A recent study by Yale researchers have looked at the evolutionary history of Antarctic fish. These fish house “anti-freeze” proteins, which, as their name suggests, are impervious to freezing in the, well, freezing waters. Millions and millions of years ago, these fish adapted to the polar conditions; however, today they are endangered because of the rapid rise in ocean temperatures.

Thomas Near, the associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, as well as the lead author of the study, explains that the rise of 2 degrees centigrade of water temperature will “likely have a devastating impact on this Antarctic fish lineage, which is so well adapted to water at freezing temperatures.”

These fish have successfully been developed and diversified into a hundred species of different fish. Collectively called the notothenioids, they adapted through the years to their different habitats in order to thrive. Millions of years ago, the rapid cooling led to a mass extinction of the fish that were living in and accustomed to the warmer waters. However, the acquisition of these ” anti-freeze” glycoproteins allowed the notothenioids to be able to survive in waters that were home to these frigid temperatures. Over the years, the notothenioids adapted to the different open ecological niches, and soon, as evolution dictates, there were new species of notothenioids that came to fruition, and soon were a part of the regular marine life living within the waters of Antarctica.

Notothenioids are the main species of the fish that are found to have thrived through this lineage. They are also a major food source for larger predators, such as whales, seals, and penguins. There are other species of fish as well, that are an example of the changes and difference of lineage that have been determined by the temperature of the water and environment that they live in.

The new study suggests that although the notothenioids had the ability to gather these anti-freeze glycoproteins about 42 million years ago, this was not the only reason that the notothenioids were able to successfully adapt to their Antarctic surroundings. In fact, the largest amount of the notothenioids fish species falling into new habitats began to occur about 10 million years following the first appearance of the anti-free glycoproteins, which is what the study has discovered.

Interestingly, it was also as a trigger instead. “The evolution of antifreeze was often thought of as a ‘smoking gun,’ triggering the diversification of these fishes, but we found evidence that this adaptive radiation is not linked to a single trait, but to a combination of factors,” Near explained in the study.

The problem is that the success seen here from evolution and the natural state is threatened by the climate change, especially in Antarctica and the other areas in the Southern Ocean, primarily because this is one of the fastest-warming regions on the Earth. These same traits that allowed the fish to be able to survive and live in the rapidly cooling earth have made them particularly vulnerable to the issues in the earth that is warming. The study explains that since they were so able to adapt to the strong polar conditions, they have an opposite ability to acclimate to the warmer water temperatures. Because of this, climate change could devastate and wipe out this lineage of fish, which have offered a uniqueness in evolutionary history. Furthermore, it will provide lack of a food source for the whales, seals, and penguins

The study published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Teams from The Boeing Company in Huntington Beach, California, Lockheed Martin in Palmdale, California, and Northrop Grumman in El Segundo, California have come together and spent the last year studying how to reach the goals of NASA to build and develop a technology that will allow any forms of future aircrafts to use up fifty percent less fuel that current aircrafts that they have been using since 1998. They are also exploring how to integrate 75 percent fewer harmful emissions, and how to ultimately shrink the size of any geographic areas that are affected by excessive airport noise by 83 percent in total.

These flying machines, which they dub as “leaner and greener” are on tap for the year 2025. The three industry teams are currently under contract to the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate’s Environmentally Responsible Aviation Project.

“The real challenge is we want to accomplish all these things simultaneously,” said ERA project manager Fay Collier in their press release. “It’s never been done before. We looked at some very difficult metrics and tried to push all those metrics down at the same time.”

The three teams have been awarded just under $11 million by NASA to put this challenge to work. They are assessing what kinds of aircraft designs and technologies could help reach the goals for the fuel use, emissions, and noise. The companies have just given NASA their results.

They are currently looking through the studies and seeing what their next steps are.

