Nearly 35% of all amphibians are now threatened of extinction raising them to the position of the most endangered group of animals in the world. Decline of amphibian populations and species is ongoing due to habitat loss, fungal disease, climate shift and agrochemical contaminants. These impacts are even worse to frogs that reproduce in water bodies such as streams and ponds.
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Prepare for more floods – in ways we are not used to - that’s the message from experts at Durham University who have studied rainfall and river flow patterns over 250 years.
Last summer was the second wettest on record and experts say we must prepare for worse to come.
Professor Stuart Lane, from Durham University’s new Institute of Hazard and Risk, says that after about 30 to 40 less eventful years, we seem to be entering a ‘flood-rich’ period. More flooding is likely over a number of decades.
| | | | | | | | | Professor Zhang FuCheng and his colleagues discovered and named a new confuciusornithid bird, Eoconfuciusornis zhengi, gen. et sp. nov. that lived 131 million years ago. It is the most primitive member of Family Confuciusornithidae and thus extends the lifespan of this family to 11Ma. In addition, Eoconfuciusornis and its relatives have many osteological transformations and represent an early adaptation toward improved flight in the evolution of Confuciusornithidae.
| | | | | | | | | With nearly one-third of amphibian species threatened with extinction worldwide, fueled in part by the widespread emergence of the deadly chytrid fungus, effective conservation efforts could not be more urgent. In a new article in the open-access journal PLoS Biology, Franco Andreone and his colleagues argue that one of the best places to focus these efforts is Madagascar, a global hotspot of amphibian diversity that shows no signs of amphibian declines—or traces of the chytrid fungus.
| | | | | | | | | The model fungus Podospora anserina (P. anserina) has undergone substantial evolution since its separation from Neurospora crassa, as revealed from the Podospora draft genome sequence published in BioMed Central’s open access journal, Genome Biology. The study also shows that the Podospora genome contains a large, highly specialised set of genes potentially involved in the breakdown of complex carbon sources, which may have potential use in biotechnology applications.
| | | | | | | | | Over the past decades climate change and its consequences for life on our planet have given rise to a growing scientific interest in the development of alternative energies. The fossil fuels that currently dominate our energy map are not only becoming scarce, but are moreover generating large quantities of contaminating gases. Within the field of renewable energies the scientific community is today devoting great efforts to investigating and developing fuel cells, capable of creating electrical energy from a chemical reaction between a fuel and oxygen.
| | | | | | | | | Scientists have put more meat on the theory that dinosaurs' closest living relatives are modern-day birds.
Molecular analysis, or genetic sequencing, of a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex protein from the dinosaur's femur confirms that T. rex shares a common ancestry with chickens, ostriches, and to a lesser extent, alligators.
Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation
| | | | | | | | | Biologists call for making available more detailed maps of the locations of biotech crops.
Access to maps of biotech crops on a county and township level will give researchers greater ability to analyze the effects of biotech crops on wildlife, water quality, and on pest and beneficial insects.
"Since 1996 more than a billion acres have been planted with biotech crops in the U.S.," said Michelle Marvier of Santa Clara University in Calif. "We don't really know what are the pros and cons of this important new agricultural technology."
| | | | | | | | | The shrinking expanse of Arctic sea ice is increasingly vulnerable to summer sunshine, new research concludes. The study, by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Colorado State University (CSU), finds that unusually sunny weather contributed to last summer's record loss of Arctic ice, while similar weather conditions in past summers do not appear to have had comparable impacts.
| | | | | | | | | When a tiny, quantum-scale, hypothetical balloon is popped in a vacuum, do the particles inside spread out all over the place as predicted by classical mechanics?
The question is deceptively complex, since quantum particles do not look or act like air molecules in a real balloon. Matter at the infinitesimally small quantum scale is both a wave and a particle, and its location cannot be fixed precisely because measurement alters the system.
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