Once again Monday is here. Today is the time to take a well deserved hiatus from all the politics of the day and enjoy some of the fine science news of the past week. New discoveries, new takes on old knowledge, and other bits of news are all available for the perusing in today's information world. Over the fold are selections from the past week from a few of the many excellent science news sites around the world. Today's tidbits include risk of climate change to small mammals, making tiny nanofibers, star of the African savanna ecosystem may be the lowly termite, coastal birds carry toxic metals inland, ancient jawbone of new pterodactyl, and a new method for calculating greenhouse value of ecosystems. Come gather around the fire for one more session of Dr. Possum's science education and entertainment.
Featured Stories
Small mammals failed to recover as yet from the last warming trend of 12,000 years ago.
Environmental disruptions let highly adaptable species thrive while others lost population and range. The current warming may push some species to extinction, destabilizing the food chains and ecosystems of which they are a vital part.
Pygmy shrew, minipixel, Flickr, Creative Commons
After the last event
Some species became extremely rare, others quite common. And the species that became king of the landscape – by virtue of its very commonness – was the deer mouse.
Nanofiber potential grows once again as researchers find a novel new way to spin the fibers.
When spun, the material stretches much like molten sugar does as it begins to dry into thin, silky ribbons. Just as in cotton candy production, the nanofibers are extruded through a nozzle by a combination of hydrostatic and centrifugal pressure. The resulting pile of extruded fibers form into a bagel like shape about 10 cm in diameter.
Moreover, the rapid spinning method provides a high degree of flexibility as the diameter of the fibers can be readily manipulated and the structures can be integrated into an aligned three-dimensional structure or any shape simply by varying how the fibers are collected.
The shape of the fibers can also be altered, ranging from beaded to textured to smooth.
When one thinks of the African savanna the elephant and the lion most often come to mind.
The real king of the savanna appears to be the termite, say ecologists who've found that these humble creatures contribute mightily to grassland productivity in central Kenya via a network of uniformly distributed colonies. Termite mounds greatly enhance plant and animal activity at the local level, while their even distribution over a larger area maximizes ecosystem-wide productivity.
Termite mound, ebatty, Flickr, Creative Commons
What was observed on the ground was even clearer in satellite imagery. Each mound -- relatively inconspicuous on the Kenyan grassland -- stood at the center of a burst of floral productivity. More importantly, these bursts were highly organized in relation to one another, evenly dispersed as if squares on a checkerboard. The result, says Pringle, is an optimized network of plant and animal output closely tied to the ordered distribution of termite mounds.
The diet of coastal birds is funneled into inland water when the birds follow their normal habits in life. Studies of core samples from a pair of ponds on a small island in the Canadian arctic provide a basis for comparison.
(Researchers) found significant differences between the samples that aligned with the birds’ diets. There were higher concentrations of metals such as mercury and cadmium in the sites inhabited by terns, while the nearby eider site recorded higher amounts of lead, manganese, and aluminum. The patterns of metals in the sediment cores matched those recorded in the different bird species’ tissues.
The Sahara desert yields the jawbone of a new pterodactyl.
Pterodactyls, isfive, Flickr, Creative Commons
Unearthed in three separate pieces, the jaw bone has a total length of 344mm (13.5 inches). Each piece is well preserved, uncrushed, and unlike most other pterosaur fossils, retains its original three dimension shape.
This pterosaur is distinguished from all others by its lance-shaped lower jaw which had no teeth and looked rather like the beak of a heron.
There is a need for a method to calculate the value of various land use options in our changing climate.
Greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere and contribute to climate change. The most problematic greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide (CO2); methane (CH4), which is about 25 times more effective than CO2 at trapping heat but persists in the atmosphere for much less time; and nitrous oxide (N2O), an undesirable byproduct of crop fertilization.
The new approach accounts for emissions of each of these gases, expressing their net climatic effect in "carbon-dioxide equivalents," a common currency in the carbon-trading market. This allows scientists to compare the long-term effects of clearing a forest, for example, to the costs of other greenhouse gas emissions, such as those that result from burning fossil fuels for transportation, electricity, heat or the production of biofuels.
Other Worthy Stories of the Week
How binary stars may form
Hubble finds a star eating a planet
Semiconductor manufacturing technique holds promise for solar energy
About 1 in 3 chance of mega-earthquake in Northwest in next 50 years
Ultraviolet radiation is not the culprit killing amphibians
Making Cheetos (Not so much science but lots of fun)
WISE telescope captures Heart and Soul Nebula (fabulous picture)
GPS getting an upgrade
Dangerous lungworms found in people who eat raw crayfish
How marine mammals survive stress
Scientists solve mystery of 500-million-year-old squid-like carnivore
First horned dinosaur from Mexico
Bright galaxies like to stick together
For even more science news:
General Science Collectors:
Alpha-Galileo
BBC News Science and Environment
Eureka Science News
LiveScience
New Scientist
PhysOrg.com
SciDev.net
Science/AAAS
Science Alert
Science Centric
Science Daily
Scientific American
Space Daily
Blogs:
A Few Things Ill Considered Techie and Science News
Cantauri Dreams space exploration
Coctail Party Physics Physics with a twist.
Deep Sea News marine biology
Laelaps more vertebrate paleontology
List of Geoscience Blogs
ScienceBlogs
Space Review
Techonology Review
Tetrapod Zoologyvertebrate paleontology
Science Insider
Scientific Blogging.
Wired News
Science RSS Feed: Medworm
The Skeptics Guide to the Universe--a combination of hard science and debunking crap
Daily Kos regular series:
Daily Kos University, a regular series by plf515
This Week in Science by DarkSyde
This Week in Space by nellaselim
Overnight News Digest:Science Saturday by Neon Vincent. This week OND by palantir.
Weekend Science by AKMask
All diaries with the DK GreenRoots Tag.
All diaries with the eKos Tag
NASA picture of the day. For more see the NASA image gallery.
Rosetta Nebula, NASA, Public Domain