Dispel your spider fears in New York on July 4
New York (AFP) July 03, 2014 -
Terrified of spiders? Then get down and personal with the venomous beasts at one of New York's top museums as it debunks the Hollywood myth that they're dangerous.
Arachnophobia, the excessive fear of spiders, is one of the most common animal phobias - felt by millions of people worldwide.
And yet scientists say eight-legged creatures, tarantulas and scorpions included, pose no threat t ...
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W. African Ebola epidemic 'likely to last months': UN
Accra (AFP) July 03, 2014 -
The United Nations health agency said on Thursday it expected the worst Ebola outbreak in history to continue its deadly rampage through west Africa for at least "several months".
The highly-contagious tropical bug has infected hundreds of people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, with the latest World Health Organization (WHO) figures showing that confirmed or suspected cases had left 467 ...
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Smuggled elephant ivory price triples: conservationists
Nairobi (AFP) July 03, 2014 -
The price of ivory taken from African elephants slaughtered for their tusks has tripled in the past four years in China, the world's biggest market, conservationists said on Thursday.
"The surge in the price of ivory is driving a wave of killing of elephants across Africa that shows little sign of abating," campaign group Save the Elephants said in a new report.
"With the ivory price in ...
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French deal could bring 63 million gallons of fresh water to U.A.E.
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UPI) Jul 3, 2013 -
French energy company GDF Suez is helping meet water and power supplies for the United Arab Emirates with a $1.5 billion investment, its chairman said Thursday.
The company announced the deal for the Mirfa Independent Water and Power project with its counterparts at the Abu Dhabi Water and Electric Co.
"This new project will allow us to pursue our growth strategy in the region an ...
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Maine officials say white pine fungus spreading
Portland, Maine (UPI) Jul 3, 2013 -
Forestry officials in Maine say a fungal disease that affects white pines is spreading. William Ostrofsky, a forest pathologist with the Maine Forest Service, says the disease is most prevalent in southern and central Maine where pines thrive in the state's sandy soils.
Ostrofsky thinks the fungal problem has been worsened by this spring's seemingly perpetual rainfall. The infection, wh ...
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Extinct human cousin gave Tibetans advantage at high elevation
Berkeley CA (SPX) Jul 04, 2014 -
Tibetans were able to adapt to high altitudes thanks to a gene picked up when their ancestors mated with a species of human they helped push to extinction, according to a new report by University of California, Berkeley, scientists.
An unusual variant of a gene involved in regulating the body's production of hemoglobin - the molecule that carries oxygen in the blood - became widespread in ...
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Whales as ecosystem engineers
Burlington VT (SPX) Jul 04, 2014 -
"Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part," wrote Herman Melville in Moby Dick. Today, we no longer dread whales, but their subtlety remains. "For a long time, whales have been considered too rare to make much of a difference in the oceans," notes University of Vermont conservation biologist Joe Roman. That was a mistake. ...
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Putting a price tag on the 2 degree climate target
Laxenburg, Austria (SPX) Jul 04, 2014 -
Addressing climate change will require substantial new investment in low-carbon energy and energy efficiency - but no more than what is currently spent on today's fossil-dominated energy system, according to new research from IIASA and partners.
To limit climate change to 2 Celsius, low-carbon energy options will need additional investments of about US $800 billion a year globally from no ...
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Smithsonian scientist and collaborators revise timeline of human origins
Washington DC (SPX) Jul 04, 2014 -
Many traits unique to humans were long thought to have originated in the genus Homo between 2.4 and 1.8 million years ago in Africa. Although scientists have recognized these characteristics for decades, they are reconsidering the true evolutionary factors that drove them.
A large brain, long legs, the ability to craft tools and prolonged maturation periods were all thought to have evolved ...
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Decade of benefits for the Great Barrier Reef
Townsville, Australia (SPX) Jul 04, 2014 -
With this week marking the tenth anniversary of the rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, prominent marine scientists from around the world have gathered in Canberra to discuss its successes - both expected and unexpected.
"At the time, the rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park was the largest marine conservation measure in the world," says Professor Garry Russ from the ...
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Dramatic decline of Caribbean corals can be reversed
Gland, Switzerland (SPX) Jul 04, 2014 -
With only about one-sixth of the original coral cover left, most Caribbean coral reefs may disappear in the next 20 years, primarily due to the loss of grazers in the region, according to the latest report by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
The report, Status and ...
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With 'biological sunscreen,' mantis shrimp see the reef in a whole different light
College Park MD (SPX) Jul 04, 2014 -
In an unexpected discovery, researchers have found that the complex eyes of mantis shrimp are equipped with optics that generate ultraviolet (UV) color vision. Mantis shrimp's six UV photoreceptors pick up on different colors within the UV spectrum based on filters made from an ingredient other animals depend on as built-in biological sunscreen, according to research reported in the Cell Press j ...
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Adaptations of Tibetans may have benefited from extinct denisovans
Shenzhen, China (SPX) Jul 04, 2014 -
An international team, led by researchers from BGI and University of California, presented their latest significant finding that the altitude adaptation in Tibet might be caused by the introgression of DNA from extinct Denisovans or Denisovan-related individuals into humans.