The Boeing Company’s advanced aircraft concept is built around the company’s signature blended wing body design that is also used in the sub-scale remotely piloted X-48. The X-48 has has been both wind tunnel tested at NASA’s Langley Research Center, as well as flown at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center. A notable aspect of these design, compared to the others and the current airplanes that are used, is the placement of its Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan engines. These engines are placed on top of the plane’s back end, and flanked by two vertical tails to shield people on the ground from engine noise. In addition to the different placement of the engines, the aircraft also features an advanced lightweight, damage tolerant, composite structure; various technologies for reducing airframe noise; advanced flight controls; hybrid laminar flow control, which is a design to help reduce the amount of drag; and long-span wings which improve fuel efficiency.

Conversely, Lockheed Martin explored the aircraft from a different angle. The team proposed a completely different design, including box wings, which means the front wing is mounted on the lower belly of the plane and is joined at the tips to an aft wing mounted on top of the plane. The crew at Martin have studied the box wing concept for three decades, but has not put anything into fruition as they have been waiting for lightweight composite materials, landing gear technologies, hybrid laminar flow and other tools to make it a viable configuration. The proposal combines the unique design with a Rolls Royce Liberty Works Ultra Fan Engine, which has a bypass ratio that is approximately five times greater than current engines, spanning over current limits of turbofan technology.

The third company, Northrop Grumman, took some of their company history, aiming for the previous 1930s and 40s designs, which a flying wing reminiscent of its B-2 aircraft. The concept includes four high-bypass engines, provided by Rolls Royce and embedded in the upper surface of the aerodynamically efficient wing would provide noise shielding. Because of the company’s expertise in building planes without the benefit of a stabilizing tail, this ideally would be transferred to the commercial airline market. Their version of the aircraft also incorporates advanced composite materials and engine and swept wing laminar flow control technologies.

The three studies have revealed that though NASA’s three goals (to reduce emissions, fuel consumption, and noise), are doable but definitely a challenge. Though the three preliminary designs from The Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman have all met the goal of reducing emissions of nitrogen oxides by 50 percent, the other two challenges (noise and fuel consumption) are still under research. They did have a reduction in fuel consumption (about fifty percent), but the noise aspect isn’t yet under control.

“All of the teams have done really great work during this conceptual design study,” say Mark Mangelsdorf, ERA Project chief engineer. “Their results make me excited about how interesting and different the airplanes on the airport ramp could look in 20 years. Another great result of the study is that they have really helped us focus where to invest our research dollars over the next few years,” he said.

NASA’s ERA project officials do believe that all of the goals can be met if small gains in noise and fuel consumption reduction can be achieved, in addition to those projected in the industry studies. The results of the three tests have brought forth research and conclusions on the current technology and design hurdles that airline manufacturers are facing in trying to design these leaner, greener flying machines. In turn, this will ultimately help guide NASA’s environmentally responsible aviation investment strategy for the second half of its six-year project.

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According to researchers from the Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER), the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the harsh winters that are currently evoked in the Northern Hemisphere could be caused by increasing temperatures and melting ice in the Arctic regions creates more snowfall and cold weather in the the later fall months at lower latitudes.

The team found that the strongest cooling trends in the winter were located with in the United States, southern Canada, and most of northern Eurasia. They believe that this is not entirely due in part by the natural variability of the climate system.

Previously, research has not come up with many solutions to extremely harsh, random weather conditions, such as unforeseen snowfall in more tropical areas. Instead, this new research suggests that because there has been a trend of increasingly cold winters over the last twenty years, it could be connected to the warmer temperature in the fall, skewing with what is a normal weather pattern. This causes temperatures to plummet in the winter season.

Through their studies, the team found that when there was a strong warming weather through summery July, August, and September, and then this continued through October and November, it seems to enhance the melting of sea ice in the Arctic.

In turn, this warmer weather, along with the melting of the sea ice, allowed the atmosphere in the Arctic to hold much more moisture. As a result, there is an increase in the possibility of precipitation over southern areas, such as Eurasia. This, then, falls as snow because of the temperatures are below freezing. This is also backed by the fact that over the last two decades, the snowfall has increased in the areas that were studied.

