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When humans disturb marine mammals, it’s hard to know the long-term impact

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From seismic surveys and Navy sonar to fisheries and shipping, many human activities in the ocean environment cause short-term changes in the behaviors of marine mammals.

A longstanding challenge for scientists and regulatory agencies alike has been to understand the biological significance of those changes in terms of their overall impact on affected populations of animals.

A new study led by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, provides a comprehensive framework for conducting this type of assessment. Published August 25 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the paper synthesizes a huge amount of knowledge about marine mammals and research on the impacts of various disturbances.

Senior author Daniel Costa, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and director of the Institute of Marine Sciences at UC Santa Cruz, said he first began grappling with this problem decades ago when he was studying the impact of low-frequency sound on whales and other marine mammals.

“We had measurable parameters that were statistically significant, but we didn’t know the biological significance of these changes in behavior. That bothered me, and it bothered a lot of other people in the field,” he said. [Read more…] about When humans disturb marine mammals, it’s hard to know the long-term impact

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    How humans brought change to a tropical paradiseAfter centuries of human impact on the world's ecosystems, a new study from Flinders University details an example of how a common native bee species has flourished since the very first land clearances by humans on Fiji. In a new paper in Molecular Ecology (DOI: 10.1111/mec.16034), research led by Flinders University explores…
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  • Dinosaurs were in decline before the end, according to new study
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    Dinosaurs were in decline before the end, according to new studyThe death of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was caused by the impact of a huge asteroid on the Earth. However, palaeontologists have continued to debate whether they were already in decline or not before the impact. In a new study, published today in the journal Nature Communications, an international…
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  • Significant cancer rates in California sea lions has major human health implications
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    Significant cancer rates in California sea lions has major human health implicationsScientists at The Marine Mammal Center – the world's largest marine mammal hospital – have found that viral-caused cancer in adult California sea lions is significantly increased by their exposure to toxins in the environment. The study is the result of over 20 years of research and examination of nearly…
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  • Future ocean conditions could cause significant physical changes in marine mussels
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    Future ocean conditions could cause significant physical changes in marine musselsThe increased temperature and acidification of our oceans over the next century have been argued to cause significant physical changes in an economically important marine species. Scientists from the University of Plymouth exposed blue mussels (Mytilus edulis) to current and future levels of ocean acidification (OA) or warming (W), as…
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Study takes unprecedented peek into life of 17,000-year-old mammoth

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An international research team has retraced the astonishing lifetime journey of an Arctic woolly mammoth, which covered enough of the Alaska landscape during its 28 years to almost circle the Earth twice.

Scientists gathered unprecedented details of its life through analysis of a 17,000-year-old fossil from the University of Alaska Museum of the North. By generating and studying isotopic data in the mammoth’s tusk, they were able to match its movements and diet with isotopic maps of the region.

Few details have been known about the lives and movements of woolly mammoths, and the study offers the first evidence that they traveled vast distances. An outline of the mammoth’s life is detailed in the new issue of the journal Science. [Read more…] about Study takes unprecedented peek into life of 17,000-year-old mammoth

Early Earth was bombarded by series of city-sized asteroids

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Scientists know that the Earth was bombarded by huge impactors in distant time, but a new analysis suggest that the number of these impacts may have been x10 higher than previously thought.

This translates into a barrage of collisions, similar in scale to that of the asteroid strike which wiped out the dinosaurs, on average every 15 million years between 2.5 and 3.5 billion years ago. Some of these individual impacts may have been much bigger, possibly ranging from city-sized to small province sized.

Researchers are also considering what effect the impacts may have had on the Earth’s evolving near-surface chemistry. This work is presented at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference. [Read more…] about Early Earth was bombarded by series of city-sized asteroids

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    Dinosaurs were in decline before the end, according to new studyThe death of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was caused by the impact of a huge asteroid on the Earth. However, palaeontologists have continued to debate whether they were already in decline or not before the impact. In a new study, published today in the journal Nature Communications, an international…
    Tags: years, impact, ago, earth, huge, life, time, features
  • Water on ancient Mars
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    Water on ancient MarsThere's a long-standing question in planetary science about the origin of water on Earth, Mars and other large bodies such as the moon. One hypothesis says that it came from asteroids and comets post-formation. But some planetary researchers think that water might just be one of many substances that occur…
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Changes in Earth’s orbit enabled the emergence of complex life

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Scientists at the University of Southampton have discovered that changes in Earth’s orbit may have allowed complex life to emerge and thrive during the most hostile climate episode the planet has ever experienced.

The researchers – working with colleagues in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Curtin University, University of Hong Kong, and the University of Tübingen – studied a succession of rocks laid down when most of Earth’s surface was covered in ice during a severe glaciation, dubbed ‘Snowball Earth’, that lasted over 50 million years.

Their findings are published in the journal Nature Communications. [Read more…] about Changes in Earth’s orbit enabled the emergence of complex life

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    Melting ice sheets over the past 300 years raised sea levels 18 metresIt is well known that climate-induced sea level rise is a major threat. New research has found that previous ice loss events could have caused sea-level rise at rates of around 3.6 metres per century, offering vital clues as to what lies ahead should climate change continue unabated. A team…
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Study finds boys’ dislike for reading fiction is actually fiction!

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Gender stereotypes around reading may be holding boys back in the classroom, according to a new study published in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Inclusive Education.

