The EDGE: ScienceDaily Environment Headlines -- for Sunday, July 3, 2011

ScienceDaily Environment Headlines

for Sunday, July 3, 2011

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Web weaving skills provide clues to aging, spider study reveals (July 2, 2011) -- Young house spiders weave webs with perfect angles and regular patterns, but as they reach old age their webs deteriorate, showing gaping holes and erratic weaving. By using spiders as a simple model, new research may provide insight into how age affects behavior in other organisms, including humans. ... > full story

Hawaii is not an evolutionary dead end for marine life, snail study finds (July 2, 2011) -- The question of why there are so many species in the sea and how new species form remains a central question in marine biology. Below the waterline, about 30% of Hawaii's marine species are endemic – being found only in Hawaii and nowhere else on Earth – one of the highest rates of endemism found worldwide. But where did this diversity of species come from? In a new study of limpets, cone-shaped marine snails, researchers have demonstrated that Hawaii is not an evolutionary dead end for marine species. ... > full story

New theory on origin of birds: Enlarged skeletal muscles (July 2, 2011) -- A new theory of the origin of birds, traditionally believed to be driven by the evolution of flight, is now being credited to the emergence of enlarged skeletal muscles in birds. Their upright two-leggedness, he says, led to the opportunity for other adaptive changes like flying or swimming. ... > full story

Flapping micro air vehicles inspired by swifts (July 2, 2011) -- A new design of micro air vehicle (MAV) will be able to flap, glide and hover. Researchers have been inspired by birds to design a MAV that combines flapping wings, which will allow it to fly at slow speeds and hover, with the ability to glide, ensuring good quality images from any on-board camera. ... > full story

'Goat plague' threat to global food security and economy must be tackled, experts warn (July 2, 2011) -- "Goat plague," or peste des petits ruminants, is threatening global food security and poverty alleviation in the developing world, say leading veterinarians and animal health experts. ... > full story

Foods with baked milk may help build tolerance in children with dairy allergies, study suggests (July 1, 2011) -- Introducing increasing amounts of foods that contain baked milk into the diets of children who have milk allergies helped a majority of them outgrow their allergies, according to a new study. ... > full story

Auto-pilots need a birds-eye view: Pigeons can inform navigation technology design (July 1, 2011) -- New research on how birds can fly so quickly and accurately through dense forests may lead to new developments in robotics and auto-pilots. Scientists trained pigeons to fly through an artificial forest with a tiny camera attached to their heads, literally giving a birds-eye view. ... > full story

NASA's Aura Satellite measures pollution from New Mexico, Arizona fires (July 1, 2011) -- NASA's Aura Satellite has provided a view of nitrogen dioxide levels coming from the fires in New Mexico and Arizona. Detecting nitrogen dioxide is important because it reacts with sunlight to create low-level ozone or smog and poor air quality. ... > full story

Loudest animal is recorded for the first time (July 1, 2011) -- The loudest animal on Earth, relative to its body size, is a tiny water boatman, scientists have shown. The sound is within human hearing range and at 99.2 decibels it represents the equivalent of listening to an orchestra play loudly while sitting in the front row. ... > full story

Variation in susceptibility to a virus is the key to understanding infection biology (July 1, 2011) -- A new study shows that differences in the vulnerability of animals to a virus are crucial to understanding patterns of infection, and that variation in susceptibility to two marginally different viruses increases the number of infections when the two virus variants are present in the same animal. ... > full story

At the feet of the pharaohs: Capturing the majesty of Luxor in 3-D (July 1, 2011) -- For a while, it seemed the revolution in Egypt would end his mission before it had even begun. Thomas A. DeFanti, an expert in data visualization, had been planning for months to capture spectacular 3-D surround images of Egypt's temples at Luxor on his way to Saudi Arabia early in April. It would be a proof-of-concept expedition to see if the 3-D CAVEcam -- two Lumix GF1 cameras carefully calibrated to take simultaneous right and left images -- would be functional in the super bright, hot and dusty conditions of the Nile River Valley. But for DeFanti, an avid traveler and lover of photography, it would also be a way to bring the splendors of one of the primary world heritage sites back to his state-of-the-art visualization facility in California. ... > full story

Preventing diabetes damage: Zinc's effects on a kinky, two-faced cohort (July 1, 2011) -- In type 2 diabetes, a protein called amylin forms dense clumps that shut down insulin-producing cells, wreaking havoc on the control of blood sugar. But zinc has a knack for preventing amylin from misbehaving. ... > full story

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