Earth Blog

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.

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.

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.

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.

In the vintage Merrie Melodies cartoon titled “Wabbit Twouble” Elmer Fudd merrily motors his way to Jellostone National Park for a “westful wacation in the mountains.” He sets up his campsite only to be incessantly pestered by Bugs Bunny: a known “wascal”.  During the trip Fudd also accidentally riles a grizzly bear and Fudd is forced to leave in an angry huff. On his way out of the park he takes his aggression out on the entrance sign with an ax and lands in jail. But he is satisfied the solitude of confinement will provide him: “west and wewaxation at wast!"

Fudd may have been better off if he had chosen a seaside destination according to new research from Europe that was presented this week at the British Psychological Society Annual Conference in London.

"We've been working on this for a long time and are looking at many genes. One particular gene has become my favorite," said Dr. William Powell,"And over the years it has convinced me that this gene is going to do the trick."

What trick is this gene set to perform? It’s going to detoxify the oxalic acid produced by the pathogen that causes blight in chestnut trees.

Powell is a plant biotechnology expert from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) in Syracuse, New York, and with assistance from The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) they have been working on bringing chestnut trees back to the eastern United States.

Utilizing technology to make life easier is not uncommon.  Some appliances have emergency shut-offs when they become too hot and practically everything is programmable from the coffee pot to the television.

What happens when the phone and home are both smarter than their owners? When the appliances are all considered efficient? Do we gain efficiency and knowledge with them?

Diane Cook, a professor at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Washington State University, hopes that smart homes will be the next big thing courtesy of the artificial intelligence field. Bill Gates has had one for a while so it’s about time the rest of the country attempted to keep up with the Gates’.

Biomimetics was an area of focus during the 243rd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society convention in San Diego which started this Saturday and will run through this week ending on Thursday.

You probably haven’t heard of biomimetics because it’s considered an “emerging field” but the idea behind it is simple to the point of almost being old-fashioned: looking to Mother Nature for ideas about how to use and adapt biological structures in beneficial ways for medicine and industry.

Spring is just around the corner with summer quickly following and the good weather associated with these two seasons is bound to drive people outside. Outside for all the fresh air (allergies), sun (burns), and bugs (bites) Mother Nature can conjure to make us wonder why we ever left the safe confines of our homes.

What can outdoor enthusiasts look forward to this year?  According to two new but separate studies: an uptick in Lyme Disease for the Northeast United States and a new threat known as Chagas disease for the entire country. But the potential spread of only of these diseases will be attributed to climate change.

Have you weened yourself off chemically fortified cleansers thanks to our tips? Switched to new greener brands or tried to clean with just one all-purpose cleaner? Are you making your own household cleaners yet ? No worries if you haven’t because companies are racing to meet demands for eco-friendly products. But before companies can rush products to the shelves they have to be developed by scientists in labs. If only mountain fresh soap was really harvested fresh from a mountain.

Last night former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich secured a win in Georgia’s primary and gave a speech.  In this speech he said he wasn’t pandering to voters, as fellow candidate Mitt Romney claimed, when promising $2.50 a gallon gas price if elected. He called it leading. A great leader has grand ideas and goals. Another great ability Gingrich possesses is the ability to employ euphemisms. 

News of large four foot tall prehistoric penguins that have been named Kairuku penguins by researchers who spent 35 years recreating them from fossils found in New Zealand is delighting folks on the Internet.

Not to be outdone by some ancient, tuxedo-wearing, waddling birds whose predecessors would influence the creation of DC comics villain The Penguin,  Universal’s Chilly Willy,  and Sanrio’s Tuxedo Sam, another set of researchers from North Carolina studied coyote fossils and found Ice Age coyotes were a bit fatter than today’s coyotes. Giant Penguins? Fat coyotes! Google Fight!

Space may be the final frontier and while NASA works on mapping the moon’s gravitational field by scanning it crust to core, and monitoring solar flares that most certainly will not reach Earth, Google has cameras hard at work in the ocean.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting the debut of the Catlin Seaview Survey a prototype of a program that will eventually collect images of our oceans; or Google’s next logical step in their quest to image-capture every inch of our Earth. 

Little Red Riding Hood may not have admitted to being scared as she faced the wolf dressed in her grandmother’s clothing and lying in her grandmother’s bed. Her exclamations tend to sound innocent, spoken with wide-eyed disbelief: “My, what big teeth you have!” But she must have been a little frightened. Did Little Red Riding Hood have a wolf phobia? If she did that might explain why she perceived the wolf’s features to be larger than they might have actually been.

A new study conducted by the psychology department at Ohio State University tested people who suffer from arachnophobia to see if their fear changed their perception of the size of spiders. Researchers hope that this study’s findings will help treat phobias, fear, and anxiety disorders.

A threatened coral reef off the coast of Florida’s Broward County received a staghorn coral transplant last week. Researchers at Nova Southeastern University’s (NSU) Oceanographic Center noted that this was the first time this specific reef has received coral.  Along the Florida coast and globally reefs have previously benefited from nursery grown coral. 

“This is the northernmost location on the planet for transplanted staghorn corals,” said Abby Renegar, a researcher and doctoral student, “Staghorn corals previously have been transplanted in the Florida Keys, Southeast Florida, and other tropical locations around the world.”

Televisions have evolved from clunky, overweight boxes into slim, flat-screen electronics that seamlessly blend into most living rooms.  Their new design doesn’t make them any easier to mount on a wall though.  Think about all the screws and hardware needed in mounting and what is left behind when the television is ripped from its moors -unsightly holes and damaged paint. Imagine a way to get that television, bookcase, or oversized oil painting to stick to the wall with nothing but a sticky substance similar to what is found on gecko’s feet. 

“It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or two things still safe to eat.”  -Robert Fuoss

When did food become so complicated and laced with chemicals- if not entirely made from substances we can’t pronounce?  We are now cautioned to not eat anything with an ingredient list longer than a Charles Dickens sentence. We are being trained to shun high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated anything, and to identify the many names of sugar - maltodextrin, sucrose, dextrose, glucose, and more.

The problem isn’t just with our food: studies are being released to show the diameter of our plates and even the color are contributing to our unhealthy eating habits. How our food is arranged and labeled can also help us make dietary decisions. 

A recent report by researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) found that color-coding and re-arranging food in the hospital’s cafeteria led people to make better choices. 

Previously here on the Earth Blog we’ve talked about the importance of clean water to sustaining life and how the issue affects us all globally. Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it will provide $1.8 to $3.8 million in grant money for projects to restore American waterways as part of the Urban Waters program. The ultimate goal of the grants is to fund research, studies, training, and projects that will help improve and restore water quality through activities that are also community oriented.

Not all children have the same advantages or opportunities when it comes to exploring and understanding nature. City children in land-locked states may never stick their fingers in a real tide pool to touch a sea cucumber and children raised on a self-sustaining farm may not see smog pollution. It’s important for children to be able to observe the world around them to understand not only their place in it but how actions affect the world in the long and short term.