Soil microbes produce less atmospheric carbon dioxide than expected with climate warming

Credit: Steven D. AllisonKey players in carbon cycle multiply slowly when overheated
In dark, rich soils on every continent, microbes dealing with the effects of climate change aren't accelerating global warming the way scientists had predicted, a study by researchers at the University of California at Irvine, Colorado State University and Yale University shows.

Results of the study appear in a paper published on-line this week in the journal Nature Geoscience. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and U.S. Department of Energy.

New monitor lizard discovered in Indonesia

Varanus obor, the Sago monitor, or Torch monitor lizard.A newly discovered species of monitor lizard, a close relative of the Komodo dragon, was reported in the journal Zootaxa this week by a professor at UC Santa Barbara and a researcher from Finland.

Sam Sweet, a professor in the department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at UCSB, and Valter Weijola, a graduate student at Abo Akademi University in Turku, Finland, are the first to describe the distinctive lizard, which lives in the Moluccan islands of east Indonesia. Sweet is an authority on monitor lizard biology.

Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico

Rig on fireA massive explosion occurred at 11 p.m. EST on Transocean's Deepwater Horizon oil rig, operated by BP, in the Gulf of Mexico. According to initial reports as many as 11 people are unaccounted for. Search and rescue operations are underway.

From data available, this oil spill could easily be one of the worst in the last few decades - with a potential of causing more damage and destruction to environment and marine life than the Exxon Valdez in 1989

Nearly 15,000 oppose Montenegro plan to drown wild beauty

Moraca River, MontenegroThe Montenegro government was yesterday handed a 14,764 signature petition asking it to consider alternatives to its four dam plan for the country’s second most important and most scenic River. The plan for multiple dams on the Moraça River, which will inundate areas of the Montegnegro capital’s natural and cultural heritage and threatens flows into the Balkan’s largest lake and its fisheries and bird migration reserves, was drawn up 40 years ago.

Closing in on a carbon-based solar cell

Two graphene molecules (dark grey) are caged by sidegroups (blue) attached to each graphene sheet. The sidegroups help prevent the graphene sheets from stacking, as they are prone to do.
Image: Liang-shi LiTo make large sheets of carbon available for light collection, Indiana University Bloomington chemists have devised an unusual solution - attach what amounts to a 3-D bramble patch to each side of the carbon sheet. Using that method, the scientists say they were able to dissolve sheets containing as many as 168 carbon atoms, a first.

The scientists' report will appear in a future issue of Nano Letters, an American Chemical Society journal. "Our interest stems from wanting to find an alternative, readily available material that can efficiently absorb sunlight," said chemist Liang-shi Li, who led the research. "At the moment the most common materials for absorbing light in solar cells are silicon and compounds containing ruthenium. Each has disadvantages."

Household detergents, shampoos may form harmful substance in waste water

Scientists are reporting evidence that certain ingredients in shampoo, detergents and other household cleaning agents may be a source of precursor materials for formation of a suspected cancer-causing contaminant in water supplies that receive water from sewage treatment plants. The study sheds new light on possible environmental sources of this poorly understood water contaminant, called NDMA, which is of ongoing concern to health officials. Their study is in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal.

Evidence that nanoparticles in sunscreens could be toxic if accidentally eaten

Sunscreens contain nanoparticles of zinc oxide - used to prevent the damaging effects of sunlight - that can harm colon cells and may be toxic if accidentally eaten.
Credit: iStockScientists are reporting that particle size affects the toxicity of zinc oxide, a material widely used in sunscreens. Particles smaller than 100 nanometers are slightly more toxic to colon cells than conventional zinc oxide. Solid zinc oxide was more toxic than equivalent amounts of soluble zinc, and direct particle to cell contact was required to cause cell death. Their study is in ACS' Chemical Research in Toxicology, a monthly journal.

Commercial fishing estimated to kill millions of sea turtles

The number of sea turtles inadvertently snared by commercial fishing gear over the past 20 years may reach into the millions, according to the first peer-reviewed study to compile sea turtle bycatch data from gillnet, trawl and longline fisheries worldwide.

The study, which was published online April 6 in the journal Conservation Letters, analyzed data compiled from peer-reviewed papers, government reports, technical reports, and symposia proceedings published between 1990 and 2008. All data were based on direct onboard observations or interviews with fishermen. The study did not include data from recreational fishing.

Dig looks at society just before dawn of of urban civilization in the Middle East

Abbas Alizadeh, an archaeologist with the University of Chicago, passes a piece of broken pottery to Gil Stein, Director of the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago (right) and a leader of an excavation in Syria which is uncovering artifacts from a society that flourished just before the formation of urban civilization in the ancient Middle East.
Credit: Oriental Institute, University of ChicagoThirty-one acres in extent, Tell Zeidan is situated where the Balikh River joins the Euphrates River in modern-day Syria. The location was at the crossroads of major trade routes across ancient Mesopotamia that followed the course of the Euphrates River valley.

