In what is being called the first controlled ocean acidification experiment ever conducted in shallow coastal waters, an international team of experts has created a miniature laboratory in the Great Barrier Reef in order to simulate anticipated future conditions in the waters of the region’s ecosystem.

The researchers, including Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment Senior Fellows Jeff Koseff, Rob Dunbar and Steve Monismith, created a so-called “lab-in-a-box” in two to six foot deep waters off the coast of the Australian reef, Woods Institute Communications Writer Rob Jordan reported on Wednesday.

The device allows them to study the effect of possible influences on the ecosystem, including increasing acid content and carbon dioxide levels, Jordan said. For now, it is being used to isolate and observe the reactions of increased acidity in an isolated patch of corals, without other parts of a reef being adversely affected by the experiment.

“Installing systems like this at reefs and other aquatic environments could be instrumental in helping us identify how ecosystems will change and which locations and ecosystem types are more likely to remain robust and resilient,” Lida Teneva, a Stanford doctoral student involved in the research, said. “From this, we can determine which habitats to focus our conservation efforts on as strongholds for the future.”

Their work, which was funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC), the Queensland Government, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Pacific Blue Foundation, is detailed in the journal Scientific Reports.

“Oceans absorb more than a quarter of all atmospheric carbon dioxide, concentrations of which are increasing at a rate twice as fast as at any time in the past 800,000 years or more,” Jordan explained. “This leads to increasingly intense water acidification and widespread coral reef destruction. The potential loss is tremendous: reefs provide aquaculture, protein and storm protection for about 1 billion people worldwide.”

“Standard in situ studies of ocean acidification have multiple drawbacks, including a lack of control over treatment conditions and a tendency to expose organisms to more extreme and variable pH levels than those predicted in the next century,” he added. “So in 2007, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute developed a system that allows for highly controlled semi-enclosed experiments in the deep sea.”

This latest study modified that system, allowing it to be used in coral reefs and creating what is known as the Coral Proto — Free Ocean Carbon Enrichment (CP-FOCE) system. The CP-FOCE utilizes a network of sensors in order to monitor water conditions, maintaining the experimental levels of acidity, allowing the research team to work directly in the natural environment while avoiding the issues typically involved with such studies, Jordan said.

Image 2 (below): A researcher conducts ocean acidification experiments off Heron Island, Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Credit: David I. Kline

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com

A new study found that one in three animal species in poor countries are being threatened by the world’s appetite for coffee and timber.

Researchers from the University of Sydney spent five years tracking the world economy by evaluating over five billion supply chains connecting consumers to over 15,000 commodities produced in 187 countries.

The team focused on the global trade of goods implicated in biodiversity like coffee, cocoa and lumber.

According to the study, international trade chains can accelerate degradation in locations far removed from where the product is bought.

“Until now these relationships have only been poorly understood,” lead author Manfred Lenzen, from the university’s Integrated Sustainability Analysis group, said in a press release. “Our extraordinary number crunching, which took years of data collection and thousands of hours on a supercomputer to process, lets us see these global supply chains in amazing detail for the first time.”

The researchers found that 50 to 60 percent of biodiversity loss in countries like Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka and Honduras was linked to exports.

They said as an example that spider monkeys were threatened by habitat loss because of strong demand for coffee and an increase in cocoa plantations in Mexico and Central America.

According to the study, 171 animal species in Papua New Guinea were threatened by export industries including mining and timber to a few large trending partners, such as Australia.

Sixty of the threatened species in Papua New Guinea were under threat from logging specifically for Japanese residential construction, according to the report.

“There is increasing awareness that developed countries’ consumption of imported products can cause a biodiversity footprint that is larger abroad than at home,” the study authors wrote in the journal Nature.

“The study shows how this is the case for many countries, including the US, Japan, and numerous European states.”

Co-author Barney Foran said in a statement that he hopes the findings would help make labeling products on supermarket shelves with sustainability ratings a normal practice.

“We shouldn’t let retailers make sustainability labels a premium product,” he said. “We should ask that they always stock products that are made responsibly, from the bottom shelf to the top shelf.”

The study authors recommend companies be required to make foreign suppliers accountable to the same production standards they hold to themselves at home.

“In a perfect world affluent consumers in all countries could be important players in halting biodiversity decline if they adopt a ℠values’ rather than a ℠price’ filter for most of their purchasing decisions,” Foran wrote in an email to Reuters.

