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.