Tag Archives: earth

Measuring Microbes Makes Wetland Health Monitoring More Affordable, Says MU Researcher

By Guest PostMay 15, 2013Environmentarchaea, atreyee sims, bacteria, cape may, earth, ecosystem, healthy ecosystem, kidneys, measuring microbes, microorganisms, new jersey, soil, university of missouri, wastewater, wastewater treatment, water samples, wetland health, wetland health evaluation, zhiqiang hu

Understanding microbe communities could improve wetland wastewater treatment systems

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Wetlands serve as the Earth’s kidneys. They filter and clean people’s water supplies while serving as important habitat for many species, including iconic species like cattails, cranes and alligators. Conventional ecosystem health assessments have focused on populations of these larger species. However, the tiny, unseen creatures in the wetlands provided crucial indicators of the ecosystems’ health in a study by University of Missouri Associate Professor of Engineering Zhiqiang Hu and his team. Using analysis of the microbiological health of wetlands is cheaper and faster than traditional assessments, and could lead to improvements in harnessing natural processes to filter humans’ wastewater.

“During road and building construction, engineers must sacrifice wetlands to development, but laws dictate that these lost wetlands be compensated for by establishing a wetland somewhere else,” said Hu. “Our research could be applied to both monitor the success of these compensation wetlands and guide conservationists in inoculating new engineered ecosystems with the correct types of microorganisms.” (more…)

Paper Offers Framework for Amazon Oil and Gas Development

By Guest PostMay 12, 2013Environment, Generalamazonian hydrocarbon exploration, amazonian region, analysis, bill powers, blue moon fund, clinton jenkins, critical ecosystems, cultural diversity, dynamic hydrocarbon zones, earth, emergency, environmental state, erd, etech international, extended reach drilling, future conflicts, gas, key component, matt finer, national geographic society, negative impact, north Carolina, northern peru, oil, production, state university, technique, tropical forest environment, vital watersheds, western amazon

Oil and gas development continues to press into the most remote corners of the western Amazon, one of the most biologically and culturally diverse zones on Earth. Now a study proposes a new 10-point, best-practice framework that combines technical engineering criteria with consideration of ecological and social concerns to reduce the negative impacts of Amazonian hydrocarbon exploration and production.

The researchers say, for example, that by using extended reach drilling (ERD), a technique to reach a larger subsurface area from one surface drilling location, it is possible to greatly reduce the total number of needed drilling platforms and access roads for a given project. (more…)

An Ancient Biosonar Sheds New Light on the Evolution of Echolocation in Toothed Whales

By Guest PostMay 9, 2013Natureaarhus university, acoustic monitoring, ancient biosonar, aquatic mammals, Bangladesh, biosonar signals, bottlenose dolphin, denmark, earth, evolution of echolocation, evolutionary process, frants havmand jensen, freshwater, freshwater cetaceans, freshwater dolphins, ganges river dolphins, hole, low frequent click, mangrove forest, marine dolphins, marine environments, oceanographic institution, oldest species, peter teglberg madsen, platanistidae family, river habitats, river systems, toothed whales, woods

Some thirty million years ago, Ganges river dolphins diverged from other toothed whales, making them one of the oldest species of aquatic mammals that use echolocation, or biosonar, to navigate and find food. This also makes them ideal subjects for scientists working to understand the evolution of echolocation among toothed whales.

New research, led by Frants Havmand Jensen, a Danish Council for Independent Research | Natural Sciences postdoctoral fellow at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, shows that freshwater dolphins produce echolocation signals at very low sound intensities compared to marine dolphins, and that Ganges river dolphins echolocate at surprisingly low sound frequencies. The study, “Clicking in shallow rivers,” was published in the journal PLOS ONE. (more…)

What Happened to Dinosaurs’ Predecessors After Earth’s Largest Extinction 252 Million Years Ago?

By Guest PostMay 4, 2013Scienceadam huttenlocker, africa, after the extinction, Antarctica, asilisaurus, australia, biogeographic patterns, brandon peecook, christian sidor, daril vilhena, dinosaurs in tanzania, dinosaurs predecessors, earliest dinosaur, earth, expeditions to antarctica, fossil hunting expeditions, fossil record, four legged animals, h richard lane, India, karoo, ken angielczyk, largest extinction, linda tsuji, mass extinction, museum fossils, national science foundation, nyasasaurus parringtoni, paleontologist, pig sized dicynodon, predecessors to dinosaurs, roger smith, sebastien steyer, snapshots, South Africa, south america, southern pangea, southwest russia, species distributions, sterling nesbitt, university of washington, unorthodox places, zambia, zambian basins

Fossil-hunting expeditions to Tanzania, Zambia and Antarctica provide new insights

Predecessors to dinosaurs missed the race to fill habitats emptied when nine out of 10 species disappeared during Earth’s largest mass extinction 252 million years ago.

