Tag: biology

White nose found in North Caroina

1:11 pm

The fungus that has been killing cave hibernating bats throughout the eastern United States has now been found in North Carolina.

In a related note, the National Speleological Society has sent a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, expressing its concern over what many cavers believe has been the government’s indiscriminate cave closure policies in response to the white nose fungus. Key quote:

Our members have been extremely patient and collaborative throughout the entire [white nose syndrome] situation, but the frustration and discontent has been growing. We are hearing more and more from across the country that cavers do not want to participate in collaborative efforts – in much part due to management decisions by federal and state agencies that are perceived by knowledgeable and conservation-minded cavers to be over-reactive, based on sometimes slim science, speculation and political pressure, and insensitive to broader science and conservation issues. That result would not be beneficial to anyone.

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Penguin tracking bands do harm

4:12 pm

The bands that scientists attach to penguins to track them actually do harm. The data also suggests that certain climate research might also be skewed because of this. Key quote:

Overall, the team found, bands were bad for penguins. Banded penguins had a 16% lower survival rate than unbanded birds over the 10 years, the researchers report online today in Nature. Banded birds also arrived later at the breeding grounds and took longer trips to forage for food. As a result, they produced 39% fewer chicks. . . . [The researcher noted] that his team’s results suggest that research using banded penguins may be biased. For example, he says, several high-profile studies have used banded penguins to investigate the impact of climate change on the birds. The findings of those studies aren’t necessarily wrong, but the numbers need to be reconsidered, he says.

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Preliminary findings suggest that the Arkansas birds died from impact trauma

5:51 pm

Preliminary findings from the USGS National Wildlife Health Center suggest that the mass bird die-off that occurred in Arkansas was from impact trauma. Key quote:

The State concluded that such trauma was probably a result of the birds being startled by loud noises on the night of Dec. 31, arousing them and causing them to fly into objects such as houses or trees. Scientists at the USGS NWHC performed necropsies—the animal version of an autopsy—on the birds and found internal hemorrhaging, while the pesticide tests they conducted were negative. Results from further laboratory tests are expected to be completed in 2-3 weeks.

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Amino acids found on meteorite that crashed in the Sudan

12:09 am

Dead alien life arrives on Earth! Not really but still exciting anyway: Scientists have found the remains of space-born amino acids — essential to life — in the meteorite that crashed in the Sudan in 2008. Key quote:

“This meteorite formed when two asteroids collided,” said Daniel Glavin of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “The shock of the collision heated it to more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit [1,093 degrees Celsius], hot enough that all complex organic molecules like amino acids should have been destroyed, but we found them anyway.”

The discovery is further evidence that the basic elements of life can form in even the most hostile of environments.

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NASA’s arsenic biology discovery slammed

11:33 pm

The uncertainty of science! A microbiologist is slamming last week’s NASA discovery that claimed a microbe had incorporated arsenic instead of phosphorus as part of its DNA. Key quote:

In an interview Monday, Redfield said the methods used by the researchers were so crude that any arsenic they detected was likely from contamination. There is no indication that the researchers purified the DNA to remove arsenic that might have been sticking to the outside of the DNA or the gel the DNA was embedded in, she added. Normally, purifying the DNA is a standard step, Redfield said: “It’s a kit, it costs $2, it takes 10 minutes.” She also questioned why the researchers analyzed the DNA while it was still in the gel, making the results more difficult to interpret: “No molecular biologist would ever do that.”

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