Woolly mammoth to be brought back to life in five years

The woolly mammoth, which became extinct 10,000 years ago, will now be brought back to life from a cloned bone marrow within five years, scientists have claimed. Scientists from Russia's Sakha republic's mammoth museum and Japan's Kinki University will launch a joint research in 2012 in a bid to recreate the giant animal, the Daily Mail reported citing Kyodo News. The researchers say it may be possible to clone a woolly mammoth after they found a well-preserved bone marrow in a thigh bone recovered in Siberia. What i think about this is that if they can clone a mammoth just by using  a bone than they could clone almost anything know.

Fishing trends threaten marine predators

Current fishing trends are making iconic marine predators such as sharks, tuna, swordfish and marlin increasingly rare, Canadian researchers say.  Half of the North Atlantic and North Pacific waters under national jurisdiction have experienced a 90 percent decrease in the populations of top predators since the 1950s, researchers from the University of British Columbia report in the journal Marine Ecological Progress Series. Exploitation of marine predators started in coastal areas of northern countries, and then expanded to the high seas and to the southern hemisphere, they said. So in the future these problems can truly affect the growth of fish in those areas that are bieng affected.

 

Cleverer than a child of four, the birds who can read your mind

Birds intelligence in fact rivals that of apes who, along with crows, are able to do tasks that three and four-year-old children have difficulty with. The Aesop’s fable experiment was designed to see if corvids,the family of birds that includes crows, jays, ravens and jackdaws, have causal reasoning  the awareness that one event leads to another. According to the results they did and they also showed that they were good tool users. What is amazing about this is that these birds are not natural users of tools in the wild, so this is not a skill that natural selection has crafted over the centuries. Yet another experiment has shown that birds have  what is called ‘theory of mind’  in short, the ability to see the world from another bird’s point of view. All this experiments are showing more and more how these birds can actualy be put on the top of the list when it comes to smart animals.

'Skin bones' helped large dinosaurs survive

Bones contained entirely within the skin of some of the largest dinosaurs on Earth might have stored vital minerals to help the massive creatures survive and bear their young in tough times, according to new research by a team including a University of Guelph scientist. The study suggests that these long-necked plant-eaters used hollow "skin bones" called osteoderms to store minerals needed to maintain their huge skeletons and to lay large egg clutches. Sediments around the fossils show that the dinosaurs' environment was highly seasonal and semi-arid, with periodic droughts causing massive die-offs. Shaped like footballs sliced lengthwise and about the size of a gym bag in the adult, these bones are the largest osteoderms ever identified. The adult specimen's bone was hollow, likely caused by extensive bone remodelling, said Vickaryous one of the specialists of this finding.

New thinking required on wildlife disease

 A University of Adelaide scientist says much more could be done to predict the likelihood and spread of serious disease such as tuberculosis (TB) or foot-and-mouth disease in Australian wildlife and commercial stock. Professor Corey Bradshaw  has evaluated freely available software tools that provide a realistic prediction of the spread of disease among animals.  Buffalo can harbour bovine tuberculosis, which poses a threat to commercial cattle livestock. They were introduced to northern Australia in the 1800s from Timor-Leste. In the 1980s and 1990s the government of the time began a broad-scale culling program, culling tens of thousands of buffalo.  Professor Bradshaw says Australia needs to implement tools such as those combining disease and population models to help plan the response to any potential return of TB  or other, nastier diseases, such as foot-and-mouth.

Could Curiosity Determine if Viking Found Life on Mars?

One of the most controversial and long-debated aspects of Mars exploration has been the results of the Viking landers’ life-detection experiments back in the 1970s. While the preliminary findings were consistent with the presence of bacteria (or something similar) in the soil samples, the lack of organics found by other instruments forced most scientists to conclude that the life-like responses were most likely the result of unknown chemical reactions, not life. Gilbert V. Levin, however, one of the primary scientists involved with the Viking experiments, has continued to maintain that the Viking landers did indeed find life in the Martian soil. Curiosity is not specifically a life-detection mission. Rather, it continues the search for evidence of habitability, both now and in the past.  Levin believes it could find knew life, between its organics detection capability and its high-resolution cameras.

