Stories tagged Interdependence of Life
Tall order: Scientists are cloning giant redwood trees from California in an effort to reforest lost trees and combat climate change.Courtesy VictorgrigasStart talking about giant cloning projects, and the conversation is going to quickly turn to Jurassic Park, the film that "what iffed" the cloning of dinosaurs. It was all for fun, if beyond hypothetical.
But giants of another kind, trees, are being cloned in an effort to help turn the balance of deteriorating conditions here on Earth. California's iconic, and incredibly tall, redwood trees are getting the cloning treatment. You can read the full details about the project here. And today, Earth Day 2013, the project is going global as clones of these redwoods are being planted in Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, Germany and the U.S.
Why clone just behemoth trees? The guys running the project surmise where better to find the strongest, hardiest genetic codes to withstand the coming climate pressures than in these huge redwoods, many which have lived for over 4,000 years.
The current crop of plantings come from the DNA of giant trees cut down about a century ago. Even though the bulk of the trees are just stumps today, those stumps are very much alive. They have live shoots emerging from the stumps, which the researchers can extract DNA from to serve as the basis for their cloning work.
The new plantings have a long way to go. They're only about 18 inches tall right now. The big challenge, the researchers say, is to find people and resources to nurture this little trees into viable, independent growers.
Redwoods are considered best suited to absorb massive volumes of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas primarily responsible for climate change.
What do you think? Is this a good application for cloning? Can these huge trees make a difference with climate change over the long haul? Should we be tinkering around with this kind of science?
Tags : ![Home at last: Our late cat, Ernesto "El Gato Gordo" Hemingway, seen recuperating after somehow managing to find his way back home from across the street in 1997.](/sites/default/files/images/ernie_chair011.jpg "Home at last: Our late cat, Ernesto "El Gato Gordo" Hemingway, seen recuperating after somehow managing to find his way back home from across the street in 1997.")
Home at last: Our late cat, Ernesto "El Gato Gordo" Hemingway, seen recuperating after somehow managing to find his way back home from across the street in 1997.Courtesy Mark RyanA cat in Florida got loose on one side of the state and managed to find its way back home to the other side, baffling both the delighted owners and scientists. Holly, the directionally-savvy 4-year-old tortoiseshell cat traveled from Daytona Beach to within a mile of her owners’ home in West Palm Beach. It took her about 50 days to traverse the 200 mile distance. When found, the poor kitty was weak and emaciated, had a croaky meow, and displayed signs of hoofing it over long distances.
“Her pads on her feet were bleeding,” said Bonnie Richter, who along with her husband, Jacob, are the happy owners (read: service staff) of the migratory feline. “Her claws are worn weird. The front ones are really sharp, the back ones worn down to nothing.
Skeptics might conjecture that the found cat is merely a stray that just looks like the long-lost Holly, and that the distraught owners only think it’s their cat because they miss her so and want to believe it’s her. Well, they couldn’t be more wrong. The scruffy cat in question had an implanted microchip that proves it is indeed Holly.
The Richters’ tale is but one of many incredible stories about lost or separated pets finding their way back home across vast distances. And surprisingly, science doesn’t seem to have any answers as how the animals do it.
“I really believe these stories, but they’re just hard to explain,” said Marc Bekoff, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Colorado. “Maybe being street-smart, maybe reading animal cues, maybe being able to read cars, maybe being a good hunter. I have no data for this.”
SOURCE
New York Times story
Darn those invisible force fields!: Wait, should those be little cartoon birdies circling its head?Courtesy Wikimedia CommonsIf you're a bird, the human-built world has some mysterious hazards. You're flitting about, minding your own business, maybe munching seeds at the birdfeeder in someone's yard. Life is pretty good. But then you take off from your perch, zip through the air, and suddenly BAM! crash into an invisible force field whose impact leaves you stunned at best and, at worst, sends you to the giant suet ball in the sky.
The transparency of windows and the tendency of their shiny surfaces to mirror the trees and outdoor spaces that they overlook makes them deadly--birds mistake them for open passages, flying straight into them and conking their little melons on the glass. A recent study in Canada suggests that collisions with house windows alone kills some 22 million Canadian birds each year.
But, there's hope for all these noggin-smashing avians. A German company has developed an ultraviolet-reflecting coating modeled on the reflective properties of the orb-weaver spider's web. The UV-reflecting properties of the spiders' webs--and the treated windows--allow birds to see and avoid them even as they remain invisible to us, since birds can see parts of the spectrum, including ultraviolet, that humans cannot.
