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.