Whiskers: Milestone in Evolution of Mammals

Research comparing rats and mice with their distance relatives the marsupial, suggested that moveable whiskers were an important milestone in the evolution of mammals from reptiles.Using high-speed digital video recording and automatic tracking, the research team, which was led by Professor Tony Prescott from the from Sheffield University's Department of Psychology, have shed light on how rodents such as mice and rats move their whiskers back-and-forth at high speed and in varying ways to actively sense the environment around them in a behavior known as whisking. Whisking allows mice or rats to accurately determine the position, shape and texture of objects, make rapid and accurate decisions about objects, and then use the information to build environmental maps. For example when running in a straight line, rats and mice move their whiskers back-and-forth the same amount on both sides.

Big Cats' Roars Due to Unusual Vocal Cords

"When lions and tigers roar loudly and deeply - terrifying every creature within earshot - they are somewhat like human babies crying for attention, although their voices are much deeper."Says the senior author of a new study that shows lions' and tigers' loud, low-frequency roars are predetermined by physical properties of their vocal fold tissue. While the comparison was not part of the study, Titze says a baby "cries to have people come to help it. The lion uses similar attention-getting sound, but mainly to say, 'I am here, this is my territory, get out of here.'' The new study's key finding is that lions and tigers can roar loudly and deeply because their vocal folds have a flat, square shape and can withstand strong stretching and shearing. That contradicts a theory that lions roar deeply because the vocal folds are heavy with fat. 

New model more accurately describes migratory animals' extinction risk

 Researchers at the University of Georgia and Tulane University have developed a mathematical model that may make such predictions more accurate. Their work appears in the early online edition of the Royal Society journal Biology Letters."The concern is that for a lot of species, we don't know very much about their wintering grounds," said Richard Hall, assistant research scientist in the UGA Odum School of Ecology. "Here in the U.S. we do a pretty good job of conserving breeding habitat for species of concern, but often we have no idea what kinds of threats are facing their non-breeding areas."Hall and Tulane University's Caz Taylor developed a new model that builds upon a theory of population dynamics known as metapopulation theory. Metapopulation theory describes the fraction of suitable habitat patches occupied by a species. Individuals from a sub-population emigrate from their original site to colonize previously unoccupied patches of new habitat where they either survive or die out. When the rate of successful colonization exceeds the rate of extinction, the proportion of occupied patches rises and the metapopulation is likely to persist.

No single cause for mass extinctions

 A recently published study suggests that neither climate change nor human factors accounts for mass extinctions of large mammals, during the Ice Age.The inter-disciplinary research team, which included 40 institutions from around the world, included Professor Alan Haywood, a paleoclimatologist from the University of Leeds, who helped provide climate simulations for the project. A subject of much debate in recent decades, the study helps scientists know whether humans or climate change caused the mass extinctions of a third of large mammals in Eurasia and two thirds in North America.  The study concluded that neither humans nor climate change alone caused mass extinctions in the Ice Age, effectively putting an end to debate on the possibility of a single-cause.  However, despite the large amount of data used in this study, the reasons why some species survived while others went extinct remains unclear, making predictions about existing mammals’ response to future global climate change difficult.

Eating fish can reduce the risk of diabetes

A study analyses the dietary patterns of the adult Spanish population with high cardiovascular risk. The results reveal a high consumption of both red meat and fish. However, whilst eating lots of cured meats is associated with greater weight gain and a higher obesity rate, the consumption of fish is linked to lower glucose concentrations and a smaller risk of developing diabetes. Mercedes Sotos Prieto, lead author of the study which forms part of the Preformed study (Prevention with a Mediterranean Diet) and researcher at the University of Valencia explains how "in Mediterranean countries, consumption of foods that typically form part of the diet here has decreased in recent decades. The consumption of saturated fats mainly from red meats and industrial baking has increased and this is really worrying." So next time you go to a restaurant you might want to consider a seafood not a stake.