Bird-visible window treatments are just one instance of biomimicry, the imitation of natural materials and systems for technological applications. It seems that the humble orb-weavers have already been using a bird-deterring system that we humans are just now figuring out. Let's hope that technologies like UV-reflective coatings can help save birds' lives. If they do, we can thank an engineer, but let's not forget to also thank a spider.
The issue:
About a month ago, a frack-sand mining operation near Grantsburg, WI, spilled some fine-grained sediment from a settling pond into a tributary of the St. Croix River. Local news media covered the story, and more details, for example, can be found in the Pioneer Press story by Dennis Lien.
So what’s the big deal?
Well, there are standards regarding water turbidity, which means that as a society we’ve decided that we don’t like cloudy water, at least in some settings and at some levels. For a naturally clear-water system like the St. Croix, increasing turbidity would alter the food chain at all levels. Algal primary producers rely on sunlight blocked by turbidity. Sight-based predation at the top of the food change would be altered. Benthic (bottom-dwelling) organisms that depend on coarse substrates could be smothered by siltation. Especially in the St. Croix, one of the last refugia for freshwater endangered mussel species, we must be on guard against too much fine sediment. And finally, where does the sediment end up? It’s filling up not only man-made reservoirs but also treasured natural lakes, iconically Lake St. Croix and Lake Pepin. These lakes are filling in with fine-grained sediment at about 3X and 10X their natural rates, respectively. (How do we know? See work done by the Museum’s St. Croix Watershed Research Station.)
Hey, it’s only a little bit...
Or was it? How much is a little? A little here, a little there, and a little more from over there -- it starts to add up. All water in a watershed runs downhill to the river, efficiently carrying both particles and dissolved materials. The river ultimately sees it all: all the disturbances, however seemingly minor, throughout the watershed. Rivers die a death of a thousand cuts. We have enough difficulty trying to control nonpoint sources of sediment and other pollutants. Stopping discharge of fine-grained materials from a mining operation is eminently fixable. It’s the right thing to do. Fortunately, all parties seem in agreement on this, including the mining company, which has repaired its leaky dike.
Brontosaurs-a-chomping: The constant eating by herds of sauropods like these no doubt produced a constant flow of methane into the atmosphere.Courtesy Public domainImagine you’ve been transported back in time to the Late Jurassic and you’re sitting on a gently sloping hillside watching a large herd of the gigantic sauropod dinosaurs chowing down on tons of vegetation in the valley below. What’s the one thing you might need to worry about? The herd of sauropods suddenly stampeding the hillside? A truck-sized carnivore eyeing you from the shadows? Tiny burrowing mammals gnawing at your ankles? While all these scenarios would have been possible, the most likely worry would probably be (if you’re downwind anyway) getting inundated by a warm blast of dinosaur farts.
That’s right, dinosaur flatulence - tons of it - wafting over you like a huge, stinky old blanket. Ewww.
Researchers from Liverpool John Moore's University, the University of London, and the University of Glasgow have calculated that herds of sauropods, those tiny-headed ,long-necked, long-tailed herbivorous dinosaurs that populated the Jurassic landscape about 150 million years ago, would have been eating a lot of vegetation during their lifetimes and in the process releasing a tremendous amount of methane gas from their guts and into the Earth’s atmosphere. That's a lot of cheese-cutting.
In fact, writing in the journal Current Biology, Dr. David Wilkinson and his colleagues claimed that the amount of emission of methane just from the herbivorous dinosaur gassers would have been about the same amount being emitted from all sources today - 500-520 million tons each year. Methane is a greenhouse gas that can absorb the sun’s infrared energy, and heat up the atmosphere. The producers of methane today range from ruminant species such as cows, goats, and sheep, and from human activities such as natural gas drilling, but the effects on the environment could be similar – a warming of the atmosphere. Back in the Mesozoic, average temperatures were about 18 °F higher than today. Wilkinson and his colleagues suggest the dinosaur backfires could have been a big factor in the warming of the prehistoric environment, but admit it wouldn't have been the only source of the gas back then.
"There were other sources of methane in the Mesozoic so total methane level would probably have been much higher than now," Wilkinson said.
Wilkinson’s research interest lays not so much in the sauropods themselves but in the microscopic bacteria that once lined their guts. It was these microbes that converted the vegetable matter into energy and waste, including methane. Could that vast SBD Mesozoic methane source, as the researchers suggest, have been a big contributor to the warmer temperatures back then? Possibly. Or maybe it's just a lot of hot air.
SOURCE
BBC Nature News
The sunflower and the bee: just the kind of photograph Project Noah likes to see.Courtesy Mark RyanI saw a posting on Facebook yesterday (tip of the hat to the Bell Museum) about a website called Project Noah. It’s a really cool site that allows anyone with a camera and a love of nature to upload pictures or video and help identify the plants and animals that populate our world, both locally and globally. And who doesn’t have a camera of some sort nowadays?
