ScienceDaily: Top Environment News

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• Falling lizards use tail for mid-air twist, inspiring lizard-like 'RightingBot'
• Want bigger plants? Get to the root of the matter
• Printing living tissues: 3-D printed vascular networks made of sugar
• An error-eliminating fix overcomes big problem in '3rd-gen' genome sequencing
• Key step in immune system-fueled inflammation discovered
• Rising heat at the beach threatens largest sea turtles, climate change models show
• Beyond base-pairs: Mapping the functional genome

Falling lizards use tail for mid-air twist, inspiring lizard-like 'RightingBot' Posted: 01 Jul 2012 04:16 PM PDT Lizards, just like cats, have a knack for turning right side up and landing on their feet when they fall. But how do they do it? Unlike cats, which twist and bend their torsos to turn upright, lizards swing their large tails one way to rotate their body the other, according to new research. A lizard-inspired robot, called "RightingBot," replicates the feat.

Want bigger plants? Get to the root of the matter Posted: 01 Jul 2012 04:16 PM PDT Plant scientists have imaged and analyzed, for the first time, how a potted plant's roots are arranged in the soil as the plant develops. In this study,biologists also found that doubling plant pot size makes plants grow over 40 percent larger.

Printing living tissues: 3-D printed vascular networks made of sugar Posted: 01 Jul 2012 04:16 PM PDT New advances in tissue engineering could one day make a replacement liver from a patient's cells, or animal muscle tissue that could be cut into steaks. One problem with making 3-D tissue structures, however, is keeping the interior cells from suffocating. Now, researchers have developed an innovative solution: they've shown that 3-D printed templates of filament networks can be used to rapidly create vasculature and improve the function of engineered living tissues.

An error-eliminating fix overcomes big problem in '3rd-gen' genome sequencing Posted: 01 Jul 2012 04:16 PM PDT A team has developed a software package that fixes a serious problem inherent in "3rd-gen" single-molecule genome sequencing: the fact that every fifth or sixth DNA "letter" it generates is incorrect. The high error rate is the flip side of the new method's chief virtue: it generates much longer genome "reads," providing a much more complete picture of genomes.

Key step in immune system-fueled inflammation discovered Posted: 01 Jul 2012 04:15 PM PDT Like detectives seeking footprints and other clues on a television "whodunit," science can also benefit from analyzing the tracks of important players in the body's molecular landscape. Scientists have done just that and illuminated a key step in the journey of inflammation-producing immune cells. The finding provides powerful, previously unknown information about critical biological mechanisms underlying heart disease and many other disorders.

Rising heat at the beach threatens largest sea turtles, climate change models show Posted: 01 Jul 2012 04:15 PM PDT Climate change could exacerbate existing threats to critically endangered leatherback sea turtles and nearly wipe out the population in the eastern Pacific. Deaths of turtle eggs and hatchlings in nests buried at hotter, drier beaches are the leading projected cause of the potential climate-related decline, according to a new study.

Beyond base-pairs: Mapping the functional genome Posted: 01 Jul 2012 04:15 PM PDT Researchers have now mapped, for the first time, a significant portion of the functional sequences of the mouse genome, the most widely used mammalian model organism in biomedical research.

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