This work published online in Nature sheds new light into understanding human's adaptation to diverse environments i ...
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Zone tropical coastal oceans; manage them more like land resources
Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Jul 04, 2014 -
Leading international environmental and marine scientists have published a joint call for societies to introduce and enforce use zoning of Earth's coastal ocean waters, mirroring approaches commonly used to manage and protect land resources.
Writing in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, the 24 scientists from Canada, the USA, the UK, China, Australia, New Caledonia, Sweden and Kenya un ...
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Payback time for soil carbon from pasture conversion to sugarcane production
Sao Paulo, Brazil (SPX) Jul 04, 2014 -
The reduction of soil carbon stock caused by the conversion of pasture areas into sugarcane plantations - a very common change in Brazil in recent years - may be offset within two or three years of cultivation. The calculation appears in a study conducted by researchers at the Center for Nuclear Energy in Agriculture (CENA) of the University of Sao Paulo (USP) in collaboration with colleagues fr ...
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Norway Gets TerraSAR-X Direct Receiving Station
Paris (SPX) Jul 01, 2014 -
Airbus Defence and Space and Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT) have signed a multi-million-euro agreement for the delivery and installation of a Direct Receiving Station (DRS) for TerraSAR-X and its twin satellite TanDEM-X in Norway.
Through data reception at KSAT's premises in Svalbard and processing in Tromso, this system - scheduled to be operational by the end of 2014 - will support ...
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NASA launches carbon-tracking satellite
Washington (AFP) July 02, 2014 -
NASA on Wednesday launched a satellite designed to track carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas that is responsible for global warming.
The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 took off aboard a Delta 2 rocket at 2:56 am Pacific time (0956 GMT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
After 56 minutes of flight, the satellite separated from the second-stage rocket as planned, with no gli ...
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Seeing your true colors: Standards for hyperspectral imaging
Washington DC (SPX) Jul 04, 2014 -
Today, doctors who really want to see if a wound is healing have to do a biopsy or some other invasive technique that, besides injuring an already injured patient, can really only offer information about a small area. But a technology called hyperspectral imaging offers doctors a noninvasive, painless way to discriminate between healthy and diseased tissue and reveal how well damaged tissue is h ...
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ENSO and the Indian Monsoon...not as straightforward as you'd think
Washington DC (SPX) Jul 04, 2014 -
When folks hear the term El Nino, they generally think of two things. 1) A decrease in the amount of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean and 2) Chris Farley. Ok, they probably only think of #2, but we here at the ENSO blog are trying to broaden that viewpoint. We've already discussed US impacts during El Nino but we know it also affects global circulation.
One of ENSO's most important influen ...
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More People Means More Plant Growth
Washington DC (SPX) Jul 03, 2014 -
Ecologist Thomas Mueller uses satellite data to study how the patterns of plant growth relate to the movement of caribou and gazelle. The research sparked an idea: Would the footprint of human activity show up in the data?
Mueller, of the University of Maryland in College Park (now at the Biodiversity and Climate Research Center in Frankfurt) teamed up with university and NASA colleagues t ...
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Science journal says Facebook experiment 'a concern'
Washington (AFP) July 03, 2014 -
The scientific journal that published a controversial Facebook experiment on mood manipulation said Thursday it was concerned that the company did not follow scientific ethics and principles of informed consent.
While it stopped short of retracting the study, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said it typically publishes experiments that have allowed subjects to opt out of r ...
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Open Internet threats loom: study
Washington (AFP) July 03, 2014 -
The future of an open Internet faces threats from government crackdowns, and "balkanization" resulting from growing concerns over broad electronic surveillance, a survey of experts showed Thursday.
The Pew Research Center said a majority of experts and others in the opt-in survey were generally optimistic about Internet freedom but that a significant number expressed concerns.
"The exper ...
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Japan city launches legal bid to halt reactor build
Tokyo (AFP) July 03, 2014 -
A Japanese city on Thursday sought a court injunction to prevent a nuclear plant from being built, in a country that remains deeply suspicious of the technology three years after Fukushima.
Toshiki Kudo, mayor of Hakodate in Japan's north, appeared at Tokyo District Court on Thursday afternoon to demand an indefinite freeze on construction of the nearby Oma nuclear plant.
After a hiatus, ...
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Israeli inventor says chemical scanner will change the way we shop
Tel Aviv, Israel (UPI) Jul 3, 2013 -
Want to know what strange chemicals are in your Subway sub roll? Soon, consumers won't necessarily need to rely on investigative journalists or public safety advocates to find out that there's yoga mat plastic in their sandwich. They can just use the SCiO.
The SCiO is the soon to be released chemical scanner from Consumer Physics, a startup based in Tel Aviv, Israel. The product's inven ...
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Sixteen companies cleared for August wind energy auction in Maryland
Washington (UPI) Jul 3, 2013 -
Sixteen companies are cleared to take part in an upcoming lease sale to develop wind energy off the Maryland coast, the U.S. government announced.
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell joined Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Acting Director Walter Cruickshank to announce nearly 80,000 acres off the Maryland coast go on the auction block Aug. 19.
The D ...
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