The group of researchers believe that because there is an increase in the snow cover, it affects the Arctic Oscillation. The Arctic Oscillation is an atmospheric pressure pattern that is found in the mid-latitudes to high latitudes, which causes it is remain in the “negative phase”.

This “negative phase” means that there is higher pressure over the Arctic region, which has  pushes cold air into the mid-latitude regions. Among these mid-latitude regions are the United States and northern Canada, which is why the colder winters are observed.

The researchers don’t doubt the facts we already know: the world is getting warmer. And yes, just because of the cold winters, it doesn’t mean that the warmer temperatures aren’t favored. However, they also believe that because there is more snow, this is somehow related. As it continues to get warmer in the fall, the snow will soon turn into rain, which may reduce and eventually eliminate winter cooling altogether.

One of the clearest reasons that there has been no research and activity on this done in the past is that most climate models do not pick up the rends in winter cooling, accounting for the snow cover. This study, then, focusing on the importance of snow cover, has brought this issue forward, which will now improve future accuracy of seasonal forecasts.

The research shows that by using the snow cover as a main focus in the seasonal forecast, it can provide a more accurate forecast overall. The current models fail to do this, and miss one of the most (or, perhaps, the most) important factors that relates to the influence of winter.

The study was published January 13, in the Institute of Physics Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters.

Researchers at the University of Miami discovered what might be causing these, notably, triggered by hurricanes and typhoons, and other tropical cyclones.

Scientists Shimon Wdowinski presented his findings at the 2011 AGU Fall Meeting in San Fransisco. As an associate research professor of Marine Geology and Geophysics at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, he has found this research information helpful and, perhaps, ground breaking.

The biggest trigger, they discovered, are events that end up producing large amounts of rain. The heavy type of rain can create thousands and thousands of landslides, which, in turn, creates severe erosion. This removes ground material from the Earth’s surface. When this occurs, there is not as much of a stress load, and all of a sudden, fault lines are encouraged to move.

Wdowinski, along with a colleague from Florida International University, took the time to analyze various data that stemmed from earthquakes topping a magnitude-6 and above. They specifically focused on earthquakes that hailed from Taiwan and Haiti. The duo found  a strong temporal relationship between the earthquakes, typhoons, and hurricanes. Basically, large, impactful earthquakes were occurring within four years after a particularly wet tropical cyclone season.

In the last fifty years there were three tropical cyclone events that were very wet. They were Typhoon Morakot, Typhoon Herb, and Typhoon Flossie. All three were followed within four years by major earthquakes in Taiwan’s mountainous regions.

The Morakot typhoon, which was in 2009, was followed by a M-6.2 earthquake that same year, and an M-6.4 in 2010. Over a decade before, the 1996 Typhoon Herb was followed by an M-6.2 earthquake in 1998 and an M-7.6 in 1999. Years before, the 1969 Typhoon Flossie had an  M-6.2 earthquake occur a few years later in 1972.

With these in mind, so does Haiti. In 2010, the M-7 earthquake occurred in the mountainous region just one and a half years following  two hurricanes, as well as two tropical storms, that completely flooded the area over a matter of twenty-five days.

The researchers involved in the study suggest that these landslides and excess rain results in eroded material being carried downstream. The result is that the surface load that is generally above the fault is decreased. This frees up the faults, which, in turn, can promote the activity of an earthquake.

The faults, which are actually fractures in Earth’s bedrock, build up stress as they try to make their way to slide past each other, periodically releasing the stress. This release of stress comes to fruition as an earthquake. In this case, it only is viable on any faults that are inclined, because have an significant vertical movement that is triggered.

There is a trend in the tropical cyclone/hurrican and earthquake patterning that exists in any earthquakes that are above M-5. Because of this newly found information, researchers can further analyze the various patterns in other areas that are struck by both natural disasters.

For more information, visit the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science.

Until now, however, scientists have not fully been able to understand exactly how these changes in size take place.

