USGS study looks at Louisiana Black Bear Population
The bear species nicknamed “teddy” more than a century ago that inspired the iconic stuffed toy still popular today will likely survive at least another century, according to a new U.S. Geological Survey study. (more…)
Efforts continue to increase population of endangered bird
NECEDAH, Wis. – Four whooping crane chicks raised in captivity began their integration into the wild Saturday as part of the continuing effort to increase the wild population of this endangered species. (more…)
There’s no peak in sight – fitness peak, that is – for the bacteria in Richard Lenski’s Michigan State University lab.
Lenski, MSU Hannah Distinguished Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, has been running his evolutionary bacteria experiment for 25 years, generating more than 58,000 generations. In a paper published in the current issue of Science, Michael Wiser, lead author and MSU zoology graduate student in Lenski’s lab, compares it to hiking. (more…)
China’s 34-year-old Environmental Protection Law was created when it made sense for legislators in a developing country to trade environmental well-being for a boost to the gross domestic product.
Today, China wrestles with pollution that is leaving its citizens gasping for clean air, worried about water quality and concerned for the safety of the food grown there. In the current issue of Science, a team of researchers, including a Michigan State University sustainability expert, offers guidelines for revising the EPL to protect both humans and nature. (more…)
Ethnic segregation in nations straddling the world’s highest terrains may be reinforced by the biological tolerance different peoples have to altitude, according to one of the first studies to examine the effect of elevation on ethnic demographics.
Research from Princeton University published in the journal Applied Geography suggests that people native to low-lying areas can be naturally barred from regions such as the Tibetan Plateau, the Andes or the Himalayas by altitude sickness, which is caused by low oxygen concentration in the air and can be life-threatening. As a result, the homogeny of the local population can increase with elevation. In nations shared by people of high- and lowland extractions, this separation can potentially increase ethnic tension. (more…)
Sixteen years ago, Jason Hill stood before some 30 students in one of his first classes as a teaching assistant at the University of Minnesota. This June, more than 14,000 students will log on to take his course, Sustainability of Food Systems: A Global Life Cycle Perspective.
Hill’s class is among the first five massive open online courses (MOOCs) the U of M is offering (for free) through a partnership with Coursera, a leading MOOC platform. (more…)
Three populations of aye-ayes on Madagascar studied
For the first time, the complete genomes of three populations of aye-ayes–a type of lemur–have been sequenced and analyzed.
The results of the genome-sequence analyses are published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). (more…)
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…)