The first ever photographs of jaguars within an oil plantation in Colombia have just been released. Among the individuals photographed was a mother with her two cubs. A video containing footage of a male jaguar was also included.
Panthera, the world´s leading wild cat conservation organization, focuses solely on the study and conservation of wild cats. The camera traps placed by Panthera in the Magdalena River valley were meant to gather information about the dangers of Colombia´s growing oil plantations on the jaguar populations. Panthera´s objective is to understand how the plantations affect the jaguar´s ability to move throughout its habitat, reproduce, and the effects on species that the jaguars prey on.
Oil plantations are common to Latin America and Asia. Created by deforestation of detrimental habitat to many large cat species, they prove to be an increasing threat. In Asia, tigers are severely affected by the creation of these plantations, and will not cross through areas that have been overtaken by humans; this hinders their movement and even restricts gene flow and diversity. Panthera researchers are seeking to understand if the same results are occurring in Latin America for the jaguar.
The photos captured of the female jaguar with her cubs and the other individuals are important in understanding their habits. They demonstrate, in some instances, that jaguars are uninhibited by oil palm areas in Colombia. The location of the plantation and where the pictures were taken, near a protected area of forest with native habitat, create a “best case scenario” for the study of jaguar movements through oil palm plantations.
Dr. Esteban Payan, Panthera’s Northern South America Jaguar Program Director, stated, “Typically, jaguars can move across human-dominated landscapes by traveling through riparian forests or using road underpasses, but until now, scientists had no photographic proof that jaguars entered oil palm developments in this region.”
He explained, “Given the extensive amount of jaguar habitat overtaken by oil palm plantations in Colombia, we hope that certain plantations can be part of the Jaguar Corridor, enabling jaguars to reach areas with little or no human disturbances.”
Panthera’s Jaguar Corridor Initiative strives to join and conserve jaguar populations ranging from Argentina to Mexico, where humans have dominated the landscape with constructions such as palm oil plantations. Colombia, located between several South American countries and Panama, is a most significant area for the jaguar to pass through, from Central America to South America.
Dr. Howard Quigley, the Jaguar Program Executive Director for Panthera, said, “Human development in the shape of large monocultures, like oil palm plantations, are drastically changing the face of the planet, creating refugees out of wild cats by breaking up their habitats and forcing them to live within smaller, often degraded, and more isolated pockets of land. Data collected through Panthera’s Jaguar Corridor Initiative are critical for oil palm growers, national policy makers and local governments in their decision making so they can account for the needs of jaguars across their range and minimize impacts on wildlife.”
“Our data suggest that plantations can be part of a landscape mosaic that jaguars will use. But careful planning that avoids large-scale replacement of forest with huge palm oil areas will be essential if we want to avoid the kind of isolation that tigers now suffer,” stated Quigley.
Panthera encourages sustainable oil palm applications, and asks that farmers comply with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil Recommendations, in order to reduce negative effects of widespread agricultural practices on biodiversity and to allow efforts like the Jaguar Corridor to be successful.
To see pictures and video, as well as a map of Colombia and its jaguar populations, visit Panthera´s webpage.

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com

A man in Iowa has discovered the remains of a woolly mammoth that laid to rest thousands of years ago in his backyard.

The man, identified only as John, said that one of his sons found something while walking in the forest behind their property in 2010, and John realized that the object was a bone.

“I got down on my hands and knees on the bank, and I could see a marrow line around the edge of this, and I said, ℠Boys, that´s a bone. That´s a really big bone,” John told ABC5-WOI.

The report said that John just recently brought the bone to the University of Iowa where it was identified as the femur of a woolly mammoth.

Volunteers from the University of Iowa and Iowa State University have found the mammoth’s feet bones and thoracic ribs so far, and they are continuing the backyard excavation this weekend.

Those involved in the excavation believe that they are just weeks away from uncovering the mammoth’s head.

Sarah Horgen, the university´s Museum of Natural History education coordinator, said the mammoth went extinct by the end of the last ice age, and is at least 12,000 years old.

“It´s pretty exciting — partially because the mammoth is being discovered where it died,” Horgen told the New York Daily News. “We know that because we´re finding very large bones right alongside very small bones.”

The bones belong to John since they were found on his property, but having to tote  them around from room to room at his house can be difficult.

“Sometimes I get tired of moving bones around from one spot to the other,” he told ABC5.

He said he wasn’t quite sure what he plans to do with them once they are all uncovered. “Build another room off the side of the home and put it together? I don’t know, I haven’t decided yet,” he told the news station.

Woolly mammoths have been discovered increasingly across the world, including a juvenile mammoth that was found perfectly preserved.

The Siberian mammoth, nicknamed “Yuka” in a BBC documentary, has hair still intact, as well as its footpads.

Scientists in South Korea’s Sooam Biotech Research Foundation announced plans earlier this year to attempt to clone a mammoth.

Until mammoths are walking around again in abundance, John will most likely be the only person to have one lying in his backyard.

Physicists searching for a hypothetical and rare process involving radioactive decay of atomic nuclei have gotten their most sensitive results to date, suggesting that these mysterious particles behave like other elementary particles at the quantum level.

If such a discovery can be made, the researchers said the process could have profound implications for how scientists understand the fundamental laws of physics and could help solve some of the biggest mysteries of the universe.

The latest results have shown the effectiveness of a new instrument — the Enriched Xenon Observatory 200 (EXO-200) — that researchers say will yield even greater discoveries. EXO-200 is an international collaboration led by Stanford University and the US Department of Energy´s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and includes more than 80 researchers in all.

EXO-200 has already begun one of the most sensitive searches ever for “neutrinoless double-beta decay,” a mysterious mechanism in which two neutrinos, acting as particle and antiparticle, do not emerge from the nucleus.

If this decay were observed, it would signal that neutrinos have a different quantum structure than other elementary particles. But EXO-200 did not observe this decay, which establishes the strongest evidence yet that neutrinos behave like other particles.

In a normal double beta decay, which was first observed in 1986, two neutrons in an unstable atomic nucleus turn into two protons, in which two electrons and two antineutrinos are emitted in the process.