Hooking fish, not endangered turtles

A tuna fisherman has tahimself to make the seas safer for sea turtles, animals ken it upon that are threatened or endangered with extinction worldwide. He’s designed a new hook that he says will make bait and the lethal barb that secures it unavailable to marine birds and turtles until long after it’s sunk well below the range where these animals venture to eat.  He’s created a large round shield that crews snap over a fairly standard baited hook. A typical longline deployed by tuna fleets might run up to 150 kilometers. A single line may carry from 1,000 to 3,000 barbed hooks one spaced every 50 meters or so. “Tuna longline fishing sets over 2 billion of these hooks globally each year,” Jusseit says. “We’ve shown in tests on longline boats in Australia that fishermen catch more fish using this hook,” Jusseit reports. One reason: Seabirds and turtles typically abscond with up to 15 percent of the bait. The heavy new guards also will substitute for pricy sinkers used to initially pull the hooks down to the target depths, he says.  

Climate change causing massive movement of tree species across the West

"In an enormous display of survival of the fittest, the forests of the future are taking a new shape." Says the writer of the article, according to the article scientists outline the impact that a changing climate will have on which tree species can survive, and where. The study suggests that many species that were once able to survive and thrive are losing their competitive footholds, and opportunistic newcomers will eventually push them out. So according to what the article says in the future the natural trees you see around you will probably die out and be found in unnatural places. For example we might start finding palm trees in colder places. "In some cases, once-common species such as lodgepole pine will be replaced by other trees, perhaps a range expansion of ponderosa pine or Douglas-fir," says the writer. The article also says that some areas may shift completely out of forest into grass savannah or sagebrush desert. In central California, researchers concluded that more than half of the species now present would not be expected to persist in the climate conditions of the future. 

How mammoths lost the extinction lottery

 Researchers who studied the fate of six species of 'megafauna' over the past 50,000 years found that climate change and habitat loss were involved in many of the extinctions, with humans playing a part in some cases but not others. But there was no clear pattern to explain why the animals died off, and it proved impossible to predict from habitat or genetic diversity which species would go extinct. For a more consistent picture, scientists charted the population dynamics of woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, wild horses, reindeer, steppe bison and musk ox. As the climate  warmed, woolly rhinos, woolly mammoths and the Eurasian populations of musk oxen went extinct as populations became more and more isolated from one another. But these extinctions happened thousands of years apart, and the animals' ranges changed in different ways. So at the end scientists concluded that temperature and human interaction were the main causes for mammoth extinction.

Birds Fly in the Face of Climate Change Expectations

 Researchers in California were surprised to find that West Coast birds have been growing larger in recent decades. “The finding that birds are getting bigger draws into question what’s driving the change in size.” Ms. Goodman and her colleagues analyzed data dating back 40 years from two different California bird observatories. Body mass and wing-span measurements of nearly 33,000 birds representing dozens of species collected from 1971 to 2010 were analyzed for variations over time.The researchers found that wing length had been steadily increasing and body mass had expanded. Some of the species migrate between Alaska and Latin America, while others breed locally or are short-distance migrants, but the rate of change in size did not depend on where the birds spent the majority of their longitudinal time. Ms. Goodman laid out a number of hypotheses. "More severe West Coast weather events may favor larger birds that are better able to cope with prolonged stresses since they have greater stores of energy" she said. 

