ECE GYAN

Sea otters have low genetic diversity, which could endanger their health as a species, a UCLA-led team of life scientists has discovered. The findings have implications for the conservation of rare and endangered species, in which low genetic diversity could increase the odds of extinction. Genetic diversity is a measure of how many differences exist across the genome among individuals in a population. Large populations tend to have high genetic diversity (many differences among individuals), while small populations lose much of this diversity, resulting in individuals that are more genetically similar to one another. The sea otter's low level of genetic diversity is similar to endangered species, such as the cheetah and Tasmanian devil, said lead author Annabel Beichman, a UCLA graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology. She and her colleagues reconstructed the otter's evolutionary history and assessed its level of genetic diversity, history of changes in its ...

A new article published by researchers from University of Puget Sound and University of Washington reports that, based on analysis of public wastewater samples in at least one Western Washington population center, cannabis use both increased and substantially shifted from the illicit market since retail sales began in 2014. Led by chemist Dan Burgard, the research team analyzed wastewater samples collected from 2013-2016 from two treatment plants that service a community of two hundred thousand in Western Washington. "We set out to perform a wastewater-based analysis that explored the impact of newly legalized retail cannabis sales on its use, and to determine if this approach could estimate the size of the legal market place," says Burgard, who chairs the chemistry department at Puget Sound. The researchers estimate that THC-COOH (the metabolite of psychoactive THC in cannabis created within the human body) found in wastewater has increased by 9% per quarter, on ave...

The unusual appearance of deep-sea fish like the oarfish or slender ribbonfish in Japanese shallow waters does not mean that an earthquake is about to occur, according to a new statistical analysis. The study published in the  Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America  contradicts long-held Japanese folklore that deep sea fish sightings are a sign of an imminent earthquake, say Yoshiaki Orihara of Tokai University in Japan and colleagues. When the researchers examined the relationship between deep-sea fish appearances and earthquakes in Japan, however, they found only one event that could have been plausibly correlated, out of 336 fish sightings and 221 earthquakes. "As a result, one can hardly confirm the association between the two phenomena," the authors write in the BSSA paper. The study included data from November 1928 to March 2011, looking at records of deep-sea fish appearances 10 and 30 days ahead of earthquakes that occurred 50 and 100 kilometers a...

A collaborative team of scientists from the US and Australia has named a new plant species from the remote Outback. Bucknell University biology postdoctoral fellow Angela McDonnell and professor Chris Martine led the description of the plant that had confounded field biologists for decades because of the unusual fluidity of its flower form. The discovery, published in the open access journal  PhytoKeys , offers a powerful example of the diversity of sexual forms found among plants. The new species of bush tomato discovered in remote Australia provides a compelling example of the fact that sexuality among Earth's living creatures is far more diverse -- and interesting -- than many people likely realize. Bucknell University postdoctoral fellow Angela McDonnell and biology professor Chris Martine led the study following an expedition last year to relocate populations of the new plant, which were first noted by Australian botanists during the 1970s. Herbarium specimens from th...

Feet from the raw bars and sherbet-colored condominiums of Florida's Cedar Key, researchers discovered a new species of egg-sucking sea slug, a rare outlier in a group famous for being ultra-vegetarians. Named  Olea hensoni  in honor of Muppets creator Jim Henson, the slug belongs to the sacoglossans, a group of more than 300 species that are such enthusiastic eaters of plants that many of them turn green and some resemble leaves. A few species, nicknamed "solar-powered slugs," have even developed the ability to keep algae alive inside their bodies to photosynthesize their food for them, becoming a fusion of plant and animal. But  O. hensoni  has gone rogue, joining two other sacoglossan species --  Olea hansineensis  from the northeast Pacific and  Calliopaea bellula  in the Mediterranean -- that abandoned a diet of seaweed to prey on the eggs of their fellow slugs and snails. "In the middle of this group of super-herbivores, there are a...

Transitions are a hallmark of life. When dormant plants flower in the spring or when a young adult strikes out on their own, there is a shift in control. Similarly, there is a transition during early development when an embryo undergoes biochemical changes, switching from being controlled by maternal molecules to being governed by its own genome. For the first time, a team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found in an embryo that activation of its genome does not happen all at once, instead it follows a specific pattern controlled primarily by the various sizes of its cells. The researchers published their results this week as the cover story in  Developmental Cell . In an early embryo undergoing cell division, maternally loaded RNA and proteins regulate the cell cycle. The genomes of the zygote -- a term for the fertilized egg -- are initially in sleep mode. However, at a point in the early life of the embryo, these zygotic nuclei "wake...

A wearable non-invasive device based on near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) can be used to investigate blood volume and oxygenation patterns in freely diving marine mammals, according to a study publishing June 18 in the open-access journal  PLOS Biology  by J. Chris McKnight of the University of St. Andrews, and colleagues. The results provide new insights into how voluntarily diving seals distribute blood and manage the oxygen supply to their brains and blubber, yielding important information about the basic physiological patterns associated with diving. Seals swimming  In response to submersion in water, mammals show a suite of cardiovascular responses such as reduced heart rate and constriction of peripheral blood vessels. But investigating dive-by-dive blood distribution and oxygenation in marine mammals has up to now been limited by a lack of non-invasive technology that can be used in freely diving animals. The authors hypothesized that NIRS could address ...

