The EDGE: ScienceDaily Environment Headlines -- for Saturday, August 18, 2012

ScienceDaily Environment Headlines

for Saturday, August 18, 2012

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Excessive summertime heat can shorten gestation time for beef cattle (August 17, 2012) -- New research indicates that excessively hot summertime temperatures can shorten the gestation length of beef cows, altering animal management requirements. ... > full story

As smart electric grid evolves, engineers show how to include solar technologies (August 17, 2012) -- Scientists have developed an economically feasible way to store solar energy in existing residential power networks. ... > full story

Bats evolved more than one way to drink nectar (August 17, 2012) -- A team of evolutionary biologists compared the anatomy and genes of bats to help solve a persistent question in evolution: Why do analyses of different features of an organism result in conflicting patterns of evolutionary relationships? ... > full story

Studies shed light on why species stay or go in response to climate change (August 17, 2012) -- Two new studies provide a clearer picture of why some species move -- and where they go -- in response to climate change. One found a dramatic decline in populations of a mountain ground squirrel, except where humans lived. Another paper finds that precipitation is an underappreciated driving force for species' response to climate change. ... > full story

Writing the book in DNA: Geneticist encodes his book in life's language (August 17, 2012) -- Using next-generation sequencing technology and a novel strategy to encode 1,000 times the largest data size previously achieved in DNA, a geneticist encodes his book in life's language. ... > full story

Two new owl species discovered in the Philippines (August 17, 2012) -- Two new species of owls have been discovered in the Philippines. The first owl, the Camiguin Hawk-owl, is found only on the small island of Camiguin Sur, close to northern Mindanao. The second new discovery was the Cebu Hawk-owl. This bird was thought to be extinct, as the forests of Cebu have almost all been lost due to deforestation. ... > full story

Urine based 'potion' can act as CO<sub>2</sub> absorbent (August 17, 2012) -- Absorbing the large quantities of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases present in cities would require millions of tons of some naturally occurring substance. Urine could be the reactive agent. As a resource available across all human societies, it is produced in large quantities and is close to the pollution hubs of large cities. ... > full story

Iconic Darwin finch genome sequenced (August 17, 2012) -- Scientists have sequenced the genome of one of the iconic Galapagos finches first described by Charles Darwin. he genome of the medium ground finch (Geospiza fortis) is among the first of a planned 100 genomes of vertebrate species to be sequenced and released by an international collaboration. ... > full story

Spider version of Bigfoot emerges from caves in the Pacific Northwest (August 17, 2012) -- The forests of the coastal regions from California to British Columbia are renowned for their unique and ancient animals and plants, such as coast redwoods, tailed frogs, mountain beavers and the legendary Bigfoot (also known as Sasquatch). Whereas Bigfoot is probably just fiction, a huge, newly discovered spider is very real. ... > full story

Flu vaccine research: Overcoming 'original sin' (August 17, 2012) -- Scientists studying flu vaccines have identified ways to overcome an obstacle called "original antigenic sin," which can impair immune responses to new flu strains. ... > full story

Wild pollinators support farm productivity and stabilize yield (August 17, 2012) -- Most people are not aware of the fact that 84% of the European crops are partially or entirely dependent on insect pollination. While managed honeybees pollinate certain crops, wild bees, flies and wasps cover a very broad spectrum of plants, and thus are considered the most important pollinators in Europe. ... > full story

New player in immune response? The strange case of UCP2 (August 17, 2012) -- Uncoupling proteins present a paradox. They are found within mitochondria and serve to prevent the cell’s powerhouses from exploiting the charge differential across their membranes to generate ATP, which the body uses as an energy source. When uncoupling proteins are active, mitochondria produce heat instead of ATP. This may be useful under certain circumstances, such as when an animal is hibernating, but it seems unlikely that helping bears through the winter is the only function of uncoupling proteins, especially as non-hibernating animals also have them. ... > full story

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