Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A new study from Chicago-based researchers has found that a confluence of sewage overflows and widespread antibiotic use is causing the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in waterways around the Windy City.

Recently published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, the study looked at the antibiotic triclosan, which is in about half of liquid soaps and functions by slowing or stopping the growth of bacteria, fungi, and mildew. Triclosan frequently gets into streams and rivers through domestic waste-water, leaky sewers and sewage overflows.

“The bacterial resistance caused by triclosan has real environmental consequences,” said study author Emma Rosi-Marshall, an aquatic ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. “Not only does it disrupt aquatic life by changing native bacterial communities, but it’s linked to the rise of resistant bacteria that could diminish the usefulness of important antibiotics.”

In the study, researchers collected samples at three sites in the Greater Chicago area: the urban North Shore Channel, the suburban West Branch Dupage River, and the rural Nippersink Creek. The team found a correlation between urbanization and a rise in both triclosan concentrations in sediments and the ratio of bottom-dwelling bacteria resistant to the antibiotic. The rural creek had the lowest levels of triclosan-resistant bacteria, while the urban site sampled downstream of 25 combined sewer overflows had the highest levels.

Combined sewers ferry sewage, industrial wastes, and storm water to a treatment plant using a single pipe. When excessive runoff from high rainfall or snowmelt gets into these sewers, the overflows that result send untreated sewage flowing directly into rivers and streams.

The Chicago researchers found that their local sewer overflows are a major source of triclosan pollution in the North Shore Channel. The team’s findings also support previous work that suggests sewage treatment plants can efficiently remove triclosan from wastewater.

“We detected much lower levels of triclosan at a site downstream of a sewage treatment facility as compared to a site downstream of combined sewer overflows,” said John Kelly of Loyola University Chicago. “And we demonstrated a strong link between the presence of triclosan in the environment and the development of triclosan resistant bacteria.”

Almost 800 cities in the United States use combined sewer overflows, an infrastructure feature that the Environmental Protection Agency cites as a major water pollution concern.

The study researchers also conducted artificial stream experiments at Loyola to confirm field tests that indicated triclosan exposure triggers an increase in triclosan-resistant bacteria. In addition to the proliferation of resistant bacteria, researchers also saw a drop in the diversity of river-bottom bacteria and a change in the makeup of bacterial communities. The researchers noted a six-fold increase in cyanobacteria and a spectacular die-off of algae.

“Cyanobacteria are less nutritious than algae and can produce toxins,” Rosi-Marshall explained. “In triclosan-polluted streams and rivers, changes in microbial communities could negatively affect ecological function and animal communities.”

The study is the latest result of study researchers’ on-going effort to learn more about the ecological and human health consequences of synthetic antimicrobials.

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Known to cause spontaneous abortions in pregnant women or death in immune-compromised patients, the parasite Toxoplasma gondii has an even stranger effect in mice – it takes away their fear of cats. The fearless mice are a boon to both cats, which get an easy meal, and the parasite, which gets access to the cat’s intestinal track – the only place the parasite can sexually reproduce.

According to a new University of California, Berkeley study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, the parasite’s effect on cats seems to be permanent –after the mouse recovers from the initial flu-like symptoms of toxoplasmosis and even months after the parasitic infection is cleared from the body.

“Even when the parasite is cleared and it’s no longer in the brains of the animals, some kind of permanent long-term behavior change has occurred, even though we don’t know what the actual mechanism is,” said study author Wendy Ingram, a graduate researcher at UC Berkeley.

Ingram said the parasite could affect the mouse brain so that the scent of cat urine can’t be detected. The parasite may also be affecting neurons involved in memory and learning or it could trigger a response from its host that affects the natural fear response.

The Berkeley team began by seeing if parasite-hosting mice avoided bobcat urine, a normal response in uninfected mice, versus rabbit urine, which mice typically ignore. While mice typically lose their fear of bobcat urine for a few weeks after initial infection, the researchers found that the three most common strains of Toxoplasma gondii eliminate the fear response to cats for at least four months.

Using a genetically modified strain of Toxoplasma that was unable to cause chronic infections in the mouse brain, the team showed that the behavioral effect still took hold and lasted for four months after the mice eliminated the microbe from their bodies.

“This would seem to refute – or at least make less likely – models in which the behavior effects are the result of direct physical action of parasites on specific parts of the brain,” study author and Berkeley professor Michael Eisen wrote in a blog post about the research.

