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Public Release: 3-Feb-2012
 ScienceCastaway lizards offer new look at evolutionary processes Biologists who released lizards on tiny uninhabited islands in the Bahamas have uncovered a seldom-observed interaction between evolutionary processes. Jason Kolbe, a biologist at the University of Rhode Island -- along with colleagues at Duke University, Harvard University and the University of California, Davis -- found that the lizards' genetic and morphological traits were determined by both natural selection and a phenomenon called the founder effect. 
National Science Foundation
Contact: Cheryl Dybas
Public Release: 3-Feb-2012
Geological Society of America BulletinGlobal extinction: Gradual doom is just as bad as abrupt Around 250 million years ago, most life on Earth was wiped out in an extinction known as the "Great Dying." A team led by University of Cincinnati geologist Thomas J. Algeo finds that the end came slowly from thousands of centuries of volcanic activity.
National Science Foundation, Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Exobiology Program
Contact: Greg Hand
Public Release: 3-Feb-2012
Journal of PaleolimnologySediments from the Enol lake reveal more than 13,500 years of environmental history A team of Spanish researchers have used different geological samples, extracted from the Enol lake in Asturias, to show that the Holocene, a period that started 11,600 years ago, did not have a climate as stable as was believed. Contact: SINC
Public Release: 3-Feb-2012
PLoS GeneticsParasites or not? Transposable elements in fruit flies The problem of parasitism occurs at all levels right down to the DNA scale. Genomes may contain up to 80 percent "foreign" DNA but details of the mechanisms by which this enters the host genome and how hosts attempt to combat its spread are still the subject of conjecture. Important new information comes from the group of Christian Schlötterer at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna. The findings are published in the prestigious journal PLoS Genetics. Contact: Prof. Christian Schlötterer
Public Release: 2-Feb-2012
Parasites and VectorsA battle of the vampires, 20 million years ago? They are tiny, ugly, disease-carrying little blood-suckers that most people have never seen or heard of, but a new discovery in a one-of-a-kind fossil shows that "bat flies" have been doing their noxious business with bats for at least 20 million years. Contact: George Poinar, Jr.
Public Release: 2-Feb-2012
NASA satellites see wind shear battering Tropical Depression Iggy NASA satellites have watched as wind shear has torn Cyclone Iggy apart over the last day. NASA infrared satellite imagery showed that Iggy's strongest thunderstorms have been pushed away from the storm's center and visible imagery shows the storm is being stretched out. Iggy is weakening and heading for a landfall between Geraldton and Perth.
NASA
Contact: Rob Gutro
Public Release: 2-Feb-2012
'First light' taken by NASA's newest CERES instrument The doors are open on NASA's Suomi NPP satellite and the newest version of the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument is scanning Earth for the first time, helping to assure continued availability of measurements of the energy leaving the Earth-atmosphere system.
NASA
Contact: Michael Finneran
Public Release: 2-Feb-2012
ScienceScientists coax shy microorganisms to stand out in a crowd Scientists have advanced a method that allowed them to single out a marine microorganism and map its genome even though the organism made up less than 10 percent of a water sample teeming with many millions of individuals from dozens of identifiable groups of microbes.
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
Contact: Sandra Hines
Public Release: 2-Feb-2012
Google Earth ocean terrain receives major update Internet information giant Google updated ocean data in its Google Earth application this week, reflecting new bathymetry data assembled by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, NOAA researchers and many other ocean mapping groups from around the world. Contact: Robert Monroe or Mario Aguilera
Public Release: 2-Feb-2012
International Journal of Plant SciencesBouquet bargains Most creatures face compromises when they reproduce -- the more energy they devote to having lots of babies, the less they can invest in each one. But do the same tradeoffs hold true for plants? Biologists have long assumed that plants with bigger, showier flowers can make fewer of them per plant. But the data don't always hold up, scientists say. A new study by researchers at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center may help explain why. Contact: Robin Ann Smith
Public Release: 2-Feb-2012
Astrophysical Journal LettersNew super-Earth detected within the habitable zone of a nearby cool star An international team of scientists led by Carnegie's Guillem Anglada-Escudé and Paul Butler has discovered a potentially habitable super-Earth orbiting a nearby star. The star is a member of a triple star system and has a different makeup than our Sun, being relatively lacking in metallic elements. This discovery demonstrates that habitable planets could form in a greater variety of environments than previously believed.