Or did they?

That thinking was based on fossil records from sites in South Africa and southwest Russia.

It turns out, however, that scientists may have been looking in the wrong places. (more…)

NASA Probe Gets Close-Up Views of Large Hurricane on Saturn

By Guest PostMay 1, 2013Scienceandrew ingersoll, angle, boulder, cassini huygens mission, cassini spacecraft, counter clockwise spin, earth, equinox, eye, france, Germany, hexagon, high clouds, hurricane, hydrogen atmosphere, jet propulsion laboratory, kunio sayanagi, mysterious hurricane, NASA, north pole, northern hemisphere, orbit, pasadena, saturn, saturn hurricane movie, saturnian storms, scott edgington, six sided, space science institute, the rose, united kingdom, united states, water vapor, weather pattern

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn’s north pole.

In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane’s eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of the hurricane are traveling 330 mph(150 meters per second). The hurricane swirls inside a large, mysterious, six-sided weather pattern known as the hexagon. (more…)

Making Do with More: Joint BioEnergy Institute Researchers Engineer Plant Cell Walls to Boost Sugar Yields for Biofuels

By Guest PostApril 29, 2013Environmentabove ground organs, apfl, arabidopsis, artificial, berkeley lab, dominique loque, earth, Economy, fan yang, fuel sugars, good idea, henrik scheller, hydrolytic enzymes, jbei, joint bioenergy institute, key tissue, lignocellulosic biomass, ling zhang, model plant, organic material, polysaccharides, positive feedback loop, prajakta mitra, production of lignin, resource, sugars for biofuels, yves verhertbruggen

When blessed with a resource in overwhelming abundance it’s generally a good idea to make valuable use of that resource. Lignocellulosic biomass is the most abundant organic material on Earth. For thousands of years it has been used as animal feed, and for the past two centuries has been a staple of the paper industry. This abundant resource, however, could also supply the sugars needed to produce advanced biofuels that can supplement or replace fossil fuels, providing several key technical challenges are met. One of these challenges is finding ways to more cost-effectively extract those sugars. Major steps towards achieving this breakthrough are being taken by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI).

“Through the tools of synthetic biology, we have engineered healthy plants whose lignocellulosic biomass can more easily be broken down into simple sugars for biofuels,” says Dominique Loque, who directs the cell wall engineering program for JBEI’s Feedstocks Division. “Working with the model plant, Arabidopsis, as a demonstration tool, we have genetically manipulated secondary cell walls to reduce the production of lignin while increasing the yield of fuel sugars.” (more…)

CU study provides new evidence ancient asteroid caused global firestorm on Earth

By Guest PostApril 2, 2013Scienceboulder, charcoal, chicxulub crater, cretaceous paleogene, dinosaur days, douglas robertson, earth, earth atmosphere, geological evidence, global firestorm, infrared heat pulse, k pg boundary, manhattan sized asteroid, mass extinctions, Mexico, milwaukee public museum, peter sheehan, radiation, region, sedimentation rates, university of colorado, william lewis, wisconsin, yucatan peninsula

A new look at conditions after a Manhattan-sized asteroid slammed into a region of Mexico in the dinosaur days indicates the event could have triggered a global firestorm that would have burned every twig, bush and tree on Earth and led to the extinction of 80 percent of all Earth’s species, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study.

Led by Douglas Robertson of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES, the team used models that show the collision would have vaporized huge amounts of rock that were then blown high above Earth’s atmosphere. The re-entering ejected material would have heated the upper atmosphere enough to glow red for several hours at roughly 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit — about the temperature of an oven broiler element — killing every living thing not sheltered underground or underwater. (more…)

‘Nuisance’ Data Lead to Surprising Star-Birth Discovery

By Guest PostMarch 15, 2013Sciencealma, Antarctica, atacama, atacama desert, baby picture, Chile, cosmic microwave background, early universe, earth, electromagnetic spectrum, history, joaquin vieira, john carlstrom, large millimeter array, northern hemisphere, nuisance data, population, radio galaxies, sky, south pole telescope, star birth discovery, star forming galaxies, sub millimeter wavelengths, universe, university of chicago

When a batch of bright cosmic objects first appeared in maps in 2008 made with data from the South Pole Telescope, astronomers at the University of Chicago’s Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics regarded it only as an unavoidable nuisance.

The light sources interfered with efforts to measure more precisely the cosmic microwave background—the afterglow of the big bang. But the astronomers soon realized that they had made a rare find in South Pole Telescope’s large survey of the sky. The spectra of some of the bright objects, which is the rainbow of light they emit, were inconsistent with what astronomers expected from the well-known population of radio galaxies. (more…)