Through their experiments with EXO-200, physicists have narrowed down the range of possible masses for the neutrino, a tiny uncharged particle that rarely interacts with anything, zipping through the universe at nearly the speed of light, passing right through whatever it meets.

“The result could only have been more exciting if we’d been hit by a stroke of luck and detected neutrinoless double-beta decay,” said Giorgio Gratta, a professor of physics at Stanford University and spokesperson for EXO-200. “In the region where double-beta decay was expected, the detector recorded only one event. That means the background activity is very low and the detector is very sensitive. It’s great news to say that we see nothing!”

However, physicists have also suggested that two neutrons could decay into two protons by emitting two electrons without producing any antineutrinos.

“People have been looking for this process for a very long time,” said Peter Vogel, senior research associate in physics, emeritus, at Caltech and a member of the EXO-200 team. “It would be a very fundamental discovery if someone actually observes it.”

Because a neutrino would eventually be produced in a single beta decay, two neutrinos that are produced in a neutrinoless double beta decay must somehow cancel each other out. For that to occur, a neutrino must be its own antiparticle, allowing one of the two neutrinos to act as an antineutrino and annihilate the other neutrino.

That a neutrino can be its own antiparticle is not predicted by the Standard Model — the theory that describes how all elementary particles behave and interact. If this neutrinoless process does indeed exist, physicists would be forced to revise the Standard Model.

The process also has implications for cosmology and the origin of matter, said Vogel. When the Big Bang occurred, there were equal amounts of matter and antimatter. But somehow, the balance was tipped and matter began, slowly at first, taking a foothold and eventually led to the existence of all the matter in the universe, which now far outweighs the existence of antimatter. The fact that the neutrino can be its own antiparticle might have played a key role in tipping that balance, said the researchers.

More than a decade ago, a collaborative effort of the Heidelberg-Moscow Double Beta Decay Experiment, made a controversial claim that it had discovered neutrinoless double beta decay using germanium-76 isotopes. But the new data from EXO-200 makes it highly unlikely that the earlier results were valid.

The EXO-200 experiment, which started taking data last year, will continue its quest for the next several years.

At the core of the instrument is a thin-walled cylinder made of extremely pure copper. It is filled with roughly 440 pounds of liquid xenon and buried 2,150 feet deep at the DOE´s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant at a New Mexico salt bed where radioactive waste is stored. The xenon-136 isotope, which makes up the bulk of the xenon in the holding tank, is only one of very few substances that can theoretically undergo the decay.

This research was supported by the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation in the United States, the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council in Canada, the Swiss National Science Foundation in Switzerland, and Russian Foundation for Basic Research in Russia. The research used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center.

The results of the research have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com

New details about the last moments of legendary aviator Amelia Earhart´s fateful voyage to fly around the world at the equator have emerged, adding to the evidence that she didn´t just vanish off the face of the Earth.

Dozens of radio signals that were previously dismissed have been found to be credible transmissions from the famed pilot just after her Lockheed Model 10E “Electra“ went down on July 2, 1937, according to a new study.

It has been generally accepted that Earhart´s plane simply ran out of fuel and crashed in the Pacific as she searched for Howland Island, the final refueling stop before flying on to Honolulu and then California.

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), the group planning an expedition to search for the lost crash site and final resting place of Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan, said the radio transmissions entered the air waves just hours after Earhart sent out her last in-flight message.

TIGHAR presented their findings during a three-day conference last week in Arlington, Virginia. Among the discoveries: a small broken cosmetic jar found on an uninhabited island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati, which the group believes proves where Amelia Earhart´s plane went down nearly 75 years ago.

The cosmetic jar, when reassembled, looks eerily similar to that of Dr. C H Berry´s Freckle Ointment. The ointment was marketed in the early 20th century as a concoction guaranteed to make freckles fade.

“It´s well documented Amelia had freckles and disliked having them,” said Joe Cerniglia, the TIGHAR researcher who spotted the freckle ointment as a possible match. The ointment jar was found along with several other artifacts during TIGHAR´s nine expeditions made to the uninhabited island in the Pacific.

TIGHAR is now about to begin a high-tech underwater search for parts of the plane in July, marking the 75th anniversary of Earhart´s disappearance.

“Amelia Earhart did not simply vanish on July 2, 1937. Radio distress calls believed to have been sent from the missing plane dominated the headlines and drove much of the US Coast Guard and Navy search,” Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News.

“When the search failed, all of the reported post-loss radio signals were categorically dismissed as bogus and have been largely ignored ever since,” he added.

Now, using a series of tools, models, and other high-tech equipment, TIGHAR was able to examine the 120 known reports of radio signals suspected to have been sent from Earhart´s plane within hours after the crash on July 2, 1937 through July 18, 1937, when the official search ended. The examinations conclude that 57 of the 120 signals are credible.

“The results of the study suggest that the aircraft was on land and on its wheels for several days following the disappearance,” said Gillespie.

During her scheduled approach of Howland Island at 07:42 a.m. local time on July 2, 1937, Earhart called the Coast Guard cutter Itasca, stationed at Howland for flight support.

“We must be on you, but cannot see you — but gas is running low. Have been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet,” said Earhart.

Her final in-flight message came one hour later at 08:43 a.m.

