December 18, 2006, 9:09 PM CT

Discoveries Of New Species In Borneo's Rainforests

Researchers have discovered at least 52 new species of animals and plants this past year on the island of Borneo. The discoveries, described in a new WWF report, include 30 unique fish species, two tree frog species, 16 ginger species, three tree species and one large-leafed plant species.

"The more we look the more we find," said Stuart Chapman, WWF International Coordinator of the Heart of Borneo Program. "These discoveries reaffirm Borneo's position as one of the most important centers of biodiversity in the world and why conservation there is so important."

Some of the creatures new to science include: a miniature fish, the world's second smallest vertebrate measuring less than a third of an inch in length and found in the highly acidic blackwater peat swamps of the island; six Siamese fighting fish, including one species with a beautiful iridescent blue-green marking; a catfish with protruding teeth and an adhesive belly which allows it to literally stick to rocks; and a tree frog with striking bright green eyes. The new ginger plants more than double the number of the Etlingera species found to date.

Several of these new species were found in the "Heart of Borneo," an 84,000 square mile mountainous region about the size of Kansas that is covered with equatorial rainforest in the center of the island. Large areas of the forest are at risk from destructive logging and expanding rubber, oil palm and pulp plantations. Since 1996, deforestation across Indonesia has increased to an average of 7,700 square miles each year, an area slightly smaller than Vermont. Today only half of Borneo's original forest cover remains.........

Posted by: Kelly      Permalink         Source

December 18, 2006, 4:54 AM CT

Frankincense Trees Overexploited For Christmas Scent

Current rates of tapping frankincense - which as per the Bible was given to the baby Jesus by the three wise men at Christmas and which will feature in thousands of Nativity plays in coming days - are endangering the fragrant resin's sustained production, ecologists have warned. Writing in the recent issue of Journal of Applied Ecology, ecologists from the Netherlands and Eritrea say that over tapping the trees results in them producing fewer, less viable seeds.

Frankincense is an aromatic hardened wood resin obtained by tapping Boswellia trees. For thousands of years, frankincense has been hugely important both socially and economically as an ingredient in incense and perfumes. But, say the ecologists, its production in the Horn of Africa is declining because Boswellia woodlands are failing to regenerate.

The ecologists hypothesised that poor regeneration was due to the fact that intensive tapping meant that the trees were diverting too much carbohydrate into resin, at the expense of reproductive organs, such as flowers, fruit and seeds. Working in south-western Eritrea, they tested the hypothesis by looking at how a number of seeds intensively tapped trees produced, and their germination rates, compared with untapped trees.

As per one of the authors of the study, Professor Frans Bongers of Wageningen University: "This study strongly suggests that there is competition between investment of carbohydrates in sexual reproductive structures and synthesis of frankincense in Boswellia papyrifera. At all study sites, trees subject to experimental tapping produced fewer flowers, fruits and seeds than trees that were exempt from tapping. Furthermore, tapped trees produced smaller fruits with seeds of lower weight and reduced vitality than non-tapped trees".........

Posted by: Erica      Permalink         Source

December 17, 2006, 8:03 PM CT

Logging, Mineral Exploitation Could Erase Two-thirds of Congo Basin

Do you know, the Congo Basin loses some 3.7 million acres a year to agriculture, logging, road development, oil exploitation and mining? Yes, this is what the WWF's Central African regional office (CARPO) said in a recent report.

And, if logging and mineral exploitation continues at the current rates in the world's second largest tropical forest - after the Amazon forests - two-thirds of it could disappear within just 50 years! - the environmental group WWF fears.

With the forests' disappearance, about 400 mammal species are under threat as their habitat is getting destroyed too! The animals include the world's largest populations of lowland gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and forest elephants.

CARPO director Laurent Some said in the report,.

Tropical forest is vanishing at a rate of 5 percent a decade, wrecking habitats and releasing 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, which is a fifth of global greenhouse emissions.........

Posted by: Erica      Permalink         Source

December 17, 2006, 8:00 PM CT

Bell Pepper, with Loads of Taste and Medicinal Values

Bell pepper is of three basic types - red, green, yellow and a number of more. Each has its own taste and medicinal value, plus the delicacy of being delicious too. Bell pepper is most usually known as the capsicum as it is derived from the capsicum plant. Bell pepper contains a recessive gene which eliminates the capsaicin in the fruit.