Dr Andrew Hirst and his team from Queen Mary’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences explore this fascinating shrinking effect in more deatils, as well as determine how it actually happens in their study featured in the journal The American Naturalist.

The study was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council. To test their theories, the team used data based on marine planktonic copepods. These tiny crustaceans are the main animal plankton that reside in the world’s oceans. They are also the important grazers of small plankton, as well as a necessary food source for larger fish, as well as birds and marine mammals.

More than forty years of total research has been put toward studying how the effect of differing temperatures affect these organisms. The team’s results show that growth rate (which is basically how quickly that the mass on their bodies is accumulated), and development rate (how fast the individual passes through the different life stages) are consistently decoupled in a range of pieces. Development is more of a factor when related to temperature than growth is.

Through the research, the team found that the growth and development increase at different rates as the temperature grows warmer. The problem with this is that when the warmer temperatures are reached, the species grows faster… but their development rate is even quicker. This means that they end up achieving a smaller adult size as the cycle continues.

The research team also found that by decoupling these rates, it could have important consequences for the individual species and the ecosystems that they reside in.

These interesting findings suggest that the rates that are fundamental to all organisms may not alter properly as the world becomes warmer. These rates include mortality, reproduction, and feeding, and if they fall out of sync, there many be consequences for the various species.

In truth, the team’s recent findings do disagree with previous discoveries that many macro-ecologists have found in the fast. They explain that, instead, these smaller sizes are associated with the “temperature-size rule” previously noted.

Hirst and his crew from Queen Mary’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences hope that these findings and their ongoing work will help those who are researching the potential impact of climate change on the natural world.

That’s right. The answer may lay in panda poo solving one of science’s hurdles in producing biofuels. Researchers hope this will help expand the use of biofuels in the near future, which will in turn help reduce the dependency on using foreign oil. They also hope it will help out with wildlife conservation.

So why panda poo and no other poo? The researchers explained that the bacteria that is found in the poo from the giant panda is the best for breaking down the difficult and hardy plant material in switch grass, corn stalks, and wood chips. This plant material, lignocellulose, just can’t be defeated by any of poo. And because of this finding, it could help with the development of cellulosic biofuels that is from these tough plant materials so that it doesn’t rely on food crops such as soybeans, corn, and sugar (which are now what is used to make biofuel).

So why does this work so well? Giant pandas have specific bacteria in their digestive system that can easily break down the cellulose in plants and make it into useful nutrients. Bamboo is rich in this cellulose, making up for about 99 percent of their diet. In fact, an adult giant panda eats about 20 to 40 pounds of bamboo each day.

To do the research, the team collected and analyzed the fresh poo of a pair of male and female pandas who were stationed at the Memphis Zoo over the course of a year. They explored and discovered several types of digestive bacteria in the panda poo, including some types that are similarly found in termites (which we know are experts at chewing through wood).

Their studies suggest that bacteria species in these giant pandas may be more efficient at breaking down plant materials than even termite bacteria can. As well, the panda poo may prove to combat this in a way that is better for biofuel manufacturing purposes.

The researchers estimate that under specific conditions these gut bacteria can convert approximately 90 percent of plant biomass into simple sugars. The enzymes that are found in the bacteria are highly active substances which speed up chemical reactions, and are so powerful do not have the need for high heat, harsh acids and high pressures– all of which are currently used in biofuel production processes. Because the current processes for creating biofuel is also time intensive and takes a lot of energy, the panda bacteria is also a quicker and cheaper option.

The scientists are continuing their research by trying to figure out every intestinal bacterium that is found in the giant panda. That way, they can isolate the most powerful digestive enzymes, use them for biofuel production and create them into yeasts. These yeasts can then create the enzymes and be grown on a commercial scale to create the large amounts of biofuel needed.

The U.S. Department of Energy, The Memphis Zoological Society, the Mississippi Corn Promotion Board, and the Southeastern Research Center at Mississippi State provided funding for this study.

See the American Chemical Society for more information.

