Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category

The summer Olympics may be a few months away, but the climate in the U.S. is already breaking records.

The Washington Ecology Department is asking the Corps of Engineers to develop a cumulative study of plans for coal export terminals in the Northwest.

The industrial team that aims to make an astronaut launcher by marrying parts of the shuttle and the Ariane rocket says it intends to fly crew from 2015.

Scientists have flown through the heart of a turbulent weather system in a bid to understand the causes of heavy rainfall.

The Queen’s favourite breed of dog – the corgi – has seen a boost in popularity in her Diamond Jubilee year, according to the Kennel Club.

Conservationists launch what they call an urgent mission to save the turtle dove from extinction in the UK.

One of Europe’s main contributions to the James Webb Space Telescope is built and ready to ship to the US.

Fast-traveling sand dunes indicate the Red Planet’s surface is more active than previously thought.

Peru’s northern beaches have been declared off-limits as scientists scramble to pin down what is causing the mysterious deaths of thousands of birds and dolphins.

The vast swirl of microplastic waste floating in the North Pacific has increased 100-fold over the last 40 years.

A dedicated paleontologist lived for five weeks in an abandoned chicken coop in China for the chance to discover that the world’s most famous fossils are the product of a triple-decker dose of extreme ocean chemistry.

Groundwater could be contaminated by the natural gas extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, after a decade or less.

The unusual sight of humpback whales intervening in a killer whale hunt has been caught on camera by a BBC/National Geographic film crew.

WASHINGTON – The heavy fuel that oceangoing vessels burn adds so much to air pollution hundreds of miles inland that the United States joined with Canada during President George W. Bush’s administration to ask the International Maritime Organization to create an emissions-control area along the coasts.

The quantity of small plastic fragments floating in the North Pacific Ocean has increased a hundred fold over the past 40 years.

Evolution: Cheating cuts offspring fitness

Nature 485, 7397 (2012). doi:10.1038/485151d

‘Monogamous’ female birds often produce young with another partner. This was presumed to yield offspring fitter than those produced with the paired partner, but a study of song sparrows suggests that ‘cheating’ comes with no evolutionary reproductive benefit.Jane Reid at the University of Aberdeen,

Biophysics: High-throughput cell stretcher

Nature 485, 7397 (2012). doi:10.1038/485151c

A chip on which cells flow through tiny channels can be used to measure the size and deformability of individual cells at a rate of 2,000 per second — several orders of magnitude faster than existing methods. The chip could be used to detect cancer

Nanobiotechnology: Radio remote control of genes

Nature 485, 7397 (2012). doi:10.1038/485151b

Externally applied radio waves can be used to switch on a modified gene in a mouse, thanks to radiation-absorbing nanoparticles injected into the animal. The technique could enable researchers to activate cells and genes non-invasively.Jeffrey Friedman at the Rockefeller University in New York and

Evolution: Gene duplication for bigger brains

Nature 485, 7397 (2012). doi:10.1038/485151a

DNA-duplication errors that upped the number of copies of a gene may have catalysed the evolution of complex brains in early humans.The gene SRGAP2 is expressed during development of the brain’s neocortex — a region involved in cognition. Evan Eichler at the University

Geochemistry: North Sea starved of oxygen

Nature 485, 7397 (2012). doi:10.1038/485150d

Summer oxygen levels are declining in some parts of the North Sea, probably because of ocean warming and the decay of photosynthetic blooms that form as a result of nutrient influx.Bastien Queste at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, and his team

Physiology: Bladder under circadian control

Nature 485, 7397 (2012). doi:10.1038/485150c

Most adults produce less urine at night than during the day, and store more of what is made, thanks to the circadian regulation of daily urination patterns.Hitoshi Okamura and Osamu Ogawa at Kyoto University in Japan and their colleagues developed a machine that measures

Neuroscience: BOLD strides in brain imaging

Nature 485, 7397 (2012). doi:10.1038/485150b

To visualize brain activity, neuroscientists use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure blood oxygen levels, known as BOLD signals, which are considered a proxy for cellular activity. However, it has been unclear which types of brain cell contribute to these signals.Fritjof Helmchen and

Climate science: A check on speeding glaciers

Nature 485, 7397 (2012). doi:10.1038/485150a

Analysis of a decade-long record of Greenland’s glaciers suggests that the ice sheets are not accelerating towards the ocean as much as previously forecast.Earlier work on a small number of glaciers had uncovered large increases in speed. Using satellite radar data to calculate the

Price of freedom

Nature 485, 7397 (2012). doi:10.1038/485148a

The latest mission to Jupiter highlights the benefits and pitfalls of collaboration.