Stein said Tell Zeidan may have been one of the largest Ubaid temple towns in northern Mesopotamia, and that it was as large or larger than any previously known contemporary Ubaid towns in the southern alluvial lowlands of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is today southern Iraq. However, because the site was not occupied after about 4,000 B.C., the prehistoric strata of Tell Zeidan are immediately accessible beneath the modern-day ground surface instead of being buried beneath layers of deposits from later periods.

New study shows rising water temperatures in US streams and rivers

New research by a team of ecologists and hydrologists shows that water temperatures are increasing in many streams and rivers throughout the United States. The research, published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, documents that 20 major U.S. streams and rivers – including such prominent rivers as the Colorado, Potomac, Delaware, and Hudson – have shown statistically significant long-term warming.

By analyzing historical records from 40 sites located throughout the United States, the team found that annual mean water temperatures increased by 0.02-0.14°F (0.009-0.077°C) per year. Long-term increases in stream water temperatures were typically correlated with increases in air temperatures, and rates of warming were most rapid in urbanized areas.

Dutch police hold illicit whale meat shipment following Greenpeace Action

Following a Greenpeace action which began early this morning, Rotterdam port police have promised that a whale meat shipment en route to Japan from Iceland will remain at the port. The owners of the container ship NYK ORION have decided to off load the Fin whale meat rather than become complicit in the trade in an endangered species.

"Today Greenpeace was able just in time to prevent this shipment of whale meat from continuing, such action should no longer be necessary," said Pavel Klinckhamers, Greenpeace oceans campaigner. "The Dutch authorities must ensure that whale meat never again comes to the Rotterdam harbour. They must work to end the whale meat trade."

Energy crops impact environmental quality

Crop residues, perennial warm season grasses, and short-rotation woody crops are potential biomass sources for cellulosic ethanol production. 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. Moreover, effects of crop residue removal on soil and environmental quality have not been compared against those of dedicated energy crops.

In the March-April 2010 issue of Agronomy Journal, published by the American Society of Agronomy, Dr. Humberto Blanco reviewed the impacts of crop residue removal, warm season grasses, and short-rotation woody crops on critical soil properties, carbon sequestration, and water quality as well as the performance of energy crops in marginal lands.

Model predicts shifts in carbon absorption by forest canopies

An Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist participated in a project to fine-tune computer models that can indicate when forest "carbon sinks" become net carbon generators instead. The results will help pinpoint the effectiveness of trees in offsetting carbon releases that contribute to higher atmospheric temperatures and global climate change.

ARS plant physiologist Erik Hamerlynck teamed up with Rutgers University biologist Karina Schafer and U.S. Forest Service colleagues Kenneth Clark and Nicholas Skowronski to calibrate the Canopy Conductance Constrained Carbon Assimilation (4C-A) model, a computer program that generates carbon balance estimates for tree canopies. Hamerlynck works at the ARS Southwest Watershed Research Center in Tucson, Ariz.

Ecologists receive mixed news from fossil record

University of Chicago’s Susan Kidwell and Adam Tomašových examine collections of mollusks at the Smithsonian Institution. In a paper to appear in the May issue of American Naturalist, the paleontologists explore how the ecological information provided by fossil assemblages is determined by their process of accumulation.
Credit: Bill DenisonPaleontologists can't always get what they want, to paraphrase the Rolling Stones, but sometimes they can get what they need, according to a study that will appear in the May issue of the American Naturalist.

The fossil record captures both the broad sweep of evolutionary changes in life on earth as well as ecological responses to shorter-term local and regional environmental shifts. And yet the amount of variability seen among successive fossil assemblages tends to be low compared to that ecologists see over shorter time periods. This suggests that communities are extremely resilient or resistant to change over decades to centuries.

Researchers develop new method to detect melamine in milk

Visual color and turbidity changes of gold nanoparticles resulted from different concentrations of melamine (decreasing from left to right).
Credit: Fang Wei and Na LIUniversity of Miami engineer and her collaborators are using gold nanoparticles to develop a quick, simple and efficient detection method for melamine in dairy products.

University of Miami assistant professor in the College of Engineering, Na Li and her collaborators have developed a fast, economical and easy method to detect melamine in milk. Melamine is the compound found in contaminated pet food and in tainted dairy products from China in 2007 and 2008 respectively. The laced dairy products were responsible for sickening thousands of people, especially children. The situation caused recalls of Chinese dairy products all over the world.

Monitoring melamine-tainted products continues to be a worldwide concern. Melamine is an industrial substance commonly used in plastics and fertilizers. Since Melamine is high in nitrogen, when added to foods it can make the products appear higher in protein value during standard testing. However, when ingested, the chemical can cause serious health problems and in some cases death.

Stone Age Scandinavians unable to digest milk

The hunter-gatherers who inhabited the southern coast of Scandinavia 4,000 years ago were lactose intolerant. This has been shown by a new study carried out by researchers at Uppsala University and Stockholm University. The study, which has been published in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, supports the researchers' earlier conclusion that today's Scandinavians are not descended from the Stone Age people in question but from a group that arrived later.

"This group of hunter-gatherers differed significantly from modern Swedes in terms of the DNA sequence that we generally associate with a capacity to digest lactose into adulthood," says Anna Linderholm, formerly of the Archaeological Research Laboratory, Stockholm University, presently at University College Cork, Ireland.