We convert the sun‘s heat to electricity, but if we learn to store it in chemical form, it is advantageous. This is because it can be stored for a long period of time   without losing any of the stored energy.

Until now, the chemicals needed for this storage often degraded within a few cycles, or included an expensive and rare element called ruthenium.

However, last year, MIT associate professor Jeffrey Grossman and four co-authors solved how to use diruthenium, the top chemical for reversibly storing solar energy, to store this. This made it easier to understand the process and see which materials could be used this way.

Now, Grossman and fellow researcher Alexie Kolpak have solved how to do this. The duo used carbon nanotubes, small tubular structures of pure carbon, along with a compound called azobenzene. The resulting molecules were produced using nanoscale templates to control their physical structure and find new properties in the separate materials.

This new chemical system is less expensive than earlier options, as well as more efficient at storing energy.  These nanofabrication methods can control the molecules’ interactions, increasing the amount of stored energy, the length of time they can store it, with total, independent control.

This type of solar energy uses a molecule that changes structure when exposed to sunlight. It can forever remain stable in that form until a stimulus can quickly bring it back to its other form. This releases its stored energy in a burst of heat. This works similarly to a rechargeable battery.

An advantage of this new approach it combines energy harvesting and storage into a single step. This makes it much simpler. A limitation, however, is that while this can be used for heating, producing electricity would require an extra step.

The team is “very actively looking at a range of new materials,” Grossman says, and calls this the “tip of the iceberg.”

Yosuke Kanai, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says “the idea of reversibly storing solar energy in chemical bonds is gaining a lot of attention these days. The novelty of this work is how these authors have shown that the energy density can be significantly increased by using carbon nanotubes as nanoscale templates. This innovative idea also opens up an interesting avenue for tailoring already-known photoactive molecules for solar thermal fuels and storage in general.”

The team’s success is outlined in a paper with their new findings published online in the journal Nano Letters.

Read more from ScienceDaily.

David Cleveland, a professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Barbara, felt that his Santa Barbara County could implement the local food system and really help some of the issues at hand.

A recent article from ScienceDaily outlined how Cleveland and his students launched a comprehensive study of just how “localized” the agrifood system for fruits and vegetables is in Santa Barbara County. And in turn, they wanted to determine the effects of this localization of the food system on greenhouse gas emissions and nutrition.

It seems like a good place to do it–Santa Barbara County ranks in the top 1 percent of counties in the United States in value of agricultural products, with 80 percent in produce.

The results of their research, conducted in 2009-10, were published in a recent copy of the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

The team found that more than 99 percent of the produce grown locally is exported, and more than 95 percent of the produce consumed is imported. The study also found that if all of the produce that they consumed was grown locally, it would lower greenhouse gas emissions less than 1 percent of total agrifood system emissions. Even more, there would be no effect on nutrition.

Additional research has shown that the transportation doesn’t cause as much greenhouse gasses compared to other parts of the agrifood life cycle. Thus, localization doesn’t necessarily make for better produce and food… nutritionally and environmentally.

However, that doesn’t mean that it’s not good at all. Supporting the local farmers is a key step for building community, if nothing else at all.

The team also wants to explore to what extent local farmers depend on imported labour.

Cleveland and his students will be hosting a workshop discussing their food system, looking at localization as a strategy to eventually bring it toward reducing greenhouse gasses, ensuring locals can enjoy local food, increasing their nutrition, and, of course, bringing together the community and strengthening the local economy.

Read the full article here.

Just published in the journal Science, the battery research was led by University of Texas at Austin chemists Christopher Bielawski and Jonathan Sessler. The duo discovered that when molecules come together, they form new compounds by exchanging electrons. Molecules that have opposite charges are attracted to each other and can form something new.

Bielawski and Sessler created two molecules that could come together, exchange electrons, but not form the new compound.