Slime killer hagfish feasts in rotten flesh

 Hagfish are partway between fish and worms, with a spinal cord but no backbone. They resemble the common ancestor of all backboned animals, and have changed little in at least 300 million years. This is how it would eat you  "After you're dead it will drag you out of your burrow and devour you. But it's unlikely anyone will try to devour it in turn, because that slime it used to kill you also protects it from predators. Besides, why would anyone want to eat a creature that regularly eats decaying corpses from the inside out?" This creature is truly a beast from another world for me it would be a great monster for a movie.Long thought to be scavengers, they have now been seen actively hunting for the first time. Vincent Zintzen of the Museum of New Zealand in Wellington and colleagues used underwater video cameras to catch them in action. The researchers saw that the fish released a lot of slime and they found out that it could be used for shark repellant. This scary creatures have evolved to be one of the best prepared animals in the world.

Bacteria promises new allergy-free sunscreen

 Scientists are hoping to develop allergy-free sunscreen creams from a substance found in certain bacteria. Sunscreen use has increased with the awareness that radiation emitted by the sun can give rise to skin cancer. But these creams can give rise to contact allergy when exposed to the sun, and this has led to an increasing incidence of skin allergies.Now, scientists at the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology are looking for a natural UV filter that does not have these undesired effects."We have therefore studied a UV filter, scytonemin, that is found in certain bacteria. We have managed to produce this substance artificially in the laboratory," Isabella Karlsson stated. Scytonemin is produced by certain cyanobacteria that live in habitats exposed to very strong sunlight. Scytonemin absorbs UV light and thus protects the bacteria from being damaged by the sun's radiation. However, more research will be required before it can be added to sunscreen creams. So next time you buy a sun screen you might be putting on what was on bacteria once.

Dinosaur Teeth Reveal Large Migrations

An analysis of fossilized teeth from dinosaurs in the western United States has provided the first concrete evidence that sauropods undertook seasonal migrations in search of food.Scientists have often assumed that dinosaurs did, in fact, migrate.  However, it is difficult to determine from fossils even what dinosaurs looked like, let alone infer their behavior.But Henry Fricke, head of geology at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, and his colleagues seem to have found solid evidence that sauropod dinosaurs moved hundreds of miles each year. “In a theoretical sense, it’s not hugely surprising. They are huge they would probably have eaten themselves out of house and home if they stayed in one place,” Fricke said. Fricke and his colleagues analyzed fossil from 32 teeth that belonged to sauropods of the genus Camarasaurus.  The teeth were collected at Thermopolis in Wyoming and Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, and date from the late Jurassic period (160 million to 145 million years ago).This finding has helped many scientists to know how dinosaurs survived in the past.

Is Coffee In Danger Of Extinction?

This is a very good article that talks about how Coffee is being put in the endangered list by climate change.  It has become so serious that even the big corporation Starbucks chief has been pushing the Obama administration over concerns about the world coffee supply being threatened by climate change. Jim Hanna told the news agency that Starbuck’s coffee farmers are already seeing the effects of climate change, with severe hurricanes and bugs that are resistant to pesticides.  The report said Starbucks is part of a business coalition that has been trying to push Congress and the Obama administration to act on climate change, but has seen little success. Although the big problems with the coffe will take about 20 more years to become really serious, the big company wants to prevent those problems by starting a campain now.

Giant pandas' belly bacteria helps digest bamboo

How giant pandas survive on a diet of hard-to-digest bamboo has been questined by many  researchers. It turns out, the bears carry around their own digestive helpers in their bellies, a new study suggests. Though the pandas, which can grow to 350 pounds, are closely related to meat eaters, the vast majority of their diet is plants, in the form of bamboo.  The study showed that cellulose-degrading bacteria live in the gut of the panda, Wei the leader of the study said. "It is highly possible that it is this kind of bacterium [that] plays an essential role in the degradation of cellulose of the giant panda."  The Pandas stomach evolutionised so it could be able to eat what other mammals cant. For example us humans cannot eat bark of a tree because we do not contain those cellulose eating bacteria in our stomachs.