Carnegie Postdoctoral, National Science Foundation, NASA, ARC, Fondecyt
Contact: Guillem Anglada-Escudé
Public Release: 2-Feb-2012
EARTH: Dangerous dust What would you do if you found out that the roads you drive on could cause cancer? This is the reality that residents face in Dunn County, North Dakota. For roughly 30 years, gravel containing the potentially carcinogenic mineral erionite was spread on nearly 500 kilometers of roads, playgrounds, parking lots, and even flower beds throughout Dunn County. Contact: Megan Sever
Public Release: 2-Feb-2012
Nature Scientific ReportsUT biosolar breakthrough promises cheap, easy green electricity A professor of biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a team of researchers have developed a system that taps into photosynthetic processes to produce efficient and inexpensive energy. Contact: Whitney Heins
Public Release: 2-Feb-2012
Trends in Plant SciencePlant power: The ultimate way to 'go green'? Researchers are turning to plants and solar power in the search for new sources of renewable and sustainable energy that can support the transition from rapidly depleting fossil fuels to a bio-based society. An article published by Cell Press in the Feb. 8 issue of Trends in Plant Science discusses innovative strategies for harnessing and re-routing the chemical reactions associated with photosynthesis to efficiently produce highly valuable products. Contact: Elisabeth (Lisa) Lyons
Public Release: 2-Feb-2012
ScienceCastaway lizards provide insight into elusive evolutionary process A biologist who released lizards on tiny uninhabited islands in the Bahamas has shed light on the interaction between evolutionary processes that are seldom observed. He found that the lizards' genetic and morphological traits were determined by both natural selection and a phenomenon called founder effects, which occur when species colonize new territory.
National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society
Contact: Todd McLeish
Public Release: 2-Feb-2012
ScienceHurricane gave researchers a rare opportunity to study evolution In the first experimental study of the founder effect in a natural setting, UC Davis researchers found that natural selection does not overwhelm the founder effect.
National Science Foundation
Contact: Thomas Schoener
Public Release: 1-Feb-2012
NASA's GCPEx mission: What we don't know about snow NASA's GCPEx science team is collecting as much data as they can to improve understanding of snow dynamics inside clouds, because they relate to how snow moves through Earth's water and climate cycles.
NASA
Contact: Elle Gray
Public Release: 1-Feb-2012
Journal of Integrated Pest ManagementIPM decreased pesticide use in University of Florida housing A new study recently published in the Journal of Integrated Pest Management shows that from 2003 to 2008, the use of insecticide active ingredients was reduced by about 90 percent in University of Florida housing buildings after an integrated pest management program was implemented. Contact: Norman C. Leppla
Public Release: 1-Feb-2012
Marine Mammal ScienceStudy finds southern Indian Ocean humpbacks singing different tunes A recently published study by the Wildlife Conservation Society and others reveals that humpback whales on both sides of the southern Indian Ocean are singing different tunes, unusual since humpbacks in the same ocean basin usually all sing very similar songs. Contact: John Delaney
Public Release: 1-Feb-2012
BioScienceAre nuisance jellyfish really taking over the world's oceans? Evidence is lacking that populations of jellyfish and similar gelatinous plankton are surging in numbers globally and will likely dominate the seas in coming decades. Rather, increasing scientific and media interest as well as the lack of good baseline data seem to explain the widespread perception of an increase.
National Science Foundation, University of California, State of California
Contact: Tim Beardsley
Public Release: 1-Feb-2012
Global experts question claims about jellyfish populations Blooms, or proliferation, of jellyfish have shown a substantial, visible impact on coastal populations -- clogged nets for fishermen, stinging waters for tourists, even choked intake lines for power plants -- and recent media reports have created a perception that the world's oceans are experiencing increases in jellyfish due to human activities such as global warming and overharvesting of fish. Contact: George Foulsham
Public Release: 1-Feb-2012
BioScienceYellow-cedar are dying in Alaska: Scientists now know why Yellow-cedar, a culturally and economically valuable tree in southeastern Alaska and adjacent parts of British Columbia, has been dying off across large expanses of these areas for the past 100 years. But no one could say why -- until now.
USDA Forest Service
Contact: Sherri Richardson Dodge
Public Release: 1-Feb-2012
Proceedings of the Royal Society BBacterial plasmids -- the freeloading and the heavy-lifters -- balance the high price of disease Studying self-replicating genetic units, called plasmids, found in one of the world's widest-ranging pathogenic soil bacteria -- the crown-gall-disease-causing microorganism Agrobacterium tumefaciens -- Indiana University biologists are showing how freeloading, mutant derivatives of these plasmids benefit while the virulent, disease-causing plasmids do the heavy-lifting of initiating infection in plant hosts.
National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health
Contact: Steve Chaplin
Public Release: 1-Feb-2012
Bioscience, Biotechnology, and BiochemistryGlobal experts question claims about jellyfish populations A global study has questioned claims that jellyfish are increasing worldwide. Contact: Glenn Harris
Public Release: 1-Feb-2012
Warning of unrest, new study shows millions risk losing lands in Africa New studies released in London today suggest that the frenzied sell-off of forests and other prime lands to buyers hungry for the developing world's natural resources risk sparking widespread civil unrest -- unless national leaders and investors recognize the customary rights of millions of poor people who have lived on and worked these lands for centuries. Contact: Coimbra Sirica
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