“The idea that this parasite knows more about our brains than we do, and has the ability to exert desired change in complicated rodent behavior, is absolutely fascinating,” Ingram said. “Toxoplasma has done a phenomenal job of figuring out mammalian brains in order to enhance its transmission through a complicated life cycle.”

The team said they are currently looking at how the mouse immune system responds to the parasite to determine if the response or the infection is causing the behavioral change.

About one-third of people around the world are thought to be infected with Toxoplasma and have dormant cysts in their brains being kept in check by their body’s immune system. These cysts may spring to life in immune-compromised people, resulting in death. Some preliminary studies indicate that chronic infection may be associated with schizophrenia or attempted suicide.

Because the parasite can be passed via cat feces and infect a developing fetus, pregnant women are warned to avoid kitty litter. Another source of spread is undercooked pork, Ingram noted.

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Sharks play an important role in the food web of a marine ecosystem and a study recently published in the journal PLOS ONE has found that overfishing of these predators can have a disruptive effect on coral reefs.

“Where shark numbers are reduced due to commercial fishing, there is also a decrease in the herbivorous fishes which play a key role in promoting reef health,” said study author Jonathan Ruppert, a marine ecologist with the University of Toronto.

Co-author Mark Meekan of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) said that the team’s finding might seem strange at first given that sharks and coral reefs seem to be completely unconnected.

“However our analysis suggests that where shark numbers are reduced, we see a fundamental change in the structure of food chains on reefs,” he said. “We saw increasing numbers of mid-level predators – such as snappers – and a reduction in the number of herbivores such as parrotfishes.”

“The parrotfishes are very important to coral reef health because they eat the algae that would otherwise overwhelm young corals on reefs recovering from natural disturbances.”

To reach their conclusion, the team of Canadian and Australian scientists conducted a long-term monitoring program of coral reefs off Australia’s northwest coast. The reefs sit about 190 miles off the coast of Australia where sharks are targeted by Indonesian fishers. For several centuries, sharks have been hunted in these waters under an Australian-Indonesian memorandum of understanding.

“Going by our surveys, around four sharks a day were being taken from these reefs,” Meekan told the Guardian. “This doesn’t sound like a lot, but it has been going on for a long time. The fishermen come in their sailing prows, which can dry an awful lot of shark fin on the decks.”

“The reefs provided us with a unique opportunity to isolate the impact of over-fishing of sharks on reef resilience, and assess that impact in the broader context of climate change pressures threatening coral reefs,” Ruppert noted.

“Shark fishing appears to have quite dramatic effects on coral reef ecosystems. Given that sharks are in decline on reefs worldwide, largely due to the shark fin trade, this information may prove integral to restoration and conservation efforts.”

In their report, the researchers said the complex web of prey-predator interactions surrounding coral reefs makes uncovering a specific apparatus linking sharks and corals very difficult.

“Despite the correlation between shark abundance and herbivores, we could not show the mechanism that linked these trophic levels,” the scientists wrote.

Previous studies have shown that reef sharks are closely linked to certain coral reefs, meaning that small, well-targeted protected areas could effectively protect both apex predators and the reefs themselves.

This new study comes as coral reefs are under pressure from direct human activities, as well as the impact of climate change. The use of small protected areas would allow coral reefs to be able to recover from large storms, which some scientists say are increasing in frequency and strength.

[ Watch the Video: Rhythm And Reading Go Hand In Hand ]

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Researchers at Northwestern University have found that people who can keep a beat are more responsive to speech neurologically than those with less rhythm, according to a report published in this week’s Journal of Neuroscience.

Study author Nina Kraus, a professor at Northwestern University and head of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, pointed out that previous research has already made a connection between reading aptitude and neural response consistency. The researchers said their findings could mean that musical training might be useful in sharpening the brain’s response to language.

“By directly linking auditory responses with beat-keeping ability, we have closed the triangle,” said Kraus, describing the connection between brain activity, music and language.

Because hearing speech and associating specific parts of it with written words is important in learning how to read, the Northwestern neuroscientists said that the link between reading and beat keeping likely has a common foundation in the auditory system.

In the study, the Northwestern team recruited over 120 local Chicago high school students and gave them two tests. For the first test, the participants were asked to listen to a steady beat and tap their finger along to it on a pad that registered how closely their touches synced to the beat.

For the second test, the researchers used a technique called electroencephalography (EEG) to record the consistency of participants’ brain response to a repeated syllable – “da.”

“Across this population of adolescents, the more accurate they were at tapping along to the beat, the more consistent their brains’ response to the ‘da’ syllable was,” Kraus said.

