News Articles

Madagascar's radiated tortoise is rapidly nearing extinction due to rampant hunting for its meat and the illegal pet trade. Biologists with the Turtle Survival Alliance (TSA) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) predict that unless drastic conservation measures take place, the species will be driven to extinction within the next 20 years.The team's recent field survey in southern Madagascar's spiny forest, revealed that entire regions are devoid of tortoises. Residents also reported that armed bands of poachers had taken away truckloads of tortoises to supply open meat markets in towns such as Beloha and Tsihombe. Poaching camps have been discovered with the remains of thousands of radiated tortoises, and truckloads of tortoise meat have been seized recently.

A new review in the Agronomy Journal suggests that crop residue removal from corn, wheat, and grain sorghum may not be the most earth-friendly source of biomass for cellulosic ethanol production.  The review found that removal of more than 50% of crop residue can have negative consequences on soil structure, reduce soil organic carbon sequestration, increase water erosion, and reduce nutrient cycling and crop production, particularly in erodible and sloping soils.While most research is focused on the conversion of cellulosic feeedstocks into ethanol and increasing production of biomass, the impacts of growing energy crops and the removal of crop residue on soil and environmental quality have received less attention.

43 percent of people are undecided, reluctant or do not wish to have their organs and tissue donated after their deaths, according to a new survey conducted by Donate Life America. The results shows an increase in the number of people willing to donate compared to a survey conducted last year, but also suggest that a lot of misinformation still surrounds the issue.

Exercise can alleviate depression and anxiety symptoms and should be more widely prescribed to patients who can't access or won't accept traditional therapies, say mental health experts from Southern Methodist University and Boston University. They say exercise may affect certain neurotransmitter systems in the brain the same way antidepressants do and could help patients "re-establish positive behaviors."Their research was presented last month at the annual conference of the Anxiety Disorder Association of America.

Web sites that foster online communication and interaction are not merely vapid echo chambers of self-promotion, according to a new study in American Behavioral Scientist.In fact, just the opposite is true. Interactions on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites positively impact real-life and the intersection between online communication and the offline world forms two halves of a support mechanism for local communities.

Some solar physicists have suggested that prolonged low solar activity could offset the effects of anthropogenic global warming. But a new Grand Minimum of solar activity would decrease the rise of global mean temperature caused by human greenhouse gas emissions by at most 0.3 degrees Celsius until the end of the century, according to a recent study in Geophysical Research Letters. The projected temperature drop is less than ten percent of the rise projected under “business as usual” scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

University of Birmingham scientists have discovered that the gene DAF-16 plays an important part in determining the rate of aging and average lifespan of the laboratory worm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) and its close evolutionary cousins. DAF-16 is found in many other animals, including humans, and it is possible that this knowledge could open up new avenues for altering ageing, immunity and resistance to stresses in humans. The research was published this week in PLoS One

The authors of a new paper in Current Biology say they have found the first concrete evidence that shows how gene duplications can lead to functional diversity in organisms. In the study, researchers examined how duplications of a gene called FLOWERING LOCUS T, or FT, could have evolved and interacted to prolong a sunflower's time to grow. A longer flower growth period means a bigger flower -- presumably an attribute of great value to the plant's first breeders.

Princeton Electrical Engineers have developed a new technique for revealing images of hidden objects. The method, a new type of stochastic resonance, relies on the ability to clarify an image using rays of light that would typically make the image unrecognizable, such as those scattered by clouds, human tissue or murky water. The discovery may one day help pilots navigate through fog and doctors peer into the human body without surgery. The findings were reported online in Nature Photonics.

ASU Biodesign Institute researchers are using the unique conditions of spaceflight to examine how cells remain healthy or succumb to disease, particularly in the face of stress or damage. Their experiment will be launched into low earth orbit on April 5 aboard the space shuttle Discovery on mission STS-131.The team hopes to provide fundamental new insight into the infectious disease process, and further undestanding of other progressive diseases, including immune disorders and cancer. The Results of the current study will also be used to help mitigate infectious disease risks to the crew, who are particularly vulnerable to infection, due to reduced immune function during spaceflight missions.

Although they only account for a fraction of the synapses in the visual cortex, neurons in the thalamus get their message across loud and clear by coordination -- simultaneously hitting the "send" button—according to a computer simulation developed by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.Their findings may hold important clues to how the brain encodes and processes information, which can be applied to a wide variety of applications, from understanding psychiatric disorders to the development of novel pharmaceuticals and new ways of handling information by computers or communication networks. The results are published in Science.

If our eyes could see radio waves, the nearby galaxy Centaurus A (Cen A) would be one of the biggest and brightest objects in the sky, nearly 20 times the apparent size of a full moon. What we can't see when looking at the galaxy in visible light is that it lies nestled between a pair of giant radio-emitting gas plumes ejected by its supersized black hole. Each plume is nearly a million light-years long.NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope maps gamma rays, radiation that typically packs 100 billion times the energy of radio waves. Nevertheless, and to the surprise of many astrophysicists, Cen A's plumes show up clearly in the satellite's first 10 months of data. The study appears today in Science Express.