ScienceDaily: Top Environment News

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• Insects modify mating behavior in anticipation of storms
• Computer scientists develop new approach to sort cells up to 38 times faster
• Fear of predators drives honey bees away from good food sources
• Longline fishery in Costa Rica kills thousands of sea turtles, sharks
• Red wine chemical, resveratrol, remains effective against cancer after the body converts it
• Transgendered males seen as an asset to some ancestral societies
• Tears for fears: Juvenile mice secrete a protective pheromone in their tears, blocking adult mating
• Insect repellent: Scientists find insect DEET receptors, develop safe alternatives to DEET
• Peculiar, diverse and dangerous to crops: A checklist of the scale insects of Iran
• Early mammal varieties declined as evolution of flowering plants radiated
• Streams below fracking wastewater treatment show elevated salts, metals, radioactivity
• Like father, not like son: Brain and song structure in zebra finches are strongly influenced by the environment
• Protecting the weedy and wild kin of globally important crops

Insects modify mating behavior in anticipation of storms Posted: 02 Oct 2013 03:56 PM PDT Insects modify calling and courting mating behavior in response to changes in air pressure.

Computer scientists develop new approach to sort cells up to 38 times faster Posted: 02 Oct 2013 11:11 AM PDT A team of engineers led by computer scientists has developed a new approach that marries computer vision and hardware optimization to sort cells up to 38 times faster than is currently possible. The approach could be used for clinical diagnostics, stem cell characterization and other applications.

Fear of predators drives honey bees away from good food sources Posted: 02 Oct 2013 11:11 AM PDT Honey bees live in a world filled with danger in which predators seize them from the sky and wait to ambush them on flowers. Such fear drives bees to avoid food sources closely associated with predators and, interestingly, makes colonies of bees less risk-tolerant than individual bees, according to a new study.

Longline fishery in Costa Rica kills thousands of sea turtles, sharks Posted: 02 Oct 2013 11:11 AM PDT The second-most-common catch on Costa Rica's longline fisheries in the last decade was not a commercial fish species. It was olive ridley sea turtles. These lines also caught more green turtles than most species of fish. These findings and more indicate that the Costa Rican longline fishery represents a major threat to the survival of eastern Pacific populations of sea turtles as well as sharks.

Red wine chemical, resveratrol, remains effective against cancer after the body converts it Posted: 02 Oct 2013 11:11 AM PDT A chemical found in red wine remains effective at fighting cancer even after the body's metabolism has converted it into other compounds.

Transgendered males seen as an asset to some ancestral societies Posted: 02 Oct 2013 10:14 AM PDT Transgendered androphilic males were accepted in traditional hunter-gatherer cultures because they were an extra set of hands to support their families. This is according to an ethnographic study. The study reports that this "kin selection" is still at play in pro-transgender societies today.

Tears for fears: Juvenile mice secrete a protective pheromone in their tears, blocking adult mating Posted: 02 Oct 2013 10:14 AM PDT While looking for novel pheromones that can control different instinctive mouse behaviors, researchers have discovered a pheromone found only in the tears of young mice. Their experiments showed that this molecule protects prepubescent mice from mating activity by adult male mice. The research provides the first step toward a detailed understanding of how a sensory system can regulate social behavior.

Insect repellent: Scientists find insect DEET receptors, develop safe alternatives to DEET Posted: 02 Oct 2013 10:14 AM PDT Researchers have identified DEET-detecting olfactory receptors in insects that cause repellency and three safe compounds that mimic DEET and could one day be used to prevent the transmission of deadly vector-borne diseases. Until now, no one had a clue about which olfactory receptor insects used to avoid DEET. Without the receptors, it was impossible to apply modern technology to design new repellents to improve upon DEET.

Peculiar, diverse and dangerous to crops: A checklist of the scale insects of Iran Posted: 02 Oct 2013 07:33 AM PDT Largely diverse and economically important group, the scale insects of Iran require further investigation and improvement of knowledge, both from taxonomic and practical point of view. A new detailed checklist of Coccoidea in Iran provides the first steps in the better understanding of the family and a call for future investigations and practical use of knowledge in pest control management.

Early mammal varieties declined as evolution of flowering plants radiated Posted: 02 Oct 2013 07:29 AM PDT The dramatic explosion of flowering plant species that occurred about 100 million years ago was thought to have been good news for evolving mammals. But new research suggests that wasn't necessarily the case.

Streams below fracking wastewater treatment show elevated salts, metals, radioactivity Posted: 02 Oct 2013 06:26 AM PDT Elevated levels of radioactivity, salts and metals have been found in river water and sediments at a site where treated water from oil and gas operations is discharged into a western Pennsylvania creek.

Like father, not like son: Brain and song structure in zebra finches are strongly influenced by the environment Posted: 02 Oct 2013 06:21 AM PDT A central topic in behavioral biology is the question, which aspects of a behavior are learned or expressed due to genetic predisposition. Today it is known that our personality and behavior are far less determined by the genetic background. Especially during development environmental factors can shape brain and behavior via so-called epigenetic effects. Thereby hormones play an important role. netic predisposition. However, it is relatively hard to discriminate the effects of the environment from that of the genes.

Protecting the weedy and wild kin of globally important crops Posted: 01 Oct 2013 07:12 PM PDT As more and more people recognize the importance of the wild relatives of crop plants to agriculture and food security, interest in cataloging and conserving these plants is building around the world. Agricultural researchers are working to identify and protect the wild relatives of domesticated crop plants both in the United States and abroad.

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