“This is supported biologically,” she continued. “The brainwaves we measured originate from a biological hub of auditory processing with reciprocal connections with the motor-movement centers. An activity that requires coordination of hearing and movement is likely to rely on solid and accurate communication across brain regions.”

“Rhythm is an integral part of both music and language,” Kraus explained. “And the rhythm of spoken language is a crucial cue to understanding.”

For example, comprehensible speech requires changes in talking speed or emphasis. Subtle timing differences, such as the difference between making the “b” and “p” sounds, can make for significant differences in meaning. Also, hearing these distinctions is necessary to connect the sounds with the letters that they represent.

“Musicians have highly consistent auditory-neural responses,” Kraus said. “It may be that musical training – with its emphasis on rhythmic skills – can exercise the auditory-system, leading to less neural jitter and stronger sound-to-meaning associations that are so essential to learning to read.”

John Iversen, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego who was not involved with this study, raised the possibility that musical training could have important impacts on the brain, based on the Northwestern team’s results.

“This study adds another piece to the puzzle in the emerging story suggesting that musical rhythmic abilities are correlated with improved performance in non-music areas, particularly language,” he said.

Kraus is currently performing a longitudinal study that examines the effects of music training by beat-keeping ability, neural response consistency, reading and other language skills in children as they receive music instruction year after year.

[ Watch the Video: NASA Tech Will Hunt For Heartbeats After Disasters ]

Michael Harper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

NASA, in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has developed a new technology which can detect heartbeats behind 20 feet of solid concrete or 30 feet of crushed material. This radar-based technology will be used in emergency situations where victims are trapped beneath collapsed buildings and other rubble.

The government agencies have been testing prototypes of this device for the last several months, and now they expect the first commercialized model of the product to be available by spring of 2014. Recent improvements in the design include a lightweight core, USB antenna and increased battery life of up to 14 hours.

NASA scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, along with Science and Technology Directorate from the DHS, are calling this device ‘Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response,’ or FINDER. So far they’ve tested the unit in more than 65 simulated disasters with two Urban Search and Rescue Teams: The Virginia Task Force 1 at the Fairfax County Fire Department training center, and the Virginia Task Force 2 in Virginia Beach, Va.

Their goal was to create a tool that these teams could use to find signs of life in catastrophic situations. With this technology, lives could be saved which may have been lost forever underneath the rubble created by a tornado, earthquake or hurricane. The portable radar was able to penetrate concrete, rebar and other materials to distinguish heartbeats several feet away. When out in the open, the unit can detect a human heartbeat up to 100 feet away.

“Testing proved successful in locating a task force member buried in 30 feet of mixed concrete, rebar and gravel rubble from a distance of over 30 feet,” said DHS Science and Technology program manager John Price in a statement.

“This capability will complement the current urban search and rescue tools such as canines, listening devices and video cameras to detect the presence of living victims in rubble.”

The duo of the DHS and JPL seems to be a good fit in more ways than one. Edward Chow, JPL program manager, said the crushed and mangled material of a disaster presented some challenges for early prototypes of the device. Radar waves shot into the wreckage would bounce around and return irregular signals and, therefore, inaccurate results.

“Isolating the relatively weak signal of a heartbeat within the noisy signals becomes a difficult task,” said Chow. “JPL’s radar expertise helps in this challenge.”

The microwave radar technology isn’t just sensitive enough to distinguish the faint movement and sound of a heartbeat. It’s also smart enough to know if it’s “hearing” a human heartbeat or the heartbeat of some other living thing, such as a rat. These processing systems allow search and rescue operators to quickly understand if any survivors are trapped underneath slabs of concrete and debris and allow them to begin the process of extracting them.

After thorough testing of the earliest prototype, the DHS and JPL team decided to make a few changes to the design to improve the overall functionality of the device. One unit can perform all these tasks, including powering an antenna, a radar unit and digital processing, all with a single USB interface. The team also decided to change the user interface to make it easier to use by search and rescue teams. Future iterations of this device are expected to be even smaller and therefore easier to bring into disaster areas.

The DHS and JPL will demonstrate this new unit at a presentation next Wednesday in Virgina.

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Scientists have theorized that the reason Homo sapiens were able to out-compete Neanderthals was because they embraced a more diverse diet. However, new evidence being presented by a group of European scientists indicates that Neanderthal menus may have been more diverse than previously thought.

According to a study published recently in the journal Quaternary International, salmon bones found in a cave in the Caucasus Mountains were left there by Neanderthals – meaning our prehistoric competition enjoyed fish as a part of their diet.