“These molecules were effectively spring-loaded to push apart after interacting with each other,” says Bielawski. “After electron transfer occurs, two positively charged molecules are formed which are repelled by each other, much like magnets held in a certain way will repel each other. We also installed a chemical switch that allowed the electron transfer process to proceed in the opposite direction.”

“This is the first time that the forward and backward switching of electron flow has been accomplished via a switching process at the molecular scale,” Sessler added.

Bielawski says this system gives important clues for making an efficient organic battery. The electron transfer processes is the key to providing a way to design the right organic materials .

“I would love it if my iPhone was thinner and lighter, and the battery lasted a month or even a week instead of a day,” says Bielawski. “With an organic battery, it may be possible. We are now starting to get a handle on the fundamental chemistry needed to make this dream a commercial reality.”

Read the full article here.

Image courtesy from sciencedaily.com

These cells were not a new discovery; researchers have long since recognized that most flowers had these on their surface, however no one knew their purpose.

In the study, the team tested the behaviour of the bees as they endeavored to feed off two versions of a Snapdragon: a mutated version of a Snapdragon lacking conical cells, and one with the cells. The purpose was to see if the bees would be able to recognize the shape of the petal shells, and discriminate between different surfaces.

On the flowers without the cells, the bees cannot land properly, making pollination difficult. The special cells provide a “Velcro-like” grip, and with the cells in tact, they can extract nectar more efficiently.

The team did find that when the flowers were at a horizontal angle, the bees visited both flowers about half of the time primarily because they didn’t have to land on the petals to get the job done. However, when the flowers were maneuvered to an angle, the bees quickly learned how to recognized the cone-celled flowers and landed on them about three-quarters of the time of the time.

This results in an explanation to the question of the why the cells exist and the prevalence of the coned-shaped cells on the petals in about 80% of flowering plants.

Download the full article at Science Direct.

Journal information: Heather M. Whitney, Lars Chittka, Toby J.A. Bruce, and Beverley J. Glover. Conical Epidermal Cells Allow Bees to Grip Flowers and Increase Foraging Efficiency. Current Biology, 2009; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.04.051

Image courtesy of National Biological Information Infrastructure

Their challenge is to find other terrestrial plants, where liquid water and possible life may exist. They call this the Kepler Mission.

The Kepler Mission is designed to explore and discover other planets near or inside of the livable zone in the Milky Way  galaxy. As a result, they will acquire more knowledge about where our solar system resides in the Galaxy.

All planets detected so far are giant planets, and Kepler’s on the lookout for smaller ones.

The mission is mainly seeking the planet sizes, shapes, their orbit information, and their associated stars.  They want to explore the structures and diversity of planetary systems, and this can be done by exploring a large sample of stars.

The method is called the “transit method” of planet finding. In layman’s terms, planets transit their parent stars by blocking a small amount of its light when it passes it. If this happens at regular times, it is a planet. The change in amount of light can determine the planet size, and the time can determine the orbit and estimate the temperature. With those qualities, they can determine if their is life on the planet.

Few planets similar to our own have been discovered due to their small size and distance from their parent star, making them difficult to find. The further away it is from the parent star, and the smaller the planet is,  the less likely it is that when they pass it, it will be a visible impact.

Kepler’s telescope has a 1.5 metre-diameter mirror, making it the largest telescope sent out of Earth’s orbit. With this, can has a large field of view, and will be monitoring 100,000 stars, both continuously and simultaneously.

It will take about 3-5 years to complete the mission, and is set to launch March 6th at 10:49 p.m. EST

Principal Investigator William Borucki has been working on this mission for nearly 25 years. He is hopeful it will help astronomers better understand were we stand in the universe. “The data from Kepler will have a major impact, especially if we find lots of planets like ours orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars,” he explained. “Then we’ll know its likely that we aren’t alone, and that someday we might be able to join other intelligent life in the universe.”

Scientists hope to reinforce their current hypotheses about these facts for the plants.  But if they find nothing at all, it could still be very significant.

For more information and to stay updated, visit the Kepler site from NASA.

Image courtesy of NASA.