Capsaicin:

The chemical compound capsaicin (8- methyl- N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide) which is the active component of the chili peppers. It is an irritant to mammals and produces a burning sensation to the human tissues when brought in contact. Capsaicin and several related compounds are called capsaicinoids and are produced as a secondary metabolite, by chili peppers, probably as deterrents against herbivores. Pure capsaicin is a hydrophobic, colorless, odorless, and crystalline to waxy compound.

Medical:

Capsaicin is currently used in topical ointments to relieve the pain of peripheral neuropathy such as post-herpetic neuralgia caused by shingles. It may be used in concentrations of between 0.025% and 0.075%.

Herpes Zoster, colloquially known as shingles, is the reactivation of the virus varicella zoster, leading to a crop of painful blisters over the area of dermatome.

It may also be used as a cream for the temporary relief of minor aches and pains of muscles and joints linked to arthritis, simple backache, strains and sprains. The therapy typically involves the application of a topical anesthetic until the area is numb. Then the capsaicin is applied by a therapist wearing rubber gloves and a face mask. The capsaicin remains on the skin until the patient starts to feel the "heat", at which point it is promptly removed. Capsaicin is also available in large adhesive bandages that can be applied to the back.........

Posted by: Erica      Permalink         Source

December 15, 2006, 5:10 AM CT

Ebola-Outbreak Kills 5000 Gorillas

Since reports of ape die-offs first circulated widely in 2003, sceptics have doubted how large these die-offs were and whether Ebola was even the cause. The new study, led by Magdalena Bermejo of the University of Barcelona, allays these doubts because it was conducted in a closely monitored gorilla population where genetic tests confirmed Ebola as the cause of death. Bermejo and his colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Uppsala University first showed that 93% (221 of 238) individually known gorillas at the Lossi Sanctuary in northwest Congo were killed by Ebola during outbreaks in 2002 and 2003. They then used transect surveys to show that 95% gorilla mortality rates extended over a much larger area of several thousand square kilometres. Chimpanzees were also heavily affected, with a mortality rate of 77%.

Lossi was just one in a series of large gorilla and chimpanzee die-offs caused by Ebola over the last twelve years. Accurate figures on exactly how a number of apes have died are still not available. But given the large amount of prime habitat affected, these Ebola outbreaks may have killed as much as 25% of the world gorilla population. Especially troubling has been the concentration of Ebola impact on large, remote protected areas that were designed to be the bulwarks of ape conservation efforts. Ebola has not totally made apes totally extinct from these areas but it has pushed once huge populations down to smaller sizes at which they are dramatically less resilient to illegal hunting and other looming threats.........

Posted by: Kelly      Permalink         Source

December 15, 2006, 5:00 AM CT

Stem Cells have Help to Renew Themselves

Stem cells are not fixed as to their potential development (pluripotent). Thus, stem cells from embryos may one day be able to help to manage or cure a number of different diseases. Initially, however, researchers want to keep large numbers of pluripotent cells in the laboratory which then differentiate into specialised cells. This is the only way they will acquire a sufficient quantity of specialised cells which might be used for therapeutic purposes.

The small SC1 molecule makes this possible. It was discovered by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster, their colleagues at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla and scientists at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation in San Diego. The molecule prevents the cell from specialising and loosing its pluripotence. "Thanks to this molecule, we will be able to reproduce clean stem cells relatively easily and cheaply. We have used it to keep the stem cells from mice in an undifferentiated state for a very long time," said Jeong Tae Do, one of the Max Planck scientists involved. "This represents significant progress in stem cell research".

Up to now, it has been very laborious keeping stem cells in the laboratory so that they remain pluripotent on division. For example, the scientists had to culture them on food cells sourced from a different animal and in calf serum and add a whole range of expensive substances. Human stem cells would therefore not be suitable for medical applications because they would be contaminated with animal products.........

Posted by: Janet      Permalink         Source

December 13, 2006, 8:00 PM CT

Identification of carbon dioxide receptors in insects

Mosquitoes don't mind morning breath. They use the carbon dioxide people exhale as a way to identify a potential food source. But when they bite, they can pass on many dangerous infectious diseases, such as malaria, yellow fever, and West Nile encephalitis. Now, reporting in today's advance online publication in Nature, Leslie Vosshall's laboratory at Rockefeller University has identified the two molecular receptors in fruit flies that help these insects detect carbon dioxide. The findings could prove to be important against the fight against global infectious disease.

