Earth

In the production of organic vegetables, nitrogen is important, yet can be quite costly to manage. Nitrogen management is even more challenging when production practices call for the use of polyethylene mulch combined with fertigation. The authors of a new study published in HortScience have found that hydrolyzed fish fertilizer holds promise as an "economically feasible" nitrogen source for growing organic vegetables.

Would-be participants of higher education must be given full and transparent advice before they accumulate debts as students that follow them into the workplace, according to a report published in the International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education.

An analysis conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) found that the risks of drinking raw (unpasteurized) cow's milk are significant. Consumers are nearly 100 times more likely to get foodborne illness from drinking raw milk than they are from drinking pasteurized milk. In fact, the researchers determined that raw milk was associated with over half of all milk-related foodborne illness, even though only an estimated 3.5% of the U.S. population consumes raw milk.

Natural wetlands usually emit methane and sequester carbon dioxide. Anthropogenic interventions, in particular the conversion of wetlands for agriculture, result in a significant increase in CO2 emissions, which overcompensate potential decreases in methane emission. A large international research team now calculated that the conversion of arctic and boreal wetlands into agricultural land would result in an additional cumulative radiative forcing of about 0,1 MilliJoule (mJ) per square meter for the next 100 years.

Almost half of the 36 species of felids that live in the wild in the world are at threat, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Yet the lack of studies regarding their main threat, the loss and fragmentation of their habitat, limits the establishment of effective conservation strategies. These are the findings of a study which has only been able to find 162 scientific articles regarding this threat which clearly endangers the Iberian lynx.

Yehuda Ben-Shahar and Eirik Søvik of Washington University in St. Louis and Andrew Barron's lab at Macquarie University in Australia, have write in Biology Letters that risk to bees is not neonics or global warming, it is instead metals.

Metals? Yes, metal from manufacturing and mining is present at levels harmful to bees, they say.

Amidst fears that global warming could zap a vital source of protein that has sustained humans for centuries, bean breeders with the CGIAR global agriculture research partnership announced today the discovery of 30 new types, or lines as plant breeders refer to them, of "heat-beater" beans that could keep production from crashing in large swaths of bean-dependent Latin America and Africa.

The marketing, prescribing and selling of testosterone and growth hormone as panaceas for aging-associated problems is disease mongering. So assert Thomas Perls, MD, MPH, FACP, a geriatrician at Boston Medical Center and professor of Geriatrics and Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine; and David Handelsman, MB BS, FRACP, PhD, professor of Reproductive Endocrinology and Andrology, director of the ANZAC Research Institute, University of Sydney and Andrology Department, Concord Hospital. Their editorial is published in this month's Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical that is used in a variety of consumer products, such as water bottles, dental composites and resins used to line metal food and beverage containers. Often, aquatic environments such as rivers and streams become reservoirs for contaminants, which can include products containing BPA.

When radiation suddenly contaminates the land your family has farmed and lived on for generations, you might not expect soil to protect crops and human health - that is like expecting the mugging victim to track down the criminal - but that is what happens.

By examining more than 3,600 postmortem brains, researchers at Mayo Clinic's campuses in Jacksonville, Florida, and Rochester, Minnesota, have found that the progression of dysfunctional tau protein drives the cognitive decline and memory loss seen in Alzheimer's disease. Amyloid, the other toxic protein that characterizes Alzheimer's, builds up as dementia progresses, but is not the primary culprit, they say.

Researchers at The Ohio State University have discovered how to control heat with a magnetic field.

In the March 23 issue of the journal Nature Materials, they describe how a magnetic field roughly the size of a medical MRI reduced the amount of heat flowing through a semiconductor by 12 percent.

The study is the first ever to prove that acoustic phonons--the elemental particles that transmit both heat and sound--have magnetic properties.

The human genome can be very forgiving. When children inherit chromosomes from their parents, some minor genetic changes frequently occur with few, if any, consequences. One exception, as researchers report in the March 19 issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics, is chromosomal shattering, termed chromothripsis, which the authors found in healthy mothers who had each given birth to a severely affected child. The findings could have important implications for genetic testing and issues related to infertility.

Chlorine, a disinfectant commonly used in most wastewater treatment plants, may be failing to completely eliminate pharmaceuticals from wastes. As a result, trace levels of these substances get discharged from the plants to the nation's waterways. And now, scientists are reporting preliminary studies that show chlorine treatment may encourage the formation of new, unknown antibiotics that could also enter the environment, potentially contributing to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.

Scientists have turned to the opossum to develop a promising new and inexpensive antidote for poisonous snake bites. They predict it could save thousands of lives worldwide without the side effects of current treatments.

Worldwide, an estimated 421,000 cases of poisonous snake bites and 20,000 deaths from these bites occur yearly, according to the International Society on Toxicology.