Tree-dwelling animals were the first to fly, new research suggests

 A six-legged, 25 gram robot has been fitted with flapping wings in order to gain an insight into the evolution of early birds and insects. The researchers, from the University of California, Berkley and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institut, proposed that testing the wings on robots could provide an insight into how they evolved in early birds. Fossils of animals closely related to dinosaurs, dating back further than when birds actually existed, show that feathers were present on all four limbs, suggesting that the original function of wings was to help animals glide when dropping from a height, just like a paper plane.  An alternative theory is that the first wings may have appeared in land-based animals, functioning as a mechanism to increase running speeds and then leading to take-offs and flying after. The aim of this research was to see how much of an advantage flapping wings give a running animal. This study has shown scientists how some species used their feathers at first way before they were able to fly.

Stanford researchers examine impact of 'green politics' on recent national elections

According to the website, political candidate's electoral victory or defeat is influenced by his or her stance on climate change policy. According to new Stanford University studies which were based on some of the most recent presidential and congressional elections. "These studies are a coordinated effort looking at whether candidates' statements on climate change translated into real votes," said Jon Krosnick, professor of communication and of political science at Stanford, who led two new studies one of the 2008 presidential election and one of the 2010 congressional elections. According to the studies people prefer a greener canidate. Wich would be ovious because nobody wants a president who does not care about the enviornment. This is a good thing for the enviornment because that means that people are looking for ways to help the enviornment.

Minnesota discovery could make fuel and plastics production more energy efficient and cost effective

A University of Minnesota team of researchers has overcome a major problem in the quest to design a specialized type of molecular structure that could make the production of gasoline, plastics and various chemicals more cost effective and energy efficient. The breakthrough research, was led by chemical engineering and materials science professor Michael Tsapatsis in the university's College of Science and Engineering. After more than a decade of research, the team finaly found what they needed to develop freestanding, ultra-thin zeolite nanosheets that as thin films can speed up the filtration process and require less energy. The team has a provisional patent and hopes to commercialize the technology. This will have an imense effect on the enviornment because it will release less harmful gases into the atmosphere.

Vertebrate ancestor had 'sixth sense'

According to studies 96 percent of vertebrates descended from ancestor with sixth sense. Sharks, paddlefishes and certain other aquatic vertebrates have another sense: They can detect weak electrical fields in the water and use this information to detect prey, communicate and orient themselves. A study in Nature Communications that caps more than 25 years of work finds that the vast majority of vertebrates about 30,000 species of land animals including humans and a roughly equal number of ray-finned fishes have descended from a common ancestor that had a well-developed electroreceptive system. According to the website this ancestor was probably a predatory marine fish with good eyesight, jaws and teeth and a lateral line system for detecting water movements. It lived around 500 million years ago. This knew finding has helped scientist fill in some gaps in the evolutionary timeline.

Researchers Turn Cloned Human Embryo into Working Stem Cell Line

 Scientists are trying to take an unfertilized egg, swap out the single set of chromosomes in the egg for the two sets of chromosomes in a patient’s adult cells, and initiate a process wherein the egg develops by  following the instructions of the new DNA.  Usually, this process fails, Cultures stop developing after a division or two. So the NY Stem Cell team went looking for the cause of failure. Through a series of experiments they found that whatever the problem is, it’s introduced during the removal of the egg’s native single chromosome DNA. So they did what most of us do they skipped a step to find the cause of the problem.  The new way  worked, and they produced an embryo that developed up to what’s known as the blastocyst stage, where the culture contains nearly 100 cells. At this point, stem cells can be extracted from the embryo. This has made a huge breakthrough when it comes to stem cells. In the future we might get a full grown baby but untill then this scientists have alot to find.