In what is described as an ‘unexpected’ and ‘significant’ finding, fiction is the most favoured reading genre for schoolboys compared with non-fiction, comics and magazines.

Well over half (57%) of the boys said they liked fiction or story books ‘a lot’ according to research based on more than 300 pupils aged from seven to eight in Australia. [Read more…] about Study finds boys’ dislike for reading fiction is actually fiction!

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    When English and French mix in literatureDo children learning French as a second language see benefits from reading bilingual French-English children's books? A study recently published in the journal Language and Literacy found that bilingual books, which are not often used in French immersion classrooms, are seen by students as an effective tool for second language learning. To…
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  • Experiences of loneliness may differ by age
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    Experiences of loneliness may differ by ageLoneliness in adult life is experienced differently depending on age, according to a study published in the open access journal BMC Public Health.   The research concludes that there can be no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to reducing loneliness, as factors associated with it, such as contact with friends and family, perceived…
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Dinosaurs were in decline before the end, according to new study

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The death of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was caused by the impact of a huge asteroid on the Earth. However, palaeontologists have continued to debate whether they were already in decline or not before the impact.

In a new study, published today in the journal Nature Communications, an international team of scientists, which includes the University of Bristol, show that they were already in decline for as much as ten million years before the final death blow.

Lead author, Fabien Condamine, a CNRS researcher from the Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution de Montpellier (France), said: “We looked at the six most abundant dinosaur families through the whole of the Cretaceous, spanning from 150 to 66 million years ago, and found that they were all evolving and expanding and clearly being successful. [Read more…] about Dinosaurs were in decline before the end, according to new study

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  • Early Earth was bombarded by series of city-sized asteroids
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    Early Earth was bombarded by series of city-sized asteroidsScientists know that the Earth was bombarded by huge impactors in distant time, but a new analysis suggest that the number of these impacts may have been x10 higher than previously thought. This translates into a barrage of collisions, similar in scale to that of the asteroid strike which wiped…
    Tags: impact, earth, years, ago, life, huge, time, features
  • When humans disturb marine mammals, it’s hard to know the long-term impact
    32
    When humans disturb marine mammals, it’s hard to know the long-term impactFrom seismic surveys and Navy sonar to fisheries and shipping, many human activities in the ocean environment cause short-term changes in the behaviors of marine mammals. A longstanding challenge for scientists and regulatory agencies alike has been to understand the biological significance of those changes in terms of their overall…
    Tags: species, models, life, impact, mammals, conditions, study, features, looked, huge

Unbroken: New soft electronics don’t break, even when punctured

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Want a smartphone that stretches, takes damage, and still doesn’t miss a call?

A team of Virginia Tech researchers from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Macromolecules Innovation Institute has created a new type of soft electronics, paving the way for devices that are self-healing, reconfigurable, and recyclable.

These skin-like circuits are soft and stretchy, sustain numerous damage events under load without losing electrical conductivity, and can be recycled to generate new circuits at the end of a product’s life. [Read more…] about Unbroken: New soft electronics don’t break, even when punctured

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  • A universal approach to tailoring soft robots
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    A universal approach to tailoring soft robotsBy combining two distinct approaches into an integrated workflow, Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) researchers have developed a novel automated process for designing and fabricating customised soft robots. Their method, published in Advanced Materials Technologies, can be applied to other kinds of soft robots – allowing their mechanical properties…
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How childhood exercise could maintain and promote cognitive function in later life

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A research group including Professor MATSUDA Tetsuya of Tamagawa University’s Brain Science Institute and Assistant Professor ISHIHARA Toru from Kobe University’s Graduate School of Human Development and Environment has illuminated the changes in the brain’s neural network and cortex structure that underlie the positive association between childhood exercise and the maintenance and promotion of cognitive function in later life.

These results were published in the academic journal NeuroImage on May 23, 2021. [Read more…] about How childhood exercise could maintain and promote cognitive function in later life

Scientists detect signatures of life remotely

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Left hands and right hands are almost perfect mirror images of each other. But whatever way they are twisted and turned, they cannot be superimposed onto each other. This is why the left glove simply won’t fit the right hand as well as it fits the left. In science, this property is referred to as chirality.

Just like hands are chiral, molecules can be chiral, too. In fact, most molecules in the cells of living organisms, such as DNA, are chiral. Unlike hands, however, that usually come in pairs of left and right, the molecules of life almost exclusively occur in either their “left-handed” or their “right-handed” version.

They are homochiral, as researchers say. Why that is, is still not clear. But this molecular homochirality is a characteristic property of life, a so-called biosignature. [Read more…] about Scientists detect signatures of life remotely

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    On the quest for other EarthsIn the search for planets capable of sustaining life, an international research team with members from ETH has taken a significant step forward. As the researchers reported recently in the journal Nature Communications, they found signs of a Neptune-sized planet in the Alpha Centauri star system, a mere 4.4 light years…
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  • Life on Venus? First we need to know more about molecules in the atmosphere
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    Life on Venus? First we need to know more about molecules in the atmosphereThe search for life on other planets has received a major boost after scientists revealed the spectral signatures of almost 1000 atmospheric molecules that may be involved in the production or consumption of phosphine, a study led by UNSW Sydney revealed. Scientists have long conjectured that phosphine – a chemical…
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