ScienceDaily: Top Environment News

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• Team uses forest waste to develop cheaper, greener supercapacitors
• Coral itself may play important role in regulating local climate: Coral chemicals protect against warming oceans
• Early-life exposure of frogs to herbicide increases mortality from fungal disease
• Ignorance is sometimes bliss
• Uncovering the tricks of nature's ice-seeding bacteria
• Induced pluripotent stem cells reveal differences between humans and great apes
• Plants use sugars to tell the time of day
• H5N1 bird flu genes show nature can pick worrisome traits
• Older siblings' cells can be passed from female dogs to their puppies in the womb
• New research illustrates Mississippi River's role in the transport and fate of the oil following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident
• Gilding the gum tree: Scientists strike gold in leaves
• Long-term memory helps chimpanzees in their search for food
• Super song learners: Mechanism for improving song learning in juvenile zebra finches uncovered
• People don't put a high value on climate protection
• The molecular clock of the common buzzard: Influence of genes on dispersal behavior revealed
• A functional forest ecosystem is more than just trees

Team uses forest waste to develop cheaper, greener supercapacitors Posted: 23 Oct 2013 01:52 PM PDT Researchers report that wood-biochar supercapacitors can produce as much power as today's activated-carbon supercapacitors at a fraction of the cost -- and with environmentally friendly byproducts.

Coral itself may play important role in regulating local climate: Coral chemicals protect against warming oceans Posted: 23 Oct 2013 01:52 PM PDT Australian marine scientists have found the first evidence that coral itself may play an important role in regulating local climate. They have discovered that the coral animal -- not just its algal symbiont -- makes an important sulfur-based molecule with properties to assist it in many ways, ranging from cellular protection in times of heat stress to local climate cooling by encouraging clouds to form.

Early-life exposure of frogs to herbicide increases mortality from fungal disease Posted: 23 Oct 2013 11:46 AM PDT A new study shows the herbicide atrazine increased mortality from chytridiomycosis, a disease causing worldwide amphibian declines.

Ignorance is sometimes bliss Posted: 23 Oct 2013 11:11 AM PDT Evolutionary biologist W.D. Hamilton predicted that organisms ought to evolve the ability to discriminate degrees of kinship so as to refine their ability to direct help to individuals with whom they shared the most genes. But two biologists point out that there seem to be many cases where "a veil of ignorance" prevents organisms from gaining this kind of information, forcing them to consider a situation from the perspective of all members of their group.

Uncovering the tricks of nature's ice-seeding bacteria Posted: 23 Oct 2013 11:11 AM PDT New discoveries could impact applications ranging from artificial snowmaking to global climate models.

Induced pluripotent stem cells reveal differences between humans and great apes Posted: 23 Oct 2013 11:10 AM PDT Researchers have, for the first time, taken chimpanzee and bonobo skin cells and turned them into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), a type of cell that has the ability to form any other cell or tissue in the body.

Plants use sugars to tell the time of day Posted: 23 Oct 2013 10:18 AM PDT Scientists are studying how plants are able to set and maintain this internal clock. They have found that the sugars produced by plants are key to timekeeping.

H5N1 bird flu genes show nature can pick worrisome traits Posted: 23 Oct 2013 10:17 AM PDT In the beginning, all flu viruses came from birds. Over time, the virus evolved to adapt to other animals, including humans, as natural selection favored viruses with mutations that allowed them to more readily infect the cells of new host species.

Older siblings' cells can be passed from female dogs to their puppies in the womb Posted: 23 Oct 2013 09:56 AM PDT Researchers have found that microchimerism, a condition where some people possess a small number of cells in their bodies that are not genetically their own, can be passed from a female dog to her offspring while they are still in the womb. Microchimerism most often occurs when a mother gives birth to a child. In some cases, cells from that child are left in the mothers' body and continue to live, despite being of a different genetic makeup than surrounding cells. Researchers have identified evidence that those cells can then be passed on to other children the mother may give birth to at a later time.

New research illustrates Mississippi River's role in the transport and fate of the oil following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident Posted: 23 Oct 2013 09:56 AM PDT A new study has shown that the complex circulation from the Mississippi River plume played a substantial role in the transport and fate of the oil following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident. These findings provide new information on the transport of oil and other pollutants in the Gulf of Mexico.

Gilding the gum tree: Scientists strike gold in leaves Posted: 23 Oct 2013 07:13 AM PDT Eucalyptus trees -- or gum trees as they are known -- are drawing up gold particles from the earth via their root system and depositing it their leaves and branches.

Long-term memory helps chimpanzees in their search for food Posted: 23 Oct 2013 07:10 AM PDT Searching for bountiful fruit crops in the rain forest, chimpanzees remember past feeding experiences.

Super song learners: Mechanism for improving song learning in juvenile zebra finches uncovered Posted: 23 Oct 2013 06:07 AM PDT Most songbirds learn their songs from an adult model, mostly from the father. However, there are relatively large differences in the accuracy how these songs are copied. Researchers have now found in juvenile zebra finches a possible mechanism that is responsible for the differences in the intensity of song learning. They provided the nerve growth factor "BDNF" to the song control system in the brain. With this treatment the learning ability in juvenile males could be enhanced in such a way that they were able to copy the songs of the father as good as it had been observed in the best learners in a zebra finch nest.

People don't put a high value on climate protection Posted: 23 Oct 2013 06:07 AM PDT People are bad at getting a grip on collective risks. Climate change is a good example of this: the annual climate summits have so far not led to specific measures. The reason for this is that people attach greater value to an immediate material reward than to investing in future quality of life. Therefore, cooperative behavior in climate protection must be more strongly associated with short-term incentives such as rewards or being held in high esteem.

The molecular clock of the common buzzard: Influence of genes on dispersal behavior revealed Posted: 23 Oct 2013 06:05 AM PDT Be it hibernation or the routes of migratory birds: all animal behavior that is subject to annual rhythms is controlled by a molecular clock. Although this has been known for a long time, in many cases it is still unclear how far genes are involved in setting this internal clock. Up to now, this also applied to the common buzzard and its migration from parental breeding grounds.

A functional forest ecosystem is more than just trees Posted: 23 Oct 2013 06:05 AM PDT In 2011, the University of Jyväskylä held an academic conference on the ecological restoration of forests. The conference was visited by 53 researchers from 10 European countries. Now the researchers' ideas and discussions have been published in the appreciated Biological Conservation publication series.

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