December 20, 2006, 7:03 PM CT

Gateways To Conservation Campaign

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) began a new chapter in its history with the launch of its $650 million Gateways to Conservation campaign. The new campaign will fund key improvements at the Bronx Zoo and other WCS facilities, as well as conservation education, wildlife health, and global conservation programs.

Gateways to Conservation has already raised more than $475 million (including $111.1 million in public funding) to support new Bronx Zoo initiatives such as the C.V. Starr Science Campus. A key element of the Science Campus is the Jose E. Serrano Center for Global Conservation, an eco-friendly building that will house the science, conservation, exhibition design, and outreach programs of WCS. Also part of the campus is the Wildlife Health Center, currently under renovation. WCS's health center not only provides care for more than 20,000 animals, but also serves as a base of operations for overseas wildlife health programs.

Other upcoming projects include the transformation of the Bronx Zoo's Beaux Arts-style Lion House building into a new Madagascar exhibit, and the restoration of historic Astor Court. The campaign will also fund a new shark exhibit at the New York Aquarium, along with much-needed improvements to the infrastructure of this facility. Planned exhibits at WCS's other city zoos include snow leopards at the Central Park Zoo, Amur leopards at Prospect Park Zoo, and jaguars at the Queens Zoo. Financial support for these three thus far has been provided by the City of New York.........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

December 20, 2006, 5:10 AM CT

Climate Change And Endangered Naked Carp

Forthcoming in the January/February 2007 issue of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, a groundbreaking study reveals an unanticipated way freshwater fish may respond to water diversion and climate change. Endangered naked carp migrate annually between freshwater rivers, where they spawn, and a lake in Western China, where they feed and grow. However, Lake Qinghai is drying up and becoming increasingly more saline--leading to surprising adjustments to the carps' metabolic rate.

Naked carp take seven to ten years to reach reproductive size. Although historically abundant, overfishing and destruction of spawning habitat through dam-building caused the species to become endangered during the 1990s. Diversion of water for agriculture from the lake has been compounded by climate change, leading to a decline in water level in the lake of 1012 cm per year during the past fifty years (see accompanying image).

However, Chris M. Wood (McMaster University) and coauthors found that naked carp respond to the increased salinity of the lake water in a surprising way--by taking a "metabolic holiday." In the first forty-eight hours after transitioning from the freshwater river system to lake water, the carps' oxygen consumption falls --eventually reaching just 60 percent of that in river fish.........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink         Source

December 20, 2006, 4:54 AM CT

Tropical Glaciers Vanishing Dramatically!

Not just the poles, the Equator is having its turn now! The global warming seems to be having its impact on the Equator now. Rivers of ice at the Equator are found to be melting away in this new century.

The great glaciers of Mount Kenya are found to have retreated through years, shrinking to white stains on the rocky landscapes of the 16,897-foot peak.

With the tropical glaciers, some 200 miles due south of the Mount Kilimanjaro are found to be disappearing astonishingly, to the west, in the heart of equatorial Africa, the ice caps atop Uganda's Rwenzoris are shrinking fast.

Almost every glacier of more than 300 of those studied worldwide is retreating dramatically! This is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters' October issue by international glaciologists.

They think that this worldwide phenomenon is 'essentially a response to post-1970 global warming!'.........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink         Source

December 20, 2006, 4:22 AM CT

Are Nanoparticles Viable Living Forms?

Researchers at Mayo Clinic have successfully isolated nanoparticles from human kidney stones in cell cultures and have isolated proteins, RNA and DNA that appear to be associated with nanoparticles. The findings, which appear in the recent issue of the Journal of Investigative Medicine, are significant because it is one step closer in solving the mystery of whether nanoparticles are viable living forms that can lead to disease -- in this case, kidney stones.

Kidney stones are associated with pathologic calcification, the process in which organs and blood vessels become clogged with calcium deposits that can damage major organs like the heart and kidneys. What causes calcium deposits to build up is not entirely known. Medical scientists at Mayo Clinic are studying calcification at the molecular level in an effort to determine how this phenomenon occurs.

