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Native Delaware: Parenting’s toll

By Guest PostNovember 20, 2012Scienceandrew hydrusko, bluebirds, breeding season, chris williams, coverdale farm preserve, delaware nature society, ian stewart, immune system, migratory birds, mike moore, tree swallows

Stewart studies birds to understand trade-offs between reproduction, immunity

Does parenting take a toll on the immune system?

If you’ve ever been the parent of a newborn who demanded to be fed every three to four hours, your gut instinct tells you the answer is an absolute, unequivocal yes.

University of Delaware post-doctoral researcher Ian Stewart is conducting research to answer this question a bit more scientifically. His subjects – tree swallows – make human parents look like slouches. Both the mother and father tree swallow feed their hatchlings every five minutes, 12 hours a day. (It should be noted, though, that their parenting gig is much shorter than ours — after 17 or 18 days the young leave the nest.) (more…)

Archaeologists Identify Spear Tips Used in Hunting a Half-Million Years Ago

By Guest PostNovember 20, 2012Sciencecalibrated crossbow, hafted tools, hafting, hunting weaponry, hunting with spears, kathu pan, spearing experiment, stone tipped spears, stone tipped weapons

Findings suggest hunting with stone-tipped spears began much earlier than previously believed

TORONTO, ON – A University of Toronto-led team of anthropologists has found evidence that human ancestors used stone-tipped weapons for hunting 500,000 years ago – 200,000 years earlier than previously thought. (more…)

Climate Dialogue

By Guest PostNovember 19, 2012Environmentclimate authority, climate dialogue, climate patterns, climate scientist, earth climate

Renowned geoscientist Richard Alley shares climate history, predictions

Richard Alley, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, appeared at the University of Delaware’s Mitchell Hall on Nov. 8 to discuss his breakthrough findings about abrupt climate changes in Earth’s past and the implications of his research for Earth’s future. (more…)

Collaring Tapirs – Elephant look-alikes – to Help Them Survive

By Guest PostNovember 19, 2012Natureagricultural community, animal, bairds tapir, camera trapping, central, cow, crops, elephant look alike, endangered species, Environment, farmer, gerald urquhart, gps collar, lyman briggs college, michigan state university, monitor, movement, nicaragua, project, rainforest, seed dispersal, south america, wildlife

EAST LANSING, Mich. — A team of Michigan State University researchers will soon be heading into the rainforests of Nicaragua to help an endangered species known as a Baird’s tapir co-exist with local farmers whose crops are being threatened by the animals.

The animals were thought to be extinct in that part of the world until just two years ago when the MSU team discovered them still living there through the use of “camera trapping” – the setting up of still and video cameras in order to “capture” the animal. (more…)

Fishing for Answers off Fukushima

By Guest PostNovember 19, 2012Environmentcatastrophic damage, cesium, contaminated sediment, contamination, dai ichi, earthquake, fish, fukushima, fukushima prefecture, implication, Japan, japanese coast, japanese public, ken buesseler, maff, marine environment, mitsuo uematsu, northeast, northwest, nuclear power plant, ocean, pacific ocean, public health, radiation, radiation level, radioactive isotope, radionuclides, reactor site, release, seafloor, seaweed, shellfish, tokyo, triple disaster, tsunami, university, world

Japan fisheries data provides a look at how the ocean is faring 18 months after the worst accidental release of radiation to the ocean in history

Japan’s “triple disaster,” as it has become known, began on March 11, 2011, and remains unprecedented in its scope and complexity. To understand the lingering effects and potential public health implications of that chain of events, scientists are turning to a diverse and widespread sentinel in the world’s ocean: fish.

Events on March 11 began with a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, the fourth largest ever recorded. The earthquake in turn spawned a massive 40-foot tsunami that inundated the northeast Japanese coast and resulted in an estimated 20,000 missing or dead. Finally, the wave caused catastrophic damage to the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, resulting in the largest accidental release of radiation to the ocean in history, 80 percent of which ended up in the Northwest Pacific Ocean. (more…)

Job Market Sluggish for College Grads

By Guest PostNovember 18, 2012Economy, Jobscollege graduates, job market, political uncertainty, recruiting trends

EAST LANSING, Mich. — The job market for new college graduates, hampered by a lackluster economy and political uncertainty, will increase at a sluggish 3 percent this academic year, predicts Michigan State University’s annual Recruiting Trends report. (more…)

Sandy’s Underwater Sandscapes

By Guest PostNovember 18, 2012Environmentarthur trembanis, artificial reef, autonomous underwater vehicle, auv, broadkill beach, cape henlopen, carter duval, coast, currents, data, delaware, doug miller, ecosystem, fingerprint, floor, geological imprint, geological markings, gps, hard bottom, hugh r sharp, hurricane sandy, indian river inlet, justin walker, map, marine life, maryland, mid atlantic shores, natural environment, new jersey, ocean, post, pre, redbird reef, research vessel, sand formations, seafloor, sediment, sonar, storm, storm metrics, trevor metz, underwater, val schmidt, virginia, weapons

UD researchers studying ‘fingerprint’ left on seafloor by Hurricane Sandy

Beneath the 20-foot waves that crested off Delaware’s coast during Hurricane Sandy, thrashing waters reshaped the floor of the ocean, churning up fine sand and digging deep ripples into the seabed. Fish, crustaceans and other marine life were blasted with sand as the storm sculpted new surfaces underwater.

UD scientists cued up their instruments to document the offshore conditions before, during and after Sandy’s arrival to scrutinize the differences and better predict the environmental impact of future storms. (more…)

More Bang for the Biofuel Buck

By Guest PostNovember 18, 2012Environmentabe products, acetone, artillery shells, bacterium, berkeley lab, biofuels, british, bullets, butanol, chaim weizmann, clostridium acetobutylicum, dean toste, diesel, douglas clark, elad gross, ethanol, fermentation technique, fuel molecules, gasoline, gunpowder, harvey blanch, hydrocarbons, jet fuel, joseph binder, lignocellulosic biomass, low carbon, metal catalyst, palladium, palladium catalyst, pazhamalai anbarasan, petrochemical processes, propellant, sanil sreekumar, weizmann organism, world war, zachary baer

Berkeley Lab Researchers Combine Old Fermentation Process For Making Explosives with New Chemical Catalysis to Boost Biofuel Production

A fermentation technique once used to make cordite, the explosive propellant that replaced gunpowder in bullets and artillery shells, may find an important new use in the production of advanced biofuels. With the addition of a metal catalyst, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have shown that the production of acetone, butanol and ethanol from lignocellulosic biomass could be selectively upgraded to the high volume production of gasoline, diesel or jet fuel.

Using the bacterium Clostridium acetobutylicum, the Berkeley Lab researchers fermented the sugars found in biomass into the solvent acetone and the alcohols butanol and ethanol, collectively known as “ABE” products. They then catalyzed these low carbon number products with the transition metal palladium into higher-molecular-mass hydrocarbons that are possible precursors to the three major transportation fuel molecules. The specific type of fuel molecule produced – whether a precursor to gasoline, diesel or jet – was determined by the amount of time the ABE products resided with the palladium catalyst. (more…)

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