Seed time-capsule will aid study of plant evolution amid environmental change

What if scientists resurrect actual specimens and compare their features with their modern-day descendants? That's a notion that has University of Toronto biologists helping to create a seed bank that will let future researchers do exactly that with plants, allowing them to measure evolution caused by global change. "Today's plants are the ancestors of future generations," says Arthur Weis, a U of T ecology and evolutionary biologist and director of the Koffler Scientific Reserve. "Decades from now, plant biologists can go to the same populations as we are collecting from now and collect seeds from 'descendant' generations. By growing the ancestor seeds and descendant seeds under the same conditions, they will be able to detect which traits have changed and which have not." The Koffler Scientific Reserve will be the anchor location for the Canadian effort. It will also collect seeds of several additional species of local concern, including Black-eyed Susan, Queen Ann's lace and Trillium plants. Also this seeds could be helpful if the plant species goes extinct in the future. We could use the ones we store to bring the species back.

Aquatic Fish Jump Into Picture of Evolutionary Land Invasion

Professor Alice Gibb and her research team at Northern Arizona University witnessed a small amphibious fish, the mangrove rivulus, jump with apparent skill and purpose out of a small net and back into the water. This was no random flop, like you might see from a trout that’s just been landed. The rivulus seemed to know what it was doing. Gibb said the study “supports a big-picture theory in evolution,” which is that the nervous system, in its control of bones and muscles, can allow a new behavior to appear without necessarily bringing about a physical change. According to the researchers this can be used as a example of how life changes to its own benefit. Also Gibb said, “This shows that you don’t have to have legs or rigid pectoral fins to move around on land. So if you go back and look at the fossil record to try to say which fish could move around on land, you’d have a hard time knowing for sure.” This new theory has made some scientist rethink how fishes started to move on land.

Wildlife Conservation Society study uncovers a predictable sequence toward coral reef collapse

Coral reefs that have lots of corals and appear healthy may, in fact, be heading toward collapse, according to a study published by the Wildlife Conservation Society. Using data from coral reef systems across the western Indian Ocean, an international team of researchers identified how overfishing creates a series of at least eight big changes on reefs that precipitate a final collapse. The study shows that in well-protected areas, there are typically 1000-1500 kilograms of reef fish of various species. As the volume is fished down below 1000 kilograms, the early warning signslike increased seaweed growth and urchin activitybegin to appear. The authors recommend measuring the biomass of fish instead of coral cover to identify the early warning rather than the final sign of reef collapse. To me this was pretty wierd because i thought that animal populations when down when enviornments were destroyed but her we have an example that shows that if animal pupulation goes down than the enviornment suffers too.

Interior's Wild Horse Chief Strongly Denies Claims of 'Extinction' Management

The Interior Department's wild horse and burro chief assured critics that her agency is not selling horses for slaughter and that the agency is not contributing to the extinction of this two animals. Joan Guilfoyle, division chief for the Bureau of Land Management's wild horse and burro program, said a mix of fertility control and herd gathers is critical to maintaining a healthy balance on the range, but that extinction is not the agency foult. The owner of the agency also said that that BLM sells horses only to those who have pledged to treat them humanely and not sell them for slaughter. "As a matter of fact, BLM prosecutes people who do that," said Guilfoyle. As she talked, the crowed shouted "Lies" and "We don't believe you." A pair of Utah men were indicted by a federal grand jury for an alleged scheme that investigators said involved the planned sale of wild horses to Mexico for slaughter. I think that if this is realy happening the government should take action against this unlawful things because they are literaly killing all the wild horses and burros in America.

Fish cought using a tool

The first video of tool use by a fish has been published in the journal Coral Reefs by Giacomo Bernardi, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. An orange-dotted tuskfish digs a clam out of the sand, carries it over to a rock, and repeatedly throws the clam against the rock to crush it. Bernardi shot the video in Palau in 2009.  Bernardi said. “It requires a lot of forward thinking, because there are a number of steps involved. For a fish, it’s a pretty big deal.” The actions recorded in the video are remarkably similar to previous reports of tool use by fish. Every case has involved a species of wrasse using a rock  to crush shellfish. A report published in June in Coral Reefs included photos of this behavior in a blackspot tuskfish on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Bernardi said he first heard of the phenomenon in 1994, when a colleague observed a yellowhead wrasse in Florida doing the same thing. Similar behavior was also reported in a sixbar wrasse in an aquarium. Does  this mean that fish are getting smarter, to me it does. For an animal to have that type of skills they have to be smart.

