why populations of Adelie and chinstrap penguins are in decline, while gentoo penguins are increasing in numbers.
In the new study, biologists said that all three species expanded afte ...
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Famine fear won't sway minds on GM crops
Ithaca NY (SPX) Jun 13, 2014 -
A sack-hauling time traveler from the 21st century lands in an Irish potato field in 1849, just before a terrible famine, and asks: If you thought genetically modified potatoes could avert late blight disease, spare a million countrymen from starvation and keep another million from emigrating off the Emerald Isle, would you plant these newfangled spuds?
Fast forward to the Internet Age, wh ...
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From today, the Earth is around 60 million years older -- and so is the moon
Sacramento CA (SPX) Jun 13, 2014 -
Work presented at the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Conference in Sacramento, California shows that the timing of the giant impact between Earth's ancestor and a planet-sized body occurred around 40 million years after the start of solar system formation. This means that the final stage of Earth's formation is around 60 million years older than previously thought.
Geochemists from the Universit ...
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Palmer amaranth threatens Midwest farm economy
Champaign IL (SPX) Jun 13, 2014 -
An invasive weed that has put some southern cotton farmers out of business is now finding its way across the Midwest - and many corn and soybean growers don't yet appreciate the threat, University of Illinois researchers report.
Palmer amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri), a flowering plant native to the Sonoran desert and southwest United States, has a laundry list of traits that make it a fierc ...
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A plan to share the carbon budget burden
Providence RI (SPX) Jun 13, 2014 -
Climate change is an issue of urgent international importance, but for 20 years, the international community has been unable to agree on a coordinated way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In a "Perspective" piece published in the June issue of Nature Climate Change, J. Timmons Roberts, the Ittleson Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology, proposes a four-step compromise toward emissi ...
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Newly discovered paddle prints show how ancient sea reptiles swam
Bristol, UK (SPX) Jun 13, 2014 -
Trackways formed on an ancient seabed have shed new light on how nothosaurs, ancient marine reptiles that lived during the age of the dinosaurs, propelled themselves through water. The evidence is described by a team from Bristol and China in Nature Communications.
During the Mesozoic, 252-66 million years ago, the seas were ruled by a variety of marine reptiles. One of the earliest groups ...
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For forests, an earlier spring than ever
Boston MA (SPX) Jun 13, 2014 -
Every spring, as the weather warms, trees in forests up and down the east coast explode in a bright green display of life as leaves fill their branches, and every fall, those same leaves provide one of nature's great color displays of vivid yellow, orange and red.
Over the last two decades, spurred by higher temperatures caused by climate change, Harvard scientists say, forests throughout ...
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Forest loss starves fish
Cambridge UK (SPX) Jun 13, 2014 -
Debris from forests that washes into freshwater lakes supplements the diets of microscopic zooplankton and the fish that feed off them - creating larger and stronger fish, new research shows.
The researchers warn that, as forests are eroded through human activities such as logging, the impacts will be felt in aquatic as well as terrestrial food chains.
In fact, the study was conducte ...
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Warming climates intensify greenhouse gas given out by oceans
Edinburgh, UK (SPX) Jun 13, 2014 -
Rising global temperatures could increase the amount of carbon dioxide naturally released by the world's oceans, fuelling further climate change, a study suggests.
Fresh insight into how the oceans can affect CO2 levels in the atmosphere shows that rising temperatures can indirectly increase the amount of the greenhouse gas emitted by the oceans.
Scientists studied a 26,000-year-old ...
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Motherhood is no picnic for sea otter moms
London, UK (SPX) Jun 13, 2014 -
Sea otters have voracious appetites, and for good reason. As the smallest marine mammals, they face unprecedented metabolic challenges just to stay warm. They consume a quarter of their own body mass each day and there are times when the metabolic demands of sea otter females rocket even further.
Nicole Thometz, from the University of California at Santa Cruz, USA, explains that in additio ...
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Energy demands of raising a pup push sea otter moms to the limit
Santa Cruz CA (SPX) Jun 13, 2014 -
Parents often complain that child-rearing is exhausting, but consider the poor sea otter mom. By the time a sea otter pup is weaned, its mother may be so depleted physiologically that she is unable to survive the stress of a minor wound or infection. Sea otter researchers have a term for it--"end-lactation syndrome"--and believe it accounts for high mortality rates among female sea otters in som ...
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Viewing plant cells in 3-D (no glasses required)
Washington DC (SPX) Jun 13, 2014 -
Plant cells are beginning to look a lot different to Dr. A. Bruce Cahoon and his colleagues at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU). They've adopted a new approach that combines the precision of an ion beam with the imaging capabilities of an electron beam to zoom in at micron-level resolution.
Scientists who work with nanodevices have used focused ion beam-scanning electron microscopy ...
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Cristina strengthens to category four hurricane: NHC
Washington (AFP) June 12, 2014 -
Hurricane Cristina strengthened Thursday into a powerful category four storm, but remained well off Mexico's Pacific coast, US forecasters said.
At 1230 GMT, Cristina had maximum sustained winds of nearly 145 miles (230 kilometers) per hour and was centered 250 miles southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico, the US National Hurricane Center said.
The storm was moving toward the northwest at aroun ...
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Quarter of Djibouti population desperate for drought aid: UN
Geneva (AFP) June 12, 2014 -
Nearly a quarter of the population in drought-hit Djibouti is in desperate need of aid, with malnutrition and a dramatic lack of water causing a mass exodus from rural areas, the UN said on Thursday.
"Persistent and recurring droughts have resulted in a general lack of water for both people and livestock," said the UN's Djibouti coordinator Robert Watkins.
The crisis, which has dragged o ...
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The solar wind breaks through the Earth's magnetic field
Stockholm, Sweden (SPX) Jun 12, 2014 -
Space is not empty. A wind of charged particles blows outwards from the Sun, carrying a magnetic field with it. Sometimes this solar wind can break through the Earth's magnetic field. Researchers at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF) in Uppsala now have an answer to one of the questions about how this actually occurs.
When two areas with plasma (electrically charged gas) and magn ...
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China pollution arrests rise as Beijing pushes green agenda
Beijing (AFP) June 12, 2014 -
China arrested more people last year for environmental offences than in the previous 10 combined, state media said Thursday, as Beijing strives to produce results after a much-vaunted pollution crackdown.
The official Xinhua news agency said 200 people had been arrested and more than 3,500 companies and workshops shut down for environmental violations, figures that remained comparatively mod ...
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