There is a growing body of scientific evidence that links calcification to the presence of nanosized particles, particles so small that some scientists question whether a nanoparticle can live and if so, play a viable role in the development of kidney stones.

The presence of proteins, RNA and DNA does not prove that nanoparticles are viable living forms because a genetic signature has not been identified, says the study's author John Lieske, M.D., a nephrologist with Mayo Clinic. A genetic signature would prove that nanoparticles are indeed living forms that replicate and can cause disease.........

Posted by: Sean      Permalink         Source

December 18, 2006, 9:41 PM CT

Ape-man Skeleton Is 2.2 Million Years Old

Liverpool scientists worked in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Leeds to analyse the skeleton, which was found in 1997 in Sterkfontein cave in South Africa. Known as 'Little Foot', it was known to be between two million and four million years old, but the team has now dated it precisely to 2.2 million years old.

These new findings reveal that the ape-like creature - part of the Australophithecus africanus family - may not be the immediate ancestor of human beings as some experts originally thought. This is because the team observed that 'Little Foot' lived after the arrival of the stone tool makers, Homo habilis, raising the possibility that this family was more of a side branch of the human evolutionary tree.

Dr Alfred Latham, from the University's School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology said: "'Little Foot' is known to have stood on two feet, standing approximately 130cm tall and having a brain not much larger than a modern chimpanzee. It was discovered cemented in layers of stalagmites and archaeologists are continuing to extract the skeleton from the hardened deposits. We think that 'Little Foot' either fell down a shaft or somehow got trapped in the cave and died there. The remains were preserved in the stalagmite layers and it is these layers that have helped our team to date the skeleton".........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

December 18, 2006, 9:37 PM CT

Tiny Bones Rewrite Textbooks

Small but remarkable fossils found in New Zealand will prompt a major rewrite of prehistory textbooks, showing for the first time that the so-called "land of birds" was once home to mammals as well.

The tiny fossilised bones - part of a jaw and hip - belonged to a unique, mouse-sized land animal unlike any other mammal known and were unearthed from the rich St Bathans fossil bed, in the Otago region of South Island.

But the real shock to researchers was that it was there at all: until now, decades of searching had shown no hint that the furry, warm-blooded animals that thrived and prospered so widely in other lands had ever trodden on New Zealand soil.

The fact that even one land mammal had lived there, at least 16 million years ago, has put paid to the theory that New Zealand's rich bird fauna had evolved there because they had no competition from land mammals.

An international team led by Trevor Worthy, of the University of Adelaide, Alan Tennyson, of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and Mike Archer, of the University of New South Wales, note that New Zealand separated from the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana more than 80 million years ago. The research has been reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

December 18, 2006, 9:20 PM CT

Top 10 Myths About Evolution

Though the United States is the world leader in science and technology, many of its citizens display a shocking ignorance regarding basic scientific facts. Recent surveys have revealed that only about half of Americans realize that humans have never lived side by side with dinosaurs, and about the same number reject the idea that humans developed from earlier species of animals. This lack of knowledge in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution springs from a number of negative influences in contemporary society: poor secondary education in some regions of the country, misinformation in the mass media, and deliberate obfuscation by supporters of Creationism and Intelligent Design.

In The Top 10 Myths About Evolution, educators Cameron M. Smith and Charles Sullivan clearly dispel the ten most common myths about evolution that continue to mislead average Americans. Using a refreshing, jargon-free style, they set the record straight on claims that evolution is "just a theory," that Darwinian explanations of life undercut morality, that Intelligent Design is a legitimate alternative to conventional science, that humans come from chimpanzees, and six other popular but erroneous notions.

Smith and Sullivan's reader-friendly, solidly researched text will serve as an important tool, both for teachers and laypersons seeking accurate information about evolution.........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

December 18, 2006, 9:11 PM CT

Borneo's Rainforests

"The more we look the more we find," says Stuart Chapman, WWF International Coordinator of the Heart of Borneo Program. "These discoveries reaffirm Borneo's position as one of the most important centers of biodiversity in the world and why conservation there is so important".