A prevailing theory posits that Neanderthals stuck to a strict diet of mostly large herbivorous mammals, such as woolly mammoths and wild bison. Meanwhile, our ancestors were said to have been better equipped to a changing ecosystem by incorporating a more diverse range of food into their diets.

The new study is based on animal bones found in caves occupied by these two types of prehistoric hominids. It would be easy to automatically attribute the salmon remains to Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, but scientists needed to exclude other large predators, such as bears or cave lions, which would have lived in the area at the same time.

In a cave on the northern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains, scientists discovered bone fragments of large salmon that were most likely caught as they migrated from marine waters to their freshwater spawning places. The fishy remains were found in the Middle Palaeolithic archaeological layers, dated to between 42,000 and 48,000 years ago. Study researchers said they suspect Neanderthals left the remains, but remains of Asiatic cave bears (Ursus kudarensis) and cave lions (Panthera spelaea) were also found in the cave and could have preyed on the large meaty fish.

To determine who the salmon predators were, the bear and lion remains were evaluated using carbon, nitrogen and sulfur isotopes found in bone collagen; the isotopic signatures were compared between predators and their potential prey.

The comparison revealed that salmon was neither eaten by the cave bears, which were purely vegetarian, nor cave lions.

“This study provides indirect support to the idea that Middle Palaeolithic Hominins, probably Neandertals, were able to consume fish when it was available, and that therefore, the prey choice of Neandertals and modern humans was not fundamentally different,” said study author Hervé Bocherens, a biogeologist at Universität Tübingen, in Germany.

Bocherens said more than diet differences caused the demise of the Neanderthals.

Neanderthals appear to be gaining respect from the scientific community by leaps and bounds as a study published in August indicated that groups of the prehistoric humanoids had unique cultural differences. Based on stone tool differences, researchers from the University of Southampton asserted that a more complex Neanderthal culture existed than what experts had previously thought.

“In Germany and France there appears to be two separate handaxe traditions, with clear boundaries, indicating completely separate, independent developments,” said study author Karen Rubens. “The transition zone in Belgium and Northern France indicates contact between the different groups of Neanderthals, which is generally difficult to identify but has been much talked about, especially in relation to later contacts with groups of modern humans.”

[ Watch the Video: Blue Whale Earwax Tells A Tale Of A Lifetime ]

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Earplugs made of wax and fats are common to blue and other large whales and resemble the waxy buildup in our own ears – except on a much, much larger scale.

To learn more about the history of individual whales, marine biologists from Baylor University and the Natural Museum of History have developed a unique method for analyzing these earplugs. The technique reveals a whale’s chronological hormone levels and exposure to chemicals, according to a new report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

“Scientists in the past have used this waxy matrix as an aging tool, similar to counting tree rings,” said Sascha Usenko, assistant professor of environmental science at Baylor. “Then, the question arose: Could whale earwax chronologically archive chemicals, such as man-made pollutants?”

Over the past two years, Usenko and his colleague Steven Trumble have been working to answer just that question.

“The type of information we can derive from these earplugs along with our methodology is exceptionally valuable,” Usenko said. “There is nothing like it. It really should be classified as a new field of research.”

Previous studies have looked at whale blubber to establish a whale’s hormone and chemical exposure. However, those studies have only yielded information on limited periods of time. Moreover, these results were difficult to obtain and cost-prohibitive.

“Whales are free-ranging animals and you can’t get these types of profiles or information on free-ranging animals in any part of the world,” said Trumble, an assistant professor of biology at Baylor. “This has never been done before.”

With their novel method, the Baylor researchers said they can also see the human impact on individual whales across multiple generations and various ecosystems.

“You have this 100-year-old question: How are we impacting these animals? There is ship traffic, environmental noise, climate change and contaminants. Now, we are able to provide definitive answers by analyzing whale earwax plugs,” Usenko said.

Besides determining human impact on these whales, the scientists were also able to find out information about specific hormonal events that occur during a whale’s lifetime.

“Our research was able to improve upon estimates of sexual maturity for blue whales,” Trumble said. “Previous estimates provided a 10-year range of maturity and we have been able to pinpoint exactly when the whale in the study hit sexual maturity. Our research was able to shed new light on the life cycle of whales.”

Usenko added that their newly developed technique could be used on historical samples to gain a better understanding of whales and human-whale interactions over time.