Anyway, according to their website Project Noah is:
"… A tool that nature lovers can use to explore and document wildlife and a technology platform research groups can use to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere. The purpose of the project is to mobilize and inspire a new generation of nature lovers. It began as an experiment to see if we could build an app for people to share their nature sightings and has evolved into a powerful global movement for both amateurs and experts. The name “Noah” is an acronym that stands for networked organisms and habitats. “
That kind of sums it up. The site is easy to navigate and figure out. I uploaded a couple photos I’d taken recently and it wasn’t difficult at all. You can also join a “mission” dealing with a particular zoological or botanical subject you’re interested in. You can contribute to the mission’s knowledge base by adding your own photographs or some information such as the genus and species of an unknown specimen captured in someone else’s photograph. I like shooting photographs up around Lake Superior so I joined the “Great Lakes Monitoring” mission. It just took a click of a button to become a part of it.
You can even start your own mission. It could be a legitimate study you’ve devised like why "megapug" bees seek out sunflowers or something as simple as a call for the best wildlife photos of the year. Here at the Science Museum we could start a mission called Rotting Pigs. I wonder how many contributions that would garner?
As mentioned, there’s even a Project Noah app that you can download for the mobile device of your choice. I downloaded it for my iPod Touch but noticed the reviews for it seem to be mixed. It only got an average rating overall, but what the hey, it’s free so I’m giving it a shot anyway. You can do the same if you'd like. I already know the site works fine on my laptop.
I’m really excited about this. It’s a novel and cool way to intermingle our ever-changing networking technologies with the rest of the natural world, and contribute something to the science community at the same time.
If you have more questions you might find the answers on Project Noah’s FAQ page.
LINKS
Project Noah
Abarham Maslow created the 5 basic human needs. Otherwise known as Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
5. self-actualization
4. self esteem
3. belonging
2. safety
1. survival
Now the pyramid works like this, lets say if your first need of survival is not met your safety, belonging, esteem and accusation won't be met the reason is that if your so concerned about the things on the bottom you won't meet the things on the top. Take Dave Pelzer, he was worrying about his survival he couldn't work on belonging. Or you could look at it the way most people would say your hungry or maybe concerned for your safety. you're not worried about your work you're worried about food or getting out of the unsafe place you're in. Just think of it as if you're climbing a ladder.
Teeth tell tales of travel: Ratio of oxygen isotopes in Camarasaurus teeth reveals that the sauropod migrated long distances to find food and water. Geological Museum, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WYCourtesy Mark RyanEver wonder how something as big as a sauropod dinosaur was able to grow so large? Sauropods were those huge, long-necked quadrupeds estimated to have weighed anywhere from 50 to 120 tons, and with lengths of up to 200 feet. Just seeing the skeleton of any one of them – the Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus, Ultrasaurus or any their kind – you just know those Jurassic giants had to be on a constant eating binge to maintain their massive size. But just how much food could a single area supply? Doesn’t it make sense that these critters would have eaten up any food source within the reach of their extensive necks? Then what would they do?
A new study of sauropod teeth has produced some strong evidence that the giant herbivores migrated during times of drought or other environmental stresses, searching for new untapped food and water sources. Geochemist Henry Fricke of Colorado College in Colorado Springs along with student colleagues Justin Hencecroth and Marie E. Hoerner studied the teeth of various Camarasaurus specimens comparing the ratio of oxygen isotopes found in the enamel with the ratio found in the sedimentary rock deposits where the teeth were found. By sauropod standards, Camarasaurus was one of the smaller ones, but it's the most common sauropod found in the Morrison Formation deposits.
Camarasaurus skeletonCourtesy Public domainDuring its lifetime 145 million years or so in the past, a Camarasaurus's teeth would absorb the isotopes ratio of its environment, that is the ratio of the oxygen isotopes found in the local water supply. So Fricke’s team sampled 32 camarasaur teeth, taking measurements of the younger enamel found near the base of each tooth with the older enamel near the crown. In some cases, the isotopes ratios in the enamel matched those of the sedimentary rocks from where the teeth were found. But some enamel didn’t match. This meant the dinosaur must have migrated at some time to higher ground, more than likely in search of a better food source.
"In a theoretical sense, it's not hugely surprising,” Fricke said. “They are huge — they would probably have eaten themselves out of house and home if they stayed in one place.”