It sounds like an old-school vinyl record, but the distinctive crackle in the music streamed into Chris Holloway's laboratory is atomic in origin. The group at the National Institute for Standards and Technology, Boulder, Colorado, spent a long six years finding a way to directly measure electric fields using atoms, so who can blame them for then having a little fun with their new technology? "My vision is to cut a CD in the lab -- our studio -- at some point and have the first CD recorded with Rydberg atoms," said Holloway. While he doesn't expect the atomic-recording's lower sound quality to replace digital music recordings, the team of research scientists is considering how this "entertaining" example of atomic sensing could be applied in communication devices of the future. "Atom-based antennas might give us a better way of picking up audio data in the presence of noise, potentially even the very weak signals transmitted in deep space com...

A group of astronomers led by Crystal Martin and Stephanie Ho of the University of California, Santa Barbara, has discovered a dizzying cosmic choreography among typical star-forming galaxies; their cool halo gas appears to be in step with the galactic disks, spinning in the same direction. The researchers used W. M. Keck Observatory to obtain the first-ever direct observational evidence showing that corotating halo gas is not only possible, but common. Their findings suggest that the whirling gas halo will eventually spiral in towards the disk. "This is a major breakthrough in understanding how galactic disks grow," said Martin, Professor of Physics at UC Santa Barbara and lead author of the study. "Galaxies are surrounded by massive reservoirs of gas that extend far beyond the visible portions of galaxies. Until now, it has remained a mystery how exactly this material is transported to galactic disks where it can fuel the next generation of star formation."...

Eating two or more weekly servings of yogurt may help to lower the risk of developing the abnormal growths (adenomas) which precede the development of bowel cancer -- at least in men -- finds research published online in the journal  Gut . The observed associations were strongest for adenomas that are highly likely to become cancerous, and for those located in the colon rather than in the rectum, the findings indicate. Previously published research has suggested that eating a lot of yogurt might lower the risk of bowel cancer by changing the type and volume of bacteria in the gut (microbiome). But it's not been clear whether yogurt intake might also be associated with a lower risk of pre-cancerous growths, known as adenomas. The researchers therefore looked at the diets and subsequent development of different types of adenoma among 32,606 men who were part of the Health Professionals Follow Up Study and 55,743 women who were part of the Nurses Health Study. All the stu...

Higher temperatures and mixing glyphosate with dicamba lead to increased atmospheric concentrations of dicamba, according to scientists with the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture. Tom Mueller and Larry Steckel, both professors in the UT Department of Plant Sciences, examined dicamba measurements following an application to soil inside a humidome. The dicamba formulations examined were diglycolamine (Clarity) and diglycolamine + VaporGrip (XtendiMax). Both formulations were applied as a mixture with glyphosate (Roundup PowerMax), and XtendiMax was also applied alone. Applications were made across a range of temperatures and monitored for 60 hours. Researchers then used air samplers to collect dicamba from the atmosphere within the humidome. According to study results, as expected, more dicamba was detected in the humidome as the temperature increased, with the largest gains coming when temperatures exceeded 85 degrees. Results also showed that across temperature ra...

Researchers from ETH Zurich have developed a novel technology that produces liquid hydrocarbon fuels exclusively from sunlight and air. For the first time worldwide they demonstrate the entire thermochemical process chain under real field conditions. The new solar mini-refinery is located on the roof of ETH's Machine Laboratory building in Zurich. Carbon-neutral fuels are crucial for making aviation and maritime transport sustainable. ETH researchers have developed a solar plant to produce synthetic liquid fuels that release as much CO 2 during their combustion as previously extracted from the air for their production. CO 2  and water are extracted directly from ambient air and split using solar energy. This process yields syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, which is subsequently processed into kerosene, methanol or other hydrocarbons. These drop-in fuels are ready for use in the existing global transport infrastructure. Aldo Steinfeld, Professor of Renewable ...

Amazonian forests are unlikely to provide enough timber to meet current demand over the long term, even with the use of improved logging practices. That is a key finding of a new study led by the Tropical managed Forests Observatory (TmFO), published today in  Environmental Research Letters . Dr Camille Piponiot, junior scientist from the University of French Guiana, is the study's lead author. She explained: "In the Amazon Basin, around 20 per cent of the total forest area is used for timber production. This is usually done through selective harvest of a few trees per hectare, followed by regrowth. "Selective logging provides income and employment and allows the forest to retain most of the carbon stocks and biodiversity of old-growth forests. But with 30 million cubic metres of sawlogs being extracted from the Amazon's 108 million hectares of natural production forests each year, decisions about the management of these production forests are of major import...