“We are able to go back in time and analyze archived museum earplug samples that were harvested in the 1950s and examine critical issues such as the effects of pollution, use of sonar in the oceans and the introduction of specific chemicals and pesticides in the environment over long periods of time,” Usenko said.

“There are a myriad of ways that we can analyze plugs for a better understanding of marine ecosystems and these endangered animals. There is so much additional information that can be mined from studying earplugs.”

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

For the last 300 years at least, we have been questioning what direction the center of the earth spins. A group of scientists from the University of Leeds, UK, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology may have found the answer.

According to the study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the Earth’s inner core – made of solid iron – “superrotates” in eastward directions. This means it spins faster than the rest of the planet. Made of mostly molten iron, the outer core spins westward at a slower pace.

Edmund Halley, who discovered Halley’s comet, revealed the westward drifting motion of the planet’s geomagnetic field in 1692. The current study is the first time that scientists have been able to link the way the inner core spins to the behavior of the outer core. The researchers say the Earth behaves this way because it is responding to the geomagnetic field. They hope their findings will enable scientists to interpret the dynamics of the core of the Earth, the source of our planet’s magnetic field.

Relative to the Earth’s surface, seismometers measuring earthquakes as they travel through the Earth’s core have identified an eastward direction of the solid inner core for the last few decades.

“The link is simply explained in terms of equal and opposite action”, explains Dr Philip Livermore, of the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds. “The magnetic field pushes eastwards on the inner core, causing it to spin faster than the Earth, but it also pushes in the opposite direction in the liquid outer core, which creates a westward motion.”

About the size of the Moon, the solid inner core is surrounded by the liquid outer core. This outer core is an iron alloy, whose convection-driven movement generates the geomagnetic field.

Scientists know that the planet’s internal magnetic field changes slowly over a timescale of decades. This means that the electromagnetic force responsible for pushing the inner and outer cores will itself change over time, and may explain fluctuations in the predominantly eastward rotation of the inner core. These fluctuations were reported for the last 50 years by Tkalčić et al. and recently published in Nature Geoscience.

Based on archeological artifacts and rocks – with ages of hundreds to thousands of years, additional prior studies have suggested that the drift direction has not always been westward. Evidence suggests that some periods of eastward motion may have occurred in the last 3,000 years. When this data is viewed within the conclusions of the new model, it suggests that the inner core may have undergone a westward rotation in such periods.

The Leeds team used the giant super computer Monte Rosa, which is part of the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre in Lugano, Switzerland, to run the model of the Earth’s core. A new method allowed them to simulate the Earth’s core with an accuracy 100 times better than previous models.

[ Watch the Video: Entomologists With Arachnophobia? ]

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Arachnophobia, or the fear of spiders, is understandable in the typical person. However, University of California, Riverside professor Richard Vetter recently looked into the prevalence of this phobia in entomologists – men and women who work with bugs on a daily basis.

According to a report of Vetter’s study published in American Entomologist, a survey of 41 self-described arachnophobic entomologists found that these folks react differently to spiders than to insects. Based on responses to a standardized Fear of Spiders Questionnaire (FSQ), some respondents scored as clinically arachnophobic and said they react to spiders in an almost debilitating manner.

Some of the arachnophobic entomologists said their fear developed in childhood, well before making the somewhat unusual choice of pursuing a career in entomology.

“The results of the study show that arachno-adverse entomologists share with arachnophobes in the general public both the development of response and the dislike of many of the behavioral, physical, and aesthetic aspects of spiders,” said Vetter, an entomologist himself.

“Paradoxically, I found that despite the great morphological diversity that insects exhibit and despite years of professional exposure to insects, these entomologists do not assimilate spiders into the broad arthropod morphological scheme,” he continued.

“However, for the most part these entomologists realized that their feelings could not be rationally explained. Through the mere existence of the study, several of them took solace in learning that they were not alone with their negative spider feelings.”

The article also revealed several amusing arachnophobia-related anecdotes, including some from respondents that regularly work with maggots and other unappealing creatures.

“I would rather pick up a handful of maggots than have to get close enough to a spider to kill it,” one respondent told Vetter.

“Maggots don’t sneak up on you and jump in your hair,” another replied.

Other respondents told Vetter of childhood incidents or experiences that may have contributed to their fear.

“One respondent had a recurring childhood nightmare (from age 4 to 8) of running around her house into the large web of a human-sized spider and waking up just before being eaten,” Vetter wrote in the article.

Another respondent blamed her sister for causing or increasing her arachnophobia by chasing her around the house with “dead spiders in tissues.”