So the camarasaurs did what any hungry animal would do: they headed out in search of more food, even if it meant a migration of 200 miles into the higher regions and back. Seasonal droughts were probably another factor. The highlands would have had more rainfall and therefore more vegetation and water. When the wet season returned to the basin so would the camarasaur herds. Fricke estimates the seasonal herbivore hikes took around five months to complete. He also thinks if one kind of sauropod migrated, other genera probably did the same, and an analysis of their teeth would probably show similar results.
SOURCES and LINKS
Abstract in Nature
Nature News
Paleoclimatology: the Oxygen Balance
Camarasaurus facts
8-Yr-Old Shark Conservationist Sophi Bromenshenkel from MinnesotaCourtesy University of MiamiSecond-grader Sophi Bromenshenkel from Minnesota sold lemonade, hot chocolate, shark-shaped cookies, and wristbands to promote shark conservation, and become an international phenomenon. Earlier this year, 8-year old Sophi was named the 2011 "Ocean Hero" from Oceana, an international advocacy group working to protect the world’s oceans. She graces the front cover of the latest issue of Oceana Magazine.
Through her efforts, $3,676.62 was raised to pay for satellite tags that are used to track movement of individual sharks, and provide insight on shark populations. In addition to providing safety information to recreational ocean users, the observations of how sharks navigate the ocean can be used to inform policymakers where to focus their marine protection efforts. The satellite-tagged sharks can be followed online from the website for the R.J. Dunlap Marine Conservation Program. Note that the Google Earth Plugin needs to be installed on your computer to view the maps.
Giant bison skull: its horns spanned 6 feet 4 inches. Behind stands Dr. Steve Holen, curator of archaeology at the Denver Museum of Nature & ScienceCourtesy Photo by Heather Rousseau ©Denver Museum of Nature and ScienceThe last talk I attended at the Geological Society of America (GSA) convention this past week was one of my favorites. It was an update of the Snowmastodon Project given by Kirk Johnson, chief curator at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (DMNS). Just one year ago, a construction worker bulldozing for a dam-building project at the Zeigler Reservoir near Snowmass Village in Colorado unearthed a mammoth tusk. Paleontologists and archaeologists from the Denver museum were called in, and excavation of a small portion of the drained reservoir bottom soon got underway. The museum crew worked for just one month, until November 14, 2010, when snowfall halted the project. Then last spring scientists returned to the site and were allowed just 51 days to excavate the fossil deposits before the Snowmass Water and Sanitation District resumed their expansion work on the reservoir.
This time more research experts from the US, Canada, and England joined the dig along with a slew of interns and volunteers, totaling some 233 people working on the project. Over the next seven weeks excavation at the Zeigler Reservoir site progressed at a frantic pace. According to Johnson, anywhere from 15 to 90 diggers were on site each day digging out fossils from the ancient peat and mud deposits, from what once were the shores of a small glacial lake. Despite the short window of opportunity, the sheer number and diversity of fossils from the dig site has been truly remarkable.
American Mastodon: (Mammut americanum)Courtesy Dantheman9758 at en.wikipediaOf the nearly 5000 bones and skulls exhumed from the Snowmass fossil site, more than 60 percent were of mastodons (Mammut americanum) representing at least 30 individuals in various stages of life. The other 40 percent of the fauna included mammoths (Mammuthus columbi), camels, horses, giant bison (Bison latifrons) and ground sloths (Megalonyx jeffersonii), otters, muskrats, minks, bats voles, chipmunks, beavers, bats, rabbits, mice, salamanders, frogs, lizards, snakes, fish, and birds, and iridescent beetles. No large carnivore remains were found in the deposits, and human remains were absent as well, although archaeological techniques were used during the dig just in case any were uncovered.
Flora from the prehistoric tundra environment included pollen, green leaves and cones, and tree logs, some with their bark still intact.
So far, age estimates for the deposits range between 43, 000 to 130,000 years old although further dating tests should narrow that down.
The talk included several photos of what Johnson termed “Flintstone moments”, i.e. shots of field workers posing with massive mammoth or mastodon femurs or tibia. And Johnson marveled at the incredible state of preservation of many of the fossils displayed. Some of the bones, he said, still emitted a very strong funk.
In terms of sheer number of bones and ecological data, Snowmastodon ranks up there as probably one of the best high altitude Ice Age ecology sites in the world, and certainly the best mastodon fossil site. A team of researchers at the DMNS lab will spend the next year and a half cleaning, cataloging, and analyzing all the fossils found at the Snowmass dig site, water was to be reintroduced into the reservoir on Oct. 13. Despite the loss of the site, the field crew did a tremendous job in the time they were given to excavate the fossil-rich site. And Kirk Johnson didn’t hide his excitement. In closing his talk, he said “It was one hell of a year!”
FURTHER INFO
The Snowmastodon Project website
Photo set on Flcker