Online gamers succeed were scientists fail

Online gamers have solved the structure of a retrovirus enzyme whose configuration had made scientists cry because they could not figure it out. The players were addicted  to a computer game, Foldit, that allows players to collaborate and compete in predicting the structure of protein molecules. After scientists repeatedly failed to piece together the structure of a protein-cutting enzyme from an AIDS-like virus, they called in the Foldit players. The scientists challenged the gamers to produce an accurate model of the enzyme, and guess what they did find it. Something that is incredible because scientists could not do it and people that play video games did. With this knew findings scientists will have a better chance to fight against AIDS which will have a dramatic impact on all of the world. Especially Africa were a good cure is much needed. Who would of thought that video gamers could have such a big impact on a scientific dilemma.

Hydrogen fuel from just bacteria and water

Hydrogen, a potential clean energy source, can be sustainably generated using just seawater, river water and bacteria, according to new research. Hydrogen is a potentially valuable energy source, however environmental concerns about using fossil fuels to produce the gas, and about production costs, have limited its application so far.Previous studies have shown that hydrogen gas can be produced by harnessing the by-products of microbial organic matter metabolism in a device called a microbial electrolysis cell. But the process requires an additional input of electricity to make it work effectively. According to reaserch hydrogen can be produced in a single device by integrating a water-based power supply into the system. With this knew findings we can change the way the world is affected by the use of gasoline. I think that if this study shows more good things than in the future we might as well use water and bacteria to move around.

Ancient impact killed birds too

 According to recent studies scientists concluded  that prehistoric birds went extinct the same way dinosaurs did, U.S. researchers say, that birds were also victims of the same meteorite impact 65 million years ago. Their has been many debates between scientists about the controversy whether archaic birds, died out slowly over time or were killed off by the giant impact in the Gulf of Mexico. Researchers from Yale University say fossil evidence shows the birds were going strong right up until the time of the impact, and then mostly disappeared. Researchers examined a large collection of bird fossils discovered in North America representing a wide range of the species that existed during the Cretaceous period. The fossils of those birds are not found in later times. To me i think that the scientists should keep on looking for more data because they might find a fossil of the archaic birds in a longer time than the ones they found.

Judge Backs Deal on Imperiled Species

A federal judge on Friday approved a pair of sweeping settlements that require the government to consider endangered protections for more than 800 animal and plant species. The order by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan means the government must act on imperiled species ranging from the northern wolverine and Pacific walrus to dozens of snails, mollusks, butterflies and plants. Some decisions could come by the end of the year and others by 2018.  The agreement between the Obama administration and environmental groups resolves more than a dozen lawsuits that challenged the government's handling of roughly 250 candidate species. Those are animals and plants that scientists say are in dire need of protection but that the government has lacked resources to address. The agreements also cover more than 600 species for which groups had filed legal petitions seeking protections. The government agreed to address those petitions, although there is no guarantee of new protections. These new settlements will be key to help all the endangered species that are in great need of help. The population of the animals in the lists will surely be increasing after this settlements.

Whole-parasite malaria vaccine shows promise in University of Maryland School of Medicine clinical trial

For the first time, a malaria vaccine that uses the entire malaria parasite has proven safe and shown promise to produce a strong immune response in a clinical trial, according to a new study co-authored by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine Center. The vaccine is unique in that it looks like  the entire malaria parasite, while most experimental malaria vaccines consist of just one or at most a few proteins found in the parasite. Researchers found that the vaccine the first whole parasite vaccine to be approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration for clinical trials  could provide better immune responses against malaria when administered. Though malaria has been largely eliminated in much of the developed world, it is still a widespread threat in warm, tropical areas where infected mosquitoes thrive, such as Africa. Malaria, kills nearly one million people and infects 300 million annually worldwide. The condition can be treated with anti-parasite drugs, but can kill anyone who is not immune to the parasite. Children under the age of five succumb at high rates to the neurological and cardiac effects of malaria, particularly in Africa. With this new vaccine many lives can be saved, which will have a dramatic effect on human population in Africa and other places were malaria is found.