One female respondent said she was tormented with spiders by her brother, but was able to exact a measure of retribution when she discovered that he was severely afraid of mushrooms.

In his conclusion, Vetter said the small survey reinforced previous findings on arachnophobia; namely, that it usually begins in childhood, appears to have something to do with familiar interactions with arachnids, and affects women more than men.

“Vetter’s study illustrates how the fear of spiders found in some entomologists may have roots in negative events that happened in childhood,” said Gene Kritksy, editor-in-chief of American Entomologist.

“This gives us insight on how to lessen this fear in future generations. If parents have a genuine interest in the natural world, including spiders, and they share this positive interest with their children, it could reduce the incidence of arachnophobia in the long run.”

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Just as the black plague laid waste to communities across Medieval Europe, a ‘white plague’ has been decimating marine corals in the Caribbean.

Once thought to be caused mainly by bacteria, researchers at Oregon State University have found that a group of small, circular, single-strand DNA (SCSD) viruses are connected to the dramatic rise of white plague that has occurred in recent decades.

The Oregon researchers said they are racing to learn more about the disease and how to prevent it because of its widespread, debilitating impact on coral reef health in the Caribbean.

“Twenty years ago you had to look pretty hard to find any occurrences of this disease, and now it’s everywhere,” said study author Nitzan Soffer, a doctoral student in the Department of Microbiology at OSU. “It moves fast and can wipe out a small coral colony in a few days.”

“In recent years the white plague has killed 70-80 percent of some coral reefs,” Soffer said. “There are 20 or more unknown pathogens that affect corals and in the past we’ve too-often overlooked the role of viruses, which sometimes can spread very fast.”

In the study, which was recently published in the Multidisciplinary Journal of Microbial Ecology, the scientists used transmission electron microscopy and genetic sequencing techniques to compare 24 genomes of viruses found in Caribbean corals that had exhibited symptoms of disease.

While the researchers found SCSD viruses in some of the diseased tissue samples, they were unable to find these viruses in healthy corals.

According to the OSU team, marine wildlife diseases are becoming increasingly prevalent. They cited reports of non-bleaching coral disease that have increased more than 50-fold since 1965. These diseases are contributing to declines in coral abundance and cover, the scientists added.

White plague is one of the most aggressive coral diseases, causing rapid tissue loss, affecting a wide range of corals and potentially causing partial or total colony collapse. While some bacteria have been associated with the disease, the OSU study indicates that viruses also play a role, perhaps a central one.

The researchers also found that corals with white plague disease had higher viral diversity than their healthier counterparts.

Marine biologists have been emphasizing that rising ocean temperatures that could result from global warming would stress corals and make them more susceptible to disease. The OSU team said temperature may be another factor behind the recent rise of white plague because the disease frequently appears to be at its height near the end of summer.

Overfishing allows more algae to grow on corals and could be helping to spread disease, researchers said. They added that pollution from sewage outflows in some marine habitats may also be compromising coral health.

The researchers concluded by pointing out that viral infection alone does not automatically cause major problems and disease. Many healthy corals can become infected with herpes-like viruses that persist in their system but are not fatal. These symptoms-free viruses are frequently found in other vertebrate hosts, including humans.

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Massive numbers of dead starfish have been observed in the waters around Vancouver, British Columbia over the past two months, and scientists are currently at a loss as to the possible cause of the fatal phenomenon.

Jonathan Martin, a research associate at Simon Fraser University, has observed the mass die-off of both Sunflower seastars (Pycnopodia helianthoides) and morning sun stars (Solaster dawsoni) and has published photos and videos of the event on Flickr and YouTube.

The images were taken at Whytecliff Park, West Vancouver on August 31, and at Kelvin Grove, Lion’s Bay, British Columbia on September 2, where the video footage was captured. The deceased starfish were observed at depths between approximately 20 feet and 50 feet, Martin explained, and similar scenes have been reported by witnesses at other popular dive sites nearby.

In a September 3 blog entry, Christopher L. Mah, a research collaborator with the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History explains that the white matter visible on the bottom of the YouTube video are “decaying, white tissues and ossicles from sunflower stars.” He also said that other starfish species of different lineages – including the predatory Solaster dawsoni – also appear to be “in various states of distress.”

Martin told National Geographic that he assumed that since the dead starfish were initially found in regions frequented by crabbers, that they might have been caught in traps and lost limbs attempting to escape.

However, as he continued to find remains – even in marine parks that prohibit crab fishing – he realized something else had to be causing the mass die-off. He posted his photos and videos on the Internet, hoping someone else would see them and perhaps be able to provide some insight into possible causes.

