Environmental News

Insects and plants have an important ancient defense mechanism that helps them to fight viruses. This is encoded in their DNA. Scientists have long assumed that vertebrates -- including humans -- also had this same mechanism. But researchers have found that vertebrates lost this particular asset in the course of their evolution.

Researchers have used biomarkers in ancient rocks to learn more about the environmental conditions and food sources that sustained the Ediacara Biota.

Wind-driven expansion of marsh ponds on the Mississippi River Delta is a significant factor in the loss of crucial land in the Delta region, according to new research. The study found that 17 percent of land loss in the area resulted from pond expansion, much of it caused by waves that eroded away the edges of the pond.

When the good and bad bacteria in our mouth become imbalanced, the bad bacteria form a biofilm (aka plaque), which can cause cavities, and if left untreated over time, can lead to cardiovascular and other inflammatory diseases like diabetes and bacterial pneumonia. A team of researchers has recently devised a practical nanotechnology-based method for detecting and treating the harmful bacteria that cause plaque and lead to tooth decay and other detrimental conditions.

Many research groups have explored human adaptation to high altitude living among three major far-flung global populations: Tibetans, Ethiopians and Peruvians. But few have simultaneously explored the other extreme---maladaptation----in the form of chronic mountain sickness (CMS). Now, in the largest whole genome study of its kind, an international research team led by University of California San Diego's Chairman of Pediatrics, Dr. Gabriel Haddad, has expanded on their recent study of understanding both adaptation extremes in a Peruvian population.

Colonization by the human and animal parasite, Giardia, changed the species composition of the mouse microbiome in a way that might be harmful, report researchers.

In a study that may guide drug design, researchers find organelles encounter varying levels of resistance, depending on their size and speed, as they move through a cell's cytoplasm.

Old forests that contain large trees and a diversity of tree sizes and species may offer refuge to some types of birds facing threats in a warming climate, scientists have found.

Baboons produce vocalizations comparable to vowels. This has been demonstrated using acoustic analyses of vocalizations coupled with an anatomical study of the tongue muscles and the modeling of the acoustic potential of the vocal tract in monkeys. The data confirm that baboons are capable of producing at least five vocalizations with the properties of vowels, in spite of their high larynx, and that they are capable of combining them when they communicate with their partners. The vocalizations of baboons thus point to a system of speech among non-human primates.

New research shows that the climate of the interior of southern Africa almost two million years ago was much wetter than the modern environment. This first extensive paleoenvironmental sequence for the interior of southern Africa suggests that human ancestors were living in environments other than open, arid grasslands known from East African research of the same time period.