"Insects are particularly sensitive to carbon dioxide, using it to track food sources and assess their surrounding environment," says Vosshall, Chemers Family Associate Professor and head of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior at Rockefeller. "The neurons in insects that respond to carbon dioxide were already known, but the molecular mechanism by which these neurons sense this gas was a mystery".

One protein, called Gr21a, was previously known to be expressed in the carbon dioxide responsive neurons, which are in the antennae of the fruit fly. Since in the fly, chemosensory receptors commonly work together as a pair of unrelated proteins, Walton Jones, a former biomedical fellow and first author of the paper, began by looking for other members of the gustatory receptor family, and observed that the Gr63a protein was always co-expressed with Gr21a, both in the larva and in the adult fly.........

Posted by: Kelly      Permalink         Source

December 13, 2006, 7:19 PM CT

Tigers Can Maintain High Numbers

A landmark study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) says tigers living in one of India's best-run national parks lose nearly a quarter of their population each year from poaching and natural mortality, yet their numbers remain stable due to a combination of high reproductive rates and abundant prey. The study, which appears in the journal Ecology, underscores the need of maintaining protected areas with high prey densities in an overall tiger conservation strategy, along with anti-poaching efforts and eliminating trade in tiger body parts.

The nine-year study in India's Nagarahole National Park found that an average of 23 percent of the park's tigers either move away or die each year from either naturally or from poaching outside of the park, yet total numbers remained high.

"This study shows that even well-protected wild tiger populations have naturally high rates of annual losses, and yet do fine because of their high reproductive rates," said WCS researcher Dr. Ullas Karanth, lead author of the study. "The conservation implications of this study show that effectively protecting reserves to maintain high prey densities is a key pillar in an overall strategy for the conservation of tigers".

The research team, which included Dr. Karanth and Dr. Jim Nichols from USGS, used remote cameras to identify individual tigers and then accurately estimate population trends in the park. Tigers can produce between 3-4 cubs per litter every 2-3 years.........

Posted by: Kelly      Permalink         Source

December 13, 2006, 6:56 PM CT

Oysters Can Take Heat And Heavy Metals

Pollution is bad for the sea life and so is global warming, but aquatic organisms can be resilient. However, even organisms tough enough to survive one major onslaught may find that a double whammy is more than their molecular biology can take.

A new study has observed that even relatively low levels of heavy metal pollution can interfere with the metabolic processes of oysters, and that the effects of the pollution become especially notable when oyster metabolism is also affected by high seasonal temperatures. The combined effect is strong enough to lead to fatal weakness and disease, adding a fundamental explanation for documented oyster declines in the wild. The effect also reveals an additional impact that warming coastal waters may have on cold-blooded organisms.

Investigating the mechanisms by which the heavy metal cadmium and temperature can each affect metabolic processes in oysters, a new report by a team headed by University of North Carolina at Charlotte ecophysiologist Inna Sokolova finds that both cadmium and temperature independently decrease the efficiency of metabolic processes in the oysters' mitochondria - the place where stored food is turned into the energy living cells run on.

The study also finds that cadmium can cause an increase in the production of reactive oxygen species - dangerous metabolic by-products - while higher temperatures hamper the cellular processes that normally prevent the compounds from causing damage. The findings will appear in the recent issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology.........

Posted by: Kelly      Permalink         Source

December 13, 2006, 6:27 PM CT

Soil Nutrition And Carbon Sequestration

USDA Forest Service (FS) researchers from the FS Southern Research Station (SRS) unit in Research Triangle Park, NC, along with colleagues from Duke University, published two papers in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) that provide a more precise understanding of how forests respond to increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), the major greenhouse gas driving climate change.

Building on preliminary studies reported in Nature, the scientists observed that trees can only increase wood growth from elevated CO2 if there is enough leaf area to support that growth. Leaf area, in turn, is limited by soil nutrition; without adequate soil nutrition, trees respond to elevated CO2 by transferring carbon below ground, then recycling it back to the atmospheric through respiration.

"With sufficient soil nutrition, forests increase their ability to tie up, or sequester carbon in woody biomass under increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations," says Kurt Johnsen, SRS researcher involved in the project. "With lower soil nutrition, forests still sequester carbon, but cannot take full advantage increasing CO2 levels. Due to land use history, a number of forests are deficient in soil nutrition, but forest management -- including fertilizing with nitrogen -- can greatly increase growth rate and wood growth responses to elevated atmospheric CO2".........

Posted by: Erica      Permalink         Source