“We are on the line 157 337. We will repeat this message. We will repeat this on 6210 kilocycles. Wait,” she said.

TIGHAR said the numbers 157 and 337 refer to compass headings and describe a navigational line that passed not only Howland Island, but also Gardner Island, now called Nikumaroro. This uninhabited island is where TIGHAR believes Earhart and Noonan landed after running out of fuel, and where they died as castaways.

TIGHRA theorizes that Earhart made several days of radio transmissions before the plane washed over the reef and disappeared before searchers flew over the area.

After analyzing all the post-loss radio signals, the recovery group was able to build a detailed catalog of all the credible signals based on their frequencies. Transmissions from Earhart´s Electra were possible on three primary frequencies: 3105 kHz, 6210 kHz and 500 kHz. The 500kHz frequency gave no credible post-loss signals, however.

During her world flight, Earhart transmitted on 3105 kHz at night, and 6210 kHz during daylight, using her 50-watt WE-13C transmitter. While the Itasca transmitted on 3105 kHz, it did not have voice capability on 6210 kHz. Itasca reported hearing signals on only one occasion at night on 3105 kHz frequency.

TIGHAR found that three 50-watt Morse code radio stations in Nicaragua could be heard on a receiver tuned to 3105 kHz, but those stations sent only code, and no voice. And furthermore, all transport aircraft in the area used assigned route frequencies, instead of 3105 kHz.

“Therefore, other than Itasca, Earhart´s Electra was the only plausible central Pacific source of voice signals on 3105 kHz,” said Gillespie.

But, in order to make multiple transmissions, the Electra plane needed to run the right-hand, generator-equipped engine to recharge the batteries. “The safest procedure is to transmit only when the engine is running, and battery power is required to start the engine,” said Gillespie. “To run the engine, the propeller must be clear of obstructions, and water level must never reach the transmitter.”

TIGHAR researchers analyzed tidal conditions on the island from 2 to 9 July 1937, following Earhart´s disappearance, to verify that transmissions could be made from the plane if it did in fact land on Nikumaroro´s reef. They found that credible transmissions occurred in periods during which the water level on the reef was low enough to permit engine operation.

Of the 57 credible signals picked out from the host of 120, four are of particular interest to Gillespie, mainly because they were picked up by more than one station.

The first signal came through within 5 hours after the plane went missing. It was received by Itasca and two other ships: the HMS Achilles, and the SS New Zealand Star.

Credible signals were also picked up from other locations in the US, Canada, and the central Pacific, with witnesses reported hearing a woman´s call for help, adding she spoke in English and in some cases said her name was Amelia Earhart.

A notable signal was received on July 5, 1937 by the US Navy Radio at Wailupe, Honolulu: “281 north Howland – call KHAQQ – beyond north — won´t hold with us much longer — above water — shut off.” The message, however, was somewhat distorted.

Gillespie said the re-analysis of the credible post loss signals supports TIGHAR´s theory that they were sent by Earhart´s Electra aircraft from a point on the Nikumaroro reef, roughly a quarter mile north of the British SS Norwich City shipwreck.

“The results of the study show a body of evidence which might be the forgotten key to the mystery,” said Gillespie to Discovery’s Rossella Lorenzi.

His TIGHAR expedition, setting sail from Honolulu on July 2, the 75th anniversary of Amelia Earhart´s disappearance, will be the group´s tenth voyage to the remote island trying to solve the mystery. Unlike previous missions to the island, in which the team investigated the island itself, this one will focus on the plane´s possible final resting place — at the bottom of the Nikumaroro reef.

Talking about the expedition in March, Gillespie said: “Targets will be identified using high resolution, side scan sonar mounted on an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). Finally, we will investigate suspicious looking targets using a Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) with dual manipulators and color video camera system and lights.”

The expedition has the support of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and the State Department. She met with historians and scientists from TIGHAR on March 20, noting just how pertinent this search is to Americans, saying that Earhart went missing when the country was in the grips of the Great Depression.

“Now Amelia Earhart may have been an unlikely heroine for a nation down on its luck, but she embodied the spirit of an America coming of age and increasingly confident, ready to lead in a quite uncertain and dangerous world,” she said. “When she took off on that historic journey she carried the aspirations of our entire country with her,” Clinton said.