Scientists have discovered at least 52 new species of animals and plants this past year on the island of Borneo. The discoveries, described in a new WWF report, include 30 unique fish species, two tree frog species, 16 ginger species, three tree species and one large-leafed plant species.

Some of the creatures new to science include: a miniature fish, the world's second smallest vertebrate measuring less than a third of an inch in length and found in the highly acidic blackwater peat swamps of the island; six Siamese fighting fish, including one species with a beautiful iridescent blue-green marking; a catfish with protruding teeth and an adhesive belly which allows it to literally stick to rocks; and a tree frog with striking bright green eyes. The new ginger plants more than double the number of the Etlingera species found to date.

Several of these new species were found in the "Heart of Borneo," an 84,000 square mile mountainous region about the size of Kansas that is covered with equatorial rainforest in the center of the island. Large areas of the forest are at risk from destructive logging and expanding rubber, oil palm and pulp plantations. Since 1996, deforestation across Indonesia has increased to an average of 7,700 square miles each year, an area slightly smaller than Vermont. Today only half of Borneo's original forest cover remains.........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

December 18, 2006, 8:57 PM CT

The Frozen Secrets Of Comet Wild 2

Eleven months ago, NASA's Stardust mission touched down in the Utah desert with the first solid comet samples ever retrieved from space. Since then, nearly 200 scientists from around the globe have studied the minuscule grains, looking for clues to the physical and chemical history of our solar system. Although years of work remain to fully decipher the secrets of comet Wild 2, researchers are sure that it contains some of the most primitive and exotic chemical structures ever studied in a laboratory.

Preliminary results appear in a special section of the December 15 issue of Science. Overall, research efforts have focused on answering "big-picture" questions regarding the nature of the comet samples that were returned, including determining mineral structures, chemical composition, and the chemistry of the organic, or carbon-containing, compounds they carry. Carnegie researchers made key contributions to the latter effort. Out of seven papers in total, four involved Carnegie scientists from the Geophysical Laboratory (GL) and the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM).

"Carnegie enjoys a unique concentration of instrumentation and expertise to be able to engage in cutting-edge questions such as those posed by the Stardust mission," said GL's Andrew Steele.........

Posted by: Brooke      Permalink         Source

December 18, 2006, 7:44 PM CT

What are the characteristics of a fast-growing melanoma?

What are the characteristics of a fast-growing melanoma? Researchers have identified several characteristics that would make it easy to identify fast-growing melanomas. A melanoma lesion is more likely to go faster if they are thicker, symmetrical, elevated, have regular borders or have symptoms. These findings are from the results of a recent study that is published in the latest issue JAMA/Archives journals. The study also found that rapidly progressing melanoma is more likely to occur in elderly men and individuals with fewer moles and freckles, and its cells tend to divide more quickly and have fewer pigments than those of slower-growing cancers.

"Anecdotal experience suggests that there is a form of rapidly growing melanoma, but little is known about its frequency, rate of growth, or associations," the authors write as background information in the article. One prior study suggested that how quickly a melanoma grew predicted how likely the patient was to relapse at one year or to survive without relapsing. Other research indicates that different types of melanoma grow at different rates; for instance, an aggressive type known as nodular melanoma grows more quickly than any other kind.

Wendy Liu, M.B.Ch.B., Ph.D., Peter MacCallum Cancer Center, East Melbourne, Australia, and his colleagues investigated melanoma growth rate in 404 consecutive patients (222 male, 182 female, average age 54.2) with invasive melanoma. Participants' skin was examined by a dermatologist and information about such characteristics as the number of typical and atypical moles was recorded. In addition, the patients were interviewed as soon as possible after diagnosis and preferably with a friend or family present. The scientists gathered information about demographics, skin cancer risk factors, the characteristics of the tumor and who first detected the cancer-the patient, a family member or friend, or a physician.........

Posted by: Sean      Permalink         Source