Martin contacted Mah, and explained that the starfish “seem to waste away, ‘deflate’ a little, and then just … disintegrate. The arms just detach, and the central disc falls apart. It seems to happen rapidly, and not just dead animals undergoing decomposition, as I observed single arms clinging to the rock faces, tube feet still moving, with the skin split, gills flapping in the current. I’ve seen single animals in the past looking like this, and the first dive this morning I thought it might be crabbers chopping them up and tossing them off the rocks.”

During the second dive in a region closed to fishing, Martin found that the bottom of the waters from approximately 20 to 50 feet “was absolutely littered arms, oral discs, tube feet, gonads and gills … it was kind of creepy.”

Mah speculates that the incident might be linked to a starfish population boom of 2010 or the result of an as yet unknown disease. However, he also wonders why it is affecting other species. So far, there are no clear answers.

National Geographic’s Carrie Arnold notes that earlier this summer, a similar phenomenon was observed by researchers at the University of Rhode Island along the eastern coast of the US. In that event, the investigators saw large numbers of dead Asterias species (part of the same family as the sunflower starfish in the Vancouver area) in 2011, and since then large quantities of dead starfish have been documented from Maine to New Jersey.

“Fisheries and Oceans Canada is worried enough that they’ve asked Martin to go back out and collect samples for them to test in the lab,” Arnold said. “Although the agency has expressed interest in the die-off, Martin says that starfish aren’t a major research priority, and the main burden of investigation and discovery has fallen on him and other divers with an interest in marine ecology.”

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Gorillas and orangutans can categorize images based on various biological categories in much the same way that young human children learn how to tell living beings from inanimate objects or dogs from cats, according to new research appearing in the open-access journal PeerJ.

Scientists have determined that there are at least two ways in which animals can be visually identified as being similar in nature to any other animal: they could be members of the same genus or species, thus closely resembling each other, or they may be evaluated for a different type of criteria (such as a reptile’s lack of fur). The first method searches for perceptual differences, while the other searches for conceptual differences.

There have been many studies examining concept formation in human children, the researchers explained, with great emphasis on the relationship between concept acquisition and language acquisition. Experts have suggested that broader concepts are reliant upon formal scientific training, as well as the ability to form verbal labels for those notions. If non-human animals can represent such concepts, it would be evidence against this hypothesis.

Given the existence of natural categories such as the classifications of animals, the team behind the new study expressed surprise that the language-less, non-human apes had not been observed regarding this phenomenon. Rather, concept-related studies in animals have focused primarily on the perceptual features used by those creatures to extract information about category membership without allowing animals to demonstrate whether or not they are capable of forming concepts at different levels of breadth at the same time.

Led by Dr. Jennifer Vonk, an associate professor at the Oakland University’s Department of Psychology, the researchers analyzed a young female gorilla and four orangutans of various ages. The apes were presented with images of various animals. In one study, the apes were asked to match each one with an image from the same species of family. In another, they were given pictures of animals belonging to different taxonomic classes and asked to match them to sample images of other members of the same class.

In the experiment involving images from the same taxonomic class (i.e. different reptiles or mammals), there were fewer perceptual features, which would theoretically make it harder for the apes to correctly match the images using perceptual strategies. However, Dr. Vonk’s team found that the orangutans were actually able to match pictures from the same groups at a higher level of accuracy than they were able to from within the same species or family.

This discovery indicates that the apes may have developed a concept for animal classes that goes beyond their perceived similarities. Like the orangutans, the gorilla was also able to learn these concepts, but required additional testing than with the concepts involving same-species creatures. The researchers explain that the class level distinctions are analogous to those learned early on during human development.

“The ability of other apes to match stimuli at the level of taxonomic class is a novel finding that tells us that abstract categories can be extracted from visual stimuli in the absence of biological information, verbal labels, or extensive experience with the objects,” Dr. Vonk said. “This finding suggests that orangutans, and perhaps gorillas, may share an underlying conceptual process with humans.”