Brett Smith for RedOrbit.com
New evidence points to troubling levels of carbon dioxide, the world´s primary greenhouse gas, in the Earth´s atmosphere.
Several arctic monitoring stations are measuring more than 400 parts per million (ppm) of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere this spring, compared with the 350 ppm that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide.
While some carbon dioxide production is natural, from decomposing dead plants and animals, most comes from the burning of fossil fuels, scientists say.
According to researchers, although only the Arctic monitoring stations have reached the 400 level, the rest of the world will follow soon.
“The fact that it’s 400 is significant,” said Jim Butler, global monitoring director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo. “It’s just a reminder to everybody that we haven’t fixed this and we’re still in trouble.”
The jump in carbon dioxide over the past few years should not come as a surprise to those familiar with worldwide levels of emissions currently being recorded. According to a recent International Energy Agency report, last year´s levels of fossil fuel-based carbon emissions were at an all-time high of 34.8 billion tons. This represents a 3.2 percent increase from levels recorded in 2010.
Carbon dioxide is the chief and most effective greenhouse gas and stays in the atmosphere for approximately 100 years. According to climate scientists, the 2011 emission levels set the world on a path toward a dangerous 2 degrees Celsius rise in average temperature. The result of this increase would be a water and food scarcity in certain areas along with increased levels of disease.
The IEA said it’s becoming unlikely that the world can achieve the European goal of limiting global warming to just 2 degrees based on increasing pollution and emission levels.
“The news today, that some stations have measured concentrations above 400 ppm in the atmosphere, is further evidence that the world’s political leaders – with a few honorable exceptions – are failing catastrophically to address the climate crisis,” former Vice President Al Gore, said in a statement. “History will not understand or forgive them.”
Some cutting edge research points to the possibility of creating manmade solutions to what many consider a manmade problem. Scientists at Rice University, the University of California, Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) published a study this week that showed new materials could help reduce as much as 30 percent of the energy costs associated with removing carbon dioxide from power plant emissions.
The new study, published this week online in Nature Materials, found that commonly used industrial minerals called zeolites could significantly reduce the energy consumption of carbon capture technology. Zeolites are microporous minerals typically comprised of silicon and oxygen.  About 40 exited in nature and 160 know zeolites are manmade.
Using computer modeling technology, the research team was able to identify zeolites best suited for carbon capture use. The models and calculations developed by the team will allow for a more rapid analysis of any future zeolite materials that are developed.

Little brown bats are tiny creatures that fly through the night hunting insects that humans consider pests, zooming past trees in a wave of sleek brown fur. The 3.4 inch long bats, when not hunting insects in warmer months, hibernate in abandoned mines and caves during the winter.

As peaceful as this image seems, a disease known as white-nose syndrome jeopardizes the little brown bat´s very survival.  A groundbreaking method of tracking the little brown bat by using stable hydrogen isotopes, a chemical “fingerprint” found in organic matter like hair, could help researchers understand the disease better.

Using this method, researchers from Michigan Technological University were able to conclude where the bats choose to spend their summers. This process could aid in tracking white-nose syndrome and help researchers manage the advancement of this deadly disease.

“This novel application of stable hydrogen isotopes can help predict which hibernation sites are likely to exchange bats,” Bump states. “Bat-to-bat contact is believed to be the way white-nose syndrome is spread, so understanding the bats’ movements can help us know which hibernation sites are connected and how disease could potentially be transmitted among locations.”

Joseph Bump, an assistant professor at Michigan Tech’s School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, and a former undergraduate student in his lab, Alexis Sullivan published their report in July´s issue of the journal Ecological Applications. They studied three colonies of bats that hibernated in three different mines located in the upper western peninsula of Michigan.

Sullivan, Bump, and associates Laura Kruger and Rolf Peterson focused on little brown bats that hibernate in the Caledonia Mine near Ontonagon, Michigan, the Norway Mine in Norway, Michigan, and the Quincy Mine in Hancock, Michigan. Using samples of hair collected from individuals in these three colonies, they searched for the hydrogen “fingerprint” of the water located where the bats grew the fur. Maps have been created by ecologists of different water sources in varying locations, so matching the hair “fingerprint” to the water “fingerprint” can help distinguish the bat´s origin. Until recently, this process was only used in flying birds to track their migratory patterns.

“Relatively little is known about bat-to-bat interactions or how far bats travel between seasonal habitats,” states Sullivan. She explains, “Earlier attempts to use hydrogen isotopes with bats stalled because most hibernating bats don’t make dramatic seasonal migrations, and they have unclear molt patterns, making it difficult to connect their hair to a given habitat.”

Sullivan, lead author of the paper, is currently seeking dual Master of Science degrees in Forest Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology at Michigan Tech and the Swedish University of Agricultural Science. These degrees are part of the ATLANTIS Program, a transatlantic academic program funded by the US Department of Education and the European Union.

In this most recent study, Sullivan, Bump, and their associates were able to, with a 95 percent confidence, project the summer locations of the colonies numbering 23,000 bats in the Norway Mine, tens of thousands in the Quincy Mine, and a probable quarter of a million bats in the Caledonia Mine. Utilizing the stable hydrogen method, the researchers were able to guess the geographic locations of where many of the bats may originate, some as far as 351 miles from their hibernating grounds.

White-nose syndrome has not yet affected northern bats in upper Michigan, as it has in southern bat colonies of the United States where entire populations have nearly been destroyed. It is important to study the little brown bats and how white-nose syndrome spreads, drastically affecting their populations.

Bump explains, “First, they are amazing mammals. Second, we should care about little brown bats because they eat millions of things for which we care much less, like mosquitos.”

This research was funded by the National Park Service Great Lakes Network and the Ecosystems Science Center and the School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science at Michigan Tech.

[ Watch the Video ]

Brett Smith for RedOrbit.com

With the World Health Organization projecting the global urban population to almost double to 6.3 million by 2050, better urban planning is essential to improve the health of Earth´s city dwellers.

In an attempt to address the potential health crisis that this booming population could cause, the University College of London and the Lancet Commission have issued a report recommending future policy initiatives that could lead to healthy urban development, and highlighting the case studies that are already taking strides toward that goal.

