Earth Blog

There was once a turtle so large, they say it was the size of a Smart car and that if it had wanted it could have eaten a small crocodile.

That’s what paleontologists from North Carolina State University have concluded in a paper recently published about the discovery of 60 million year old fossil they call Carbonemys.

Why did the chicken cross the road? He was going to give you the answer but he didn’t think you were listening.

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Georgia are studying “avian expressiveness” and they think all those squawking birds may be trying to tell us something.

"Many poultry professionals swear they can walk into a grow-out house and tell whether a flock is happy or stressed just by listening to the birds vocalize," Wayne Daley, a  principal research scientist from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) told Rick Robinson from the school’s Research Horizons magazine. "The trouble is, it has proved hard for these pros to pinpoint for us exactly what it is that they're hearing."

What do soda and cigarettes have in common besides their ability to kill you? They both can alter the way your brain works.

There was a British study earlier this year that reported prospective memory loss in smokers and yesterday a UCLA study reported that a diet heavy with foods that contain fructose, specifically high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) like soda and practically everything else we like to eat- because it’s a preservative- can slow the brain. This slowing affects memory and the ability to learn but there is a way to lessen the damage.

The traditional pairing of white wine with a fish dinner has another relationship aside from your plate and palate.

Biologists at the University of California, Berkeley have found that fish and viticulturists in wine country may be unknowingly competing for one of the state’s most limited resources: water. Take a guess as to who is losing the struggle? There is a fifty/fifty chance you guess correctly. If you guessed the fish and are clutching a bottle of wine you are correct and win that bottle you are holding.

Today may be the dreaded beginning of the week but as you slog through your Monday it’s never too soon to start thinking about the weekend.

Saturday is “National Kids to Parks Day” (KTP Day) and the official mascot, Buddy Bison of the National Park Trust (NPT), wants kids and their families to visit a green space. Parks -city, state, and national- across the country are hosting events to encourage people to experience and explore nature.

Earlier this month thanks to the efforts of the USDA Forest Service, U.S Fish and Wildlife Service, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, and the Memphis Zoo officials were able to take seven Louisiana pine snakes, all six months old and about three feet long, into the Kisatchie National Forest in Louisiana for immediate release.

The snakes hadn’t slithered into homes via the plumbing or weren’t hanging around residential backyards terrorizing small dogs to have earned a one-way ticket back to the forest. Officials are hoping reintroduction will help restore the population to its natural range in the center of The Bayou State. Last year officials released twenty snakes as part of the initiative which hatches and raises the snakes in captivity from wild-caught snakes.

This week Mike Lee, an environmental reporter with the San Diego Union- Tribune, wrote an article that discussed the recent findings of a study about the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” conducted by UCLA and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

A rapid increase in the amount of plastic trash floating at sea has impacted the marine environment but not in the way you are thinking.

Yesterday at a NASA press conference a panel of scientists presented new information collected by the Dawn spacecraft about the giant asteroid called Vesta.

In July of last year Dawn arrived to orbit Vesta now that its work is done there the spacecraft will leave the asteroid in about three months and travel to the dwarf planet Ceres. Dawn will begin orbiting Ceres in 2015.

Have you picked up the reusable bag habit yet? If you have, where do you keep your bags? Is it safe to assume you don’t keep them in a bathroom? Are you a reusable bag owner looking from your bag to your bathroom as you ponder the question and can only answer: “Well, that is just silly-grocery bags in the bathroom.”

Unfortunately, someone once kept a reusable bag in a hotel bathroom and it resulted in a stomach flu outbreak that affected a group of girls ages 13 and 14 and their four chaperones from Oregon during a 2010 soccer tournament trip in Washington state.

As if California didn’t have enough to worry about in the pest department (Lindsay Lohan is still roaming free, isn’t she?) a new threat has been identified that could cripple the avocado industry if left unchecked.

In 2003 the tiny beetle known as the Tea Shot Hole Borer (Euwallacea fornicatus) which is smaller than the size of a single flaxseed, was first “detected” in Los Angeles County, probably with a magnifying glass or the trained eye of a professional if it was a spotting.

According to the article it wouldn’t be until nine years later that the health of California’s trees was considered at risk when an avocado tree in a Los Angeles backyard was found with a beetle, fungus, and dieback symptoms by Akif Eskalen, a plant pathologist at UC Riverside.  The Agricultural Commissioner of Los Angeles County and the California Food and Drug Administration have both verified the identity of the tiny menace to ensure this isn’t a case of mistaken identity.

The ARC Centre for Excellence of Coral Reef Studies in Australia published a study in the latest issue of the journal Ecology that would like to remind us there are a bunch of little fish that make coral reefs happy and healthy. Despite our focus on higher profile marine animals that often tug on our heartstrings (sea turtles) or frighten us (sharks), the fish that provide basic maintenance deserve some credit.

"Herbivorous fishes protect coral reefs by limiting the growth of algae, or seaweed," says Loïc Thibaut, the lead researcher of this study. "Seaweeds grow rapidly and compete with corals for space. If left unchecked, they can smother the corals and take over the reefs. This shift, once it happens, is extremely difficult to reverse."