Aarhus University
Secretion of polysaccharides from the micro community living within the sea ice stick organism together and forms greater particles introducing a rapid transport of carbon to the seafloor. New research now makes it possible to forecast the importance for the global carbon budget of this transport.
A community of microscopic algae and bacteria thrives within the Arctic and Antarctic pack ice. These ice-organisms are adapted to growing on the ice crystal surfaces and within a labyrinth of channels and pores that permeate the ice floes.
It is a hostile place to grow with temperatures often at -10°C to -20°C, low light and within six or seven times more salty brines in the ice channels compared to the underlying seawater from where these organisms originate.
Many marine organisms secrete gel-like substances in response to environmental stress, and these ice-dwellers are no exception. In fact they secrete large quantities of gels that are made up from various types of polysaccharides.
A new study released in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, now demonstrate that these gels from ice-microorganisms are important in both the Arctic and Antarctic. It is likely that they will not only affect the physical structure within the ice but also how carbon travels to the ocean floor and even the weather.
Sticky masses
The gels promote the clumping together of cells when they are released from the ice when it melts. These sticky masses fall more rapidly to the sea floor, taking carbon (and food) out of the surfaces waters.
There is also evidence that micro-gels at the ocean surface may get caught up into the air and eventually act as cloud condensing nuclei thereby affecting weather. The gels therefore have profound implications for both the long-term burial of carbon to the ocean floor and thus the global carbon budget and on the weather.
Since 2006 Professor Graham Underwood & Dr Shazia Aslam from University of Essex and Professor David Thomas from Arctic Research Centre, Aarhus University have led several projects (funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, UK) to study the production of micro-gels, and their widespread importance to the frozen realms of the worlds oceans. They teamed up with colleagues from Australia and Canada to collect and analyze ice cores from both the Arctic and Antarctic.
Seven years on, and many frozen trips later, they now publish a rather surprising finding. Analyzing ice data spanning ice from both the Arctic and Antarctic, they are now able to determine the amounts of gel production from the ice microbes based on data of the physical nature of the ice and the amount of microbiology.
“It means that we can estimate the concentration of gels in ice, by knowing rather routine measurements such as the thickness of the ice floes, temperature and salinity of the ice and the quantity of ice biology measured as the chlorophyll content of the ice,” says Professor David Thomas, Arctic Research Centre, Aarhus University.
“This is a huge step forwards to enable us to estimate the significance of these materials to the millions of square kilometres of Antarctic and Arctic pack ice”, says Thomas.
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[ Watch the Video: Biodiesel From Used Coffee Grounds ]

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

A large percentage of people turn to coffee for energy to start their day, but new research suggests that the caffeinated beverage could also serve as fuel to power automobiles and appliances.

Yang Liu of the University of Cincinnati’s College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS) and colleagues report that an ingredient in old coffee grounds could be converted into energy sources, including biodiesel and activated carbon, through a three-step process.

First, oil would be extracted from the waste. The coffee grounds would then be dried in order to filter impurities in biodiesel production, and then the remains would be burned as an alternative energy source for electricity (similar to biomass). Liu presented his research this week at the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) 246th National Meeting & Exposition in Indianapolis.

The project launched in 2010 and is currently in its early stages, but the results thus far have been deemed promising, the university said in a statement. What started as research involving the collection of waste coffee grounds from an on-campus Starbucks could ultimately lead to cheaper, cleaner fuel for cars, furnaces, and other energy sources, according to Liu and his associates.

After collecting the grounds, the researchers removed the oil and converted the triglycerides in that oil into biodiesel and its byproduct glycerin. The coffee grounds were then dried and used to purify the biodiesel, and the preliminary results demonstrated that the oil content in the waste was between 8.37-19.63 percent, and that the biodiesel made from coffee oil meets the ASTM International D6751 standard.

“The efficiency of using the waste coffee grounds as a purification material to remove the impurities in crude biodiesel, such as methanol and residual glycerin, was slightly lower compared with commercial purification products,” the university said.

“However, the researchers report that results still indicate a promising alternative, considering the cost of purification products. Future research will continue to focus on improving the purification efficiency of waste coffee grounds-derived activated carbon,” they added.

The result could be a cheaper, cleaner-burning fuel source. Biodiesel reduces the emission of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and particulate matter versus petroleum diesel, the researchers said. Creating it using waste material that is a byproduct of brewing one of the world’s most popular beverages would be inexpensive, and would prevent an estimated one million tons of primarily landfill waste from being produced in the US each year.

“The researchers say the method they’re exploring to produce biodiesel would not only open landfill space, but it also holds promise in creating biodiesel from a natural product that’s not also in high demand as a food source, such as corn and soybean crops that are used to manufacture biodiesel,” the university said.

“The project was among four proposals selected for a $500 grant last spring from the UC Invents initiative, an enterprise led by UC Student Government and the UC student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery to share ideas and encourage innovation in campus life,” they added.