The coming population boom “will not only result in more megacities (cities of more than 10 million people), increasingly concentrated in Asia, but also in more medium-sized cities, especially in Africa,” the report said.

“UN estimates are that about 1 billion people, nearly a sixth of the global population, live in slum-like conditions. With the worldwide population predicted to expand to 9 billion by 2030, the number of people living in slum-like conditions could reach 2 billion.”

With these projections in mind, the report issued five recommendations for alleviating or avoiding health-related challenges for major cities.

First, city governments should forge an alliance among health officials, urban planners and “those able to deliver urban change for health in active dialogue.”

Stakeholders also need to address health inequalities among communities in urban areas, making community representatives involved and accountable. This could require local governments to support under-resourced and less organized sections of their urban population, the commission advised.

Lead author Professor Yvonne Rydin of the UCL Bartlett School of Planning singled out one important step policymakers could take to improve health outcomes for lower income city residents.

“There is a major need to retrofit older housing, particularly for those with lower incomes, to a) save them fuel bills and b) cut down on energy use and greenhouse gases,” Rydin responded in an email interview with RedOrbit.

“But we mustn´t do this in a way that compromises indoor air quality. Means of ventilation are essential. Well insulated houses also need to be effective in reducing heat gain in heat waves. And care needs to be taken on details to ensure that more insulation does not create the conditions for mould growth. The details are really important here.”

There is a perception that living in a city, especially in wealthy nations, gives a person an ‘urban advantage’ over their rural neighbors, the report said. Urban planners need to be mindful of the health advantages city living can convey and should maximize these benefits as best they can. The report recommended that city frameworks should explicitly incorporate urban health goals and policies aimed at the improvement of urban health.

The commission also recommended that city planners perform a complexity analysis to better understand the web of relationships that affect urban health. At the very least, policy makers “should be alert to the unintended consequences of their policies.”

Finally, the commission recommends using locally-scaled pilot projects that include active dialogue and continuous assessment.

The report also includes some case studies of public works and policy decisions that have had a positive impact on public health. In Mumbai, India, the Slum Sanitation Program (SSP) aims to provide access to one public toilet per 50 people living in slums or low income areas by 2025 through the construction of sanitation facilities. The report notes that some sanitation facilities have even become community centers, providing space for teaching and meeting.

While the program is backed by funding from the World Band and state government, nominal usage fees cover local maintenance, water, and electricity costs. These fees have allowed high standards of care to be maintained, but evidence exists that in some of the poorer settlements, only the relatively wealthier families are able to pay the fees. This forces the remaining population to resort to defecation in open areas.

In another case study in Bogota, Colombia, the decade-old Bus Rapid Transit system has decreased car usage, encouraging people to walk to transit stations and reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The system has also had other civic benefits including reduced traffic congestion and greater average travel speeds.

Rydin noted another healthy aspect of Bogota´s public policy launched in 1974 that sees a huge return on investment and also increases physical activity and reduces emissions.

“In (Bogota) they close 97 km of roads on Sundays and holiday for public access. About 1 million people use this pedestrian space. It has been estimated that for each $1 spent on this, about $3-4 are saved in health costs. And that does not include the financial benefits of reduced air pollution and knock-on economic activity.”

Brett Smith for RedOrbit.com

New research has shed a light on an ancient Asian civilization and given a glimpse into what the future might hold for the region.

Climate change is now thought to be responsible for the decline of the Indus civilization, an empire that stretched over more than a million square kilometers. One of the first great urban cultures that also included Egypt and Mesopotamia, its people lived primarily along rivers from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges, over what is now Pakistan, northwest India and eastern Afghanistan.

The study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, involved geologists and archeologists from the U.S., U.K., Pakistan, India, and Romania. Using topographic data and satellite photos, the researchers created and analyzed digital maps of landforms constructed by the Indus and neighboring rivers, which were then surveyed in the field by drilling, coring, and even manually-dug trenches. The samples that researchers collected from 2003 to 2008 were used to determine the sediments’ makeup, age and origins; whether brought in and shaped by rivers or wind.

“We reconstructed the dynamic landscape of the plain where the Indus civilization developed 5200 years ago, built its cities, and slowly disintegrated between 3900 and 3000 years ago,” said Liviu Giosan, a geologist with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and lead author of the study. “Until now, speculations abounded about the links between this mysterious ancient culture and its life-giving mighty rivers.”

Archeological evidence shows that the Harappans, who were named after one of their largest cities, had developed a highly complex society that included a sophisticated urban culture, intricate trade trades, and a currently-undeciphered writing system.

“They had cities ordered into grids, with exquisite plumbing, which was not encountered again until the Romans,” Giosan told LiveScience. “They seem to have been a more democratic society than Mesopotamia and Egypt – no large structures were built for important personalities like kings or pharaohs.”

Giosan and his team found that at one point, the monsoon-drenched rivers were prone to devastating floods. Over time, these monsoons weakened, enabling agriculture and civilization to flourish along riverbanks for nearly 2,000 years. River settlers slowly became dependant on seasonal river floods to fuel their agricultural surpluses.

However, over time, these monsoon-based rivers, which held too little water, dried up, making them unfavorable for civilization. Eventually, over the course of centuries, Harappans fled along an escape route to the east toward the Ganges basin, where monsoon rains remained reliable, the study suggested.