A Jekyll-and-Hyde Act for the Feathered Set

Honeybirds or Honeyguides are birds that guide humans to beehives. After we finish taking all the honey that we need they feed on whats left but not everything is good when it comes to these birds. Studies have shown that these birds are also parasites with a bad side. Honeyguides lay their eggs in the nests of a bird called the bee eater. When a honeyguide chick hatches, it jabs its beak into its foster siblings and shakes them until they die. At that age the birds are blind but they still commit their brutal murders.Remarkably, they also found that the baby honeyguide can mimic the call of an entire brood of bee eaters. After killing its foster siblings, the young honeyguide misleads its foster mother into thinking that she is still nurturing her own chicks. Which is amasing, as an effect this honeybirds are dramaticaly changing the population of other birds. The honeyguide appears to exhibit this parasitic behavior in the nests of at least four other species of birds. Dr. Spottiswoode  the leader of the study is studying how it has evolved the unique adaptations that allow it to exploit each host species.

Stem cell 'zoo" may save rare species

Scientists say that they have found a new way to help indengered species survive. With this new breack threw dozens of nearly extinct animals might be saved. What this new way is you ask ? well it is stem cell use.''The best way to manage extinction is to preserve species and habitats but that is not always working.Stem cell technology provides some level of hope that they won't have to become extinct even though they have been completely eliminated from their habitat.'' said Oliver Ryder scientists from the San Diego Zoo were all this is taking place. Ryider has two animals in mind to start the process on. The first one is the northern white rhinoceros. Which only seven specimens remain in existence, all in captivity and two in San Diego. The second endangered animal is a primate called the drill. The drill is a close cousin to humans. There are many studies that have been used on drills before they were put on test in humans. Dr Ryder's team had collected skin cells and tissue samples from more than 800 species, stored in a ''frozen zoo'', by 2006. Dr Ryder met up with Dr Loring to start the stem cell project. At first, Dr Ryder and Dr Loring tried to use genes from animals closely related to the target species in order to trigger the transformation, but the experiments failed. Through trial and error, they discovered to their amazement that the same genes that induce pluripotency in humans also worked for the drill and the rhino. In the future this technique might save almost all the nearly extict animals in the world.

Blind Cave Fish can tell time

The blind cave fish has spent millions of years underground isolated from evidence of day and night still  has a working biological clock. For normal animals the internal clock is called circudian rythm. For example Animals that can see know what time it is if it is dark or sunny outside. Yet for the cave fish their is no answer to now it has a clock. The only thing that scientists found was that they might know what time it is when they get hungry. For example they have a certain time for each meal. What shocked the scientists the most was that the cave fish was not sincronized in a 24 hour clock but in a 47 hour clock. According to the scientists in the future the cave fish might loose its ability to tell time.

Poor outlook for water quality in Germany

According to the journal Enviornmental Sciences and Technology durin 1994 to 2004 there was a river monitoring in northern Germany. With the technology that we have today that data was used to measure how toxic the river were. The data showed that the rivers were super toxic and that they are still toxic today. The data was used to look for 331 toxics that should not be found in water, out of those 331 toxics 257 were found in the rivers. Also banned pesticides were found in the water. According to the journal, with the toxic water flora and fauna will suffer toxic impacts. They also found aout threw experiments that water flees could not sustain life in those waters well. The studies showed that 50 percent of the water fleas died when living in the water with the 257 toxics.