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published a study on PLoS ONE that presented findings that will help understand the affects of low-levels of domoic acid (DA) - a neurotoxic amino acid produced by marine algae- found in marine life like clams and mussels.

High-levels of DA can cause amnesic shellfish poisoning in humans which has vastly different symptoms from paralytic shellfish poisoning. Amnesic shellfish poisoning can cause seizures, memory loss, and coma as opposed to abdominal pain and vomiting. Both forms can cause death but that is only in rare cases. Scientists don’t know what low-levels can do in humans over extended periods of time.

Yesterday Cinco De Mayo parades marched merrily through cities from Seattle to Kansas City (their celebration featured a Chihuahua parade) and Mexican heritage was celebrated with traditional dancing and music. The Battle of Puebla was fought and won on a May 5th a long time ago but the climate change battle is ongoing and 350.org staged events of their own over the weekend to raise more awareness.

The idea was simply to “connect the dots” between global warming and extreme weather through a series of images featuring dots, and the people and creatures in areas that had been affected or are continuing to be affected by the issue.

"We just celebrated Earth Day. May 5 is more like Broken Earth Day, a worldwide witness to the destruction global warming is already causing," said Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, a global climate campaign. "People everywhere are saying the same thing: our tragedy is not some isolated trauma, it's part of a pattern."

This week Greenpeace released their sixth seafood sustainability scorecard for grocery retailers. They have had their eye on the industry since 2008 and have released a report ranking twenty popular stores since then but Greenpeace has always had their eyes on marine life since its birth in 1971.

The scorecard is part of an ongoing project known as Carting Away the Oceans (CATO) where they not only rank retailers but examine conservation efforts,discuss better practices or habits retailers and consumers can do to protect marine ecosystems.

There are several memorable scenes in Disney’s animated Alice in Wonderland released in 1951 but everyone should recall Alice’s frantic and weepy encounter with the talking doorknob. The angry doorknob prevents her from leaving the room she has landed in after falling down the rabbit hole.  Alice takes the first logical step when faced with a door: she tries opening it only to find it locked.

Perhaps it was this scene the team at Disney Research in Pittsburgh had in mind when exploring a form of smart technology known as ”capacitive touch sensing” or the same magic responsible for smartphone touchscreens. They have applied it to a doorknob that knows when to lock or unlock depending on the way it is touched.  Alice is probably stamping her little Mary Jane clad foot that it’s 61 years too late for her to utilize this magical doorknob instead of the one she encountered.

They call their new toy Touché and the Disney scientists partnered with Carnegie Mellon University to develop the technology.

Saturday’s Moon will be a “supermoon” and all that means is that the full Moon will look big and bright because it’s nearer to us than it is normally.

News outlets are stressing that there is nothing to be afraid of because the Moon isn’t suddenly going to take a nosedive into our planet or cause chaos. How can we be certain we have nothing to fear? Supermoons are a phenomenon that occur once a year on average according to this National Geographic article and we are all still here reading this having lived through many supermoons.

Today in news of frighteningly large and thankfully extinct creatures: a group of Chinese scientists found fossils in Mongolia of giant prehistoric “flea-like” insects that feasted on the blood of sleeping dinosaurs. The discovery was written up in a recent issue of the journal Current Biology.

These fleas were approximately ten times the size of the fleas we are familiar with today so they were about as big as a fly that’s not so bad right?  

“Wind power is going to be a part of the solution to the climate change, air pollution and energy security problems," said Somnath Baidya Roy at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. "Understanding the impacts of wind farms is critical for developing efficient adaptation and management strategies to ensure the long-term sustainability of wind power."

Donald Trump may not want eleven wind turbines near his proposed golf resort in Scotland and when we say near we mean sunk offshore approximately 1.5 miles away. It’s not like they are being worked into the course like one of those novelty windmills at a local mini-golf center. However, there are plenty of other communities and countries willing to consider the idea.

Wind turbines are high profile projects and there has been study after study about the safety, the “health problems” they could cause residents, and how off shore turbines affect the marine environment. This week a study about wind farms in Texas increasing  surface temperatures at night was published in the April 29th issue of Nature Climate Change.

Earlier this month Whole Foods Market announced the early implementation of a drastic change to their seafood departments: they would no longer sell “red-rated fish” or fish that are unsustainable. The new policy went into affect on Earth Day and there has been a bit of opposition.

Senator Scott Brown (R-Massachusetts) sent a letter to the CEOs of Whole Foods asking them to reconsider the decision because their actions were going to hurt the New England fishing industry. Despite the outcry the store has moved forward with the policy and released a statement in defense of their actions.

There is another chain following Whole Foods’ lead: the Michigan-based Meijer also announced this month they are starting a “comprehensive seafood sustainability initiative” in their giant retail stores that sell everything from flip-flops to breakfast cereal.

Asteroids were a popular subject this month as Planetary Resources, Inc announced at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington their intentions to mine near-Earth asteroids for precious metals and water. The company has enlisted the help of big names like movie director James Cameron in an advisory role and Google co-founder Larry Page as a financial backer.

Planetary Resources isn’t quite ready to begin mining and they are likely following NASA’s recent asteroid news which could make their goals easier to reach.