“The Harappans were an enterprising people taking advantage of a window of opportunity – a kind of “Goldilocks civilization,” Giosan said.

This climate change-based evidence not only provide a window into the ancient past, it gives an indication of what current weather patterns might mean for this swath of Asia.

“If we take the devastating floods that caused the largest humanitarian disaster in Pakistan’s history as a sign of increased monsoon activity, than this doesn’t bode well for the region,” Giosan told LiveScience. “The region has the largest irrigation scheme in the world, and all those dams and channels would become obsolete in the face of the large floods an increased monsoon would bring.”

Michael Harper for RedOrbit.com
In a classic case of old turns new, the somewhat ironically named Coalition for Sustainable Rail (CSR) announced last week plans to create the world´s first and only carbon-neutral, high-speed locomotive by modifying a classic 1937 locomotive with new, bio-fuel burning engines.
The CSR is the result of a collaboration between University of Minnesota´s Institute on the Environment (IonE) students and the nonprofit group Sustainable Rail International. According to their website, CSR plans to “create the world´s cleanest, most powerful passenger locomotive, proving the viability of solid biofuel and modern steam locomotive technology.” In addition to building a cleaner burning, carbon neutral steam engine, the team also hopes to break a land speed record for a steam powered locomotive.
When the transformation is complete, the 1937 locomotive will be powered by biocoal, a coal-like, woody plant material. Called “torrefied biomass,” this biocoal is created by an energy-efficient processing of cellulosic biomass, according to CleanTechnica. This new biocoal is said to have similar properties of regular coal without the dangerous resulting waste, such as ash, gas, and smoke. The CSR say if this biocoal can be successfully used in the locomotive, then it can also be used in other applications as the developing world looks for sustainable sources of energy.
“Participation in the Coalition for Sustainable Rail has enabled our team to pursue one of the more exciting and potentially groundbreaking research projects in the history of IonE,” said Rod Larkins, Special Projects Director of the University of Minnesota´s Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment, according to Clean Technica.
“Once perfected, creating the world´s first carbon-neutral locomotive will be just the beginning for this technology which, we hope, will later be used for combined heat and power energy in the developing world as well as reducing the United States´ dependence on fossil fuels.”
Davidson Ward, president of the CSR, told MSNBC last week the newly modified train will be able to run at up to 130 miles per hour, all while burning carbon-neutral fuel.
“Computer simulations already show that the locomotive is about as powerful as two modern passenger diesel locomotives,” said Ward, according to MSNBC.
The new carbon-neutral locomotive will also cost less to run and maintain, as well as offer greater control than current diesel-electric powered locomotives.
Ward also said the heat used to process the fuel comes from biogas, making the entire process 94 to 96 percent thermally efficient.
As for the locomotive, the team has found a 1937 model steam locomotive from a museum in Kansas which will be outfitted with a more efficient fire box, boiler and other engine components. According to Ward, the team will use similar design principles used on other steam-powered locomotives.
“It is kind of like the windmill,” Ward said. “Windmills are very old inventions, but you can modernize it and make it more efficient and apply it today.”
According to Ward, remodeling the locomotive is more of a proof of concept project. However, should this project prove successful, the team could build a biocoal powered, higher-speed train from scratch, and could utilize the same railways as Amtrak and freight trains.

The latest round of climate talks stalled on Friday in Bonn, Germany as government delegates couldn´t resolve how to share the burden of reducing man-made global warming, running the risk of weakening any progress made at last year´s talks and possibly undoing a decades-long effort to control carbon emissions.

Developing countries, spearheaded by China, say the industrialized world is responsible for much of the emissions seen and should face the burden of emissions cuts alone, but the developed nations argue that fast-developing economies, such as China — now the top polluter in the world — and India, should not be off the hook.

The Bonn meeting was supposed to work out the details of a deal struck in Durban, South Africa in December. That deal was the creation of a new global climate pact by 2015 that would make both rich and poor nations curb emissions. But as the two-week meeting came to a close, little-to-no progress had been made.

“There is distrust and there is frustration in the atmosphere,” Seyni Nafo, spokesman for a group of African countries, told The Associated Press (AP).

“There is a total stalemate,” Arthur Runge-Metzger, the chief negotiator for the European Union (EU), added.

The EU argues that China and a number of other developing nations are regressing their commitments made in Durban, while the developing countries accuse mainly the US and EU of evading their commitments made in previous negotiations and shifting the burden on climate control to the developing world.

“Developed countries like the U.S., Japan, Canada and Russia … have consistently blocked references to the existing legal principles, while continuing to ignore the fact that their meager emission cut targets expose the world’s most vulnerable people to climate change’s devastating effects,” said Mohamed Adow, a senior climate change adviser at Christian Aid.

“The US and Japan and Russia aren´t taking their responsibilities seriously; yet the developed countries are right in that you can´t rebuild the firewall and pretend that the future for China is the same as the future for Bangladesh,” Alden Meyer from the Union of Concerned Scientists told BBC News.

“It´s clear that many governments are nowhere near putting in place the policies they have committed to, policies that are not enough to keep temperature rise to below 2 degrees,” Bill Hare, Director of Climate Analytics, told Reuters. “We´ve already identified a major emissions gap and the action being taken is highly unlikely to shrink that gap – indeed it seems that the opposite is happening,” he added.

Paris-based International Energy Agency (IAE) said on Thursday that carbon emissions from fossil fuels reached a record high of 31.6 gigatons in 2011, a 3.2 percent increase from 2010. And despite improving on its energy efficiency, China accounted for the biggest contribution to the global increase, with emissions growing by 720 million tons (9.3 percent).

US emissions have dropped by 1.7 percent as the nation tries to switch gears from coal power to natural gas. However, an exceptionally mild winter may have contributed to much of the drop in emissions seen, the agency reported. Japan´s emissions rose 2.4 percent as it increased the use of fossil fuels in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The planet is on course for a temperature rise of at least 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit, but that could be even higher if pledges are not met by 2020, the IEA report warned.

But even if governments adopted the most ambitious emissions pledges and employed very strict accounting, the emissions gap would only shrink to 9 billion metric tons, it added.

By the end of the two-week conference, observers including Tove Marie Ryding of Greenpeace International concluded that ambition had been largely absent. “It´s absurd to watch governments sit and point fingers and fight like little kids while the scientists explain about the terrifying impacts of climate change,” she told BBC.

One of the major issues delegates deadlocked over on Friday was the debate on who was considered a rich nation and who was poor.

Countries such as Qatar and Singapore are wealthier than the US per capita but are still defined as developing under UN classification, which also labels China — the world´s second largest economy — as developing.

Implementing a new system on the rich/poor division while also acknowledging historical blame is a big challenge for the UN as it seeks a global response to climate change.

“That is a fundamental issue,” said Henrik Harboe, Norway´s chief climate negotiator. “Some want to keep the old division while we want to look at it in a more dynamic way.”

The climate talks are based on the foundation that industrialized countries must take the lead in curbing climate change by making commitments to the reduction of carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases. They are also expected to provide money to help poor countries grow in a sustainable way and to protect the most vulnerable nations from rising sea levels, droughts and other consequences due to man-made global warming.

Disputes on how to categorize countries was the key issue that stalled talks in Bonn. On the final day of the two-week meeting, delegates failed to come to an agreement, leaving the issue open until the bigger summit in Qatar in November.

The proposed new deal, which would have binding commitments for all countries after 2020, must be based on the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility” enshrined in previous climate agreements, China´s lead negotiator Su Wei told the AP. “That means we still would continue the current division between developed and developing countries.”

He said China is still a developing country because if you look at wealth per capita, it barely makes the world´s top 100. More than 100 million Chinese live below the poverty line, which Beijing has defined as about $1 a day.

However, delegates from more industrialized nations argue that China´s fast-growing energy needs and rising emissions means that it cannot hide behind the developing curtain any longer and needs to step up to the plate on climate negotiations.

“We need to move into a system which is reflecting modern economic realities,” EU negotiator Christian Pilgaard Zinglersen told the AP.

China rejects the blame for stalling climate talks in Bonn, and passes it to the US and other developed nations, saying they are unwilling to keep their commitments on carbon emissions reductions.

The only existing binding treaty, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, was rejected by the US because it doesn´t impose any emissions targets on China. And on the verge of expiring this year, delegates voted to extend the Kyoto Protocol during the Durban summit in November, though a timeframe wasn´t set. Canada, Japan and Russia have also refused to make any new commitments under Kyoto, meaning it will only cover about 15 percent of global emissions.

The US always maintained that joining Kyoto would harm its economy. And years later, the UN climate effort still has little support from the US Congress.

“We are hoping that they will get on board this time,” noted Nafo, “which is not a given.”

Is the divide between climate change theory advocates and global warming skeptics due to scientific ignorance? Not according to a new study published in the latest edition of the journal Nature Climate Change.

According to a Sunday statement, researchers affiliated with the Yale Law School‘s Cultural Cognition Project tested the scientific literacy of a “representative sample” of 1,500 American adults in order to determine whether or not a lack of basic scientific education was responsible for differing opinions on the hot-button environmental issue.

To conduct these tests, the researchers used questions from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) annual assessment of technical knowledge, as well as the “cultural viewpoints” of the 1,540 participants, USA Today‘s Dan Vergano explained.

What they discovered was that those with a good technical knowledge of climate change are more “culturally polarized” and tend to share the viewpoints of others within their social circle, he added.

“The aim of the study was to test two hypotheses,” Dan Kahan, Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology at Yale Law School and a member of the study team, said in a statement. “The first attributes political controversy over climate change to the public’s limited ability to comprehend science, and the second, to opposing sets of cultural values. The findings supported the second hypothesis and not the first.”

“In effect, ordinary members of the public credit or dismiss scientific information on disputed issues based on whether the information strengthens or weakens their ties to others who share their values,” he added. “At least among ordinary members of the public, individuals with higher science comprehension are even better at fitting the evidence to their group commitments.”

Vergano wrote that “a great deal” of evidence supports the notion that the Earth’s climate has warmed over the past 100 years, with greenhouse gasses resulting from the burning of fossil fuels serving as the catalyst for this, according to documented evidence provided by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and other scientific organizations. Despite this compiled evidence, he said that public opinion remains split on the topic, with 53% blaming human activities for warming and 41% blaming naturally occurring environmental changes.