dry

New Clues Add 40,000 Years to Age of Human Species

...rentiate layers of sediment and link the currently dry region to its moister climates of the past. But, precisely dating the outcrops required volcanic minerals with elements that undergo radioactive decay. Brown and McDougall collected rocks containing volcanic debris, which McDougall dated to approxi...

New research indicates a 'troubled' greenhouse is brewing

...that the contrast between the rainy season and the dry season will increase dramatically," says Greg Retallack, whose study indicating that a troubled greenhouse is brewing is published in the April issue of the journal Geology. In this case, the word "troubled" refers to the stormy conditions shown to ...

South America's vast pantanal wetland may become next everglades, UNU experts warn

... lagoons, rivers, forest and forest islands. It is dry half the year and a shallow lake the rest, creatin...itional cattle farming is facilitating fire in the dry season. Without cattle to eat or step on the grass, it gets dry and more easily burns, leading to mo...

World's largest rainforest drying experiment completes first phase

...oil. The panels were removed during the five-month dry season each year. To sort out the forest responses...ects of forest behavior, researchers compared this dry plot of forest with a similar plot, from which rainfall was not excluded. These two forest plots wer...

Scientists discuss improved biopesticides for locust control in West Africa

... in recession now because they do not breed in the dry season, but when the annual spring rains begin, they are expected to return. Participants at the seminar included ministers of agriculture from other West African nations, national plant protection directors and locust control personnel, military of...

No relief for Pacific Northwest drought

...or relief this spring or summer from the unusually dry weather that has recently hit the Pacific Northwes...g," Neilson said. "It is going to become extremely dry in many parts of the Pacific Northwest and northern Rocky Mountain states, and the fire risk is goin...

Growth in biomass could put US on road to energy independence

...rt outlines a national strategy in which 1 billion dry tons of biomass ?any organic matter that is availa...s, the study found potential exceeding 1.3 billion dry tons per year. That amount is enough to produce biofuels to meet more than one-third of the current ...

Human Cells Filmed Instantly Messaging for First Time

...rt outlines a national strategy in which 1 billion dry tons of biomass ?any organic matter that is availa...s, the study found potential exceeding 1.3 billion dry tons per year. That amount is enough to produce biofuels to meet more than one-third of the current ...

Shift of weather patterns necessitates rethinking of reforestation methods

...Another big factor is the subjection of new to hot dry conditions before they've had a chance to acclimate and recover from the stress of planting. Rethinking planting time could remedy the loss due to droughty conditions, Taylor said. Traditional methods prescribe planting in the winter, but conditions...

Scientists journey to southern Africa to unravel the secret world of elephant communication

... gather day and night to drink or bathe during the dry Namibian summer. To avoid disturbing this remarkable parade of wildlife, and to prevent one of these large creatures from invading tents or destroying delicate electronic gear, the research team erected a 7-foot-tall cloth barrier around the perimet...

Stealth Worms May Improve Insect Pest Control

... the cycle again. These juveniles also can survive dry conditions in soils for long periods of time before they infect more insects. This naturally-occurring relationship between the nematodes and their mutualistic bacteria has existed for millennia. EPNs are found in terrestrial environments, including...

Making Sure Sacred Sheep Don't Become Extinct

...Navajo-Churro and found that the sheep did well in dry areas; they were able to produce more lambs than other breeds of sheep. Hand­spinners like the wool from Churro sheep, and they are willing to pay premium prices for it. Navajo use the wool to make blankets. But for industrial wool manufacturers, it ...

Nanobacteria in clouds could spread disease, scientists claim

...h humidity region of the clouds and the relatively dry inter-cloud regions, leading to oscillations between a dormant state and one of activation," explained Professor Wickramasinghe. "Remnants of a sticky protein (slime) coating nanobacteria makes them act as extremely efficient cloud condensation nucle...

Tsunami-damaged coral reefs should be left to recover naturally, say scientists

...g lots of earth around, they should do this in the dry season rather than the wet season to avoid sediment being washed into the sea." USEFUL WEB LINKS: The Coral Reef Targeted Research & Capacity Building for Management Project. http://www.gefcoral.org Dr Alasdair Edwards ?home page: http://www.ncl...

Fungus-farming termites descend from an African rain forest Eve

...rmites use chewed plant material, such as wood and dry grass, to feed the fungus and allow it to flourish, while the fungus converts otherwise indigestible plant material into nutrients the termites can utilize. Earlier work had shown that in the evolutionary past, a single, unreversed, transition to agr...

Hepatitis C responds best to combo of ribavirin and interferon, study concludes

...umber of white blood cells; skin disorders such as dry skin and rash; stomach complaints such as lack of appetite, nausea and indigestion; infections; insomnia; difficulty breathing, cough and fatigue. "The beneficial effect of adding ribavirin to interferon is not fully understood," the authors conclud...

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Many of 2 billion dryland dwellers at risk as land degrades

...ill-health (fever, coughing, sore eyes) during the dry season," says the report. "Dust emanating from (the Gobi desert) and the Sahara has also been implicated in respiratory problems as far away as North America and has affected coral reefs in the Caribbean." The report shows infant mortality in drylan...

Woods Hole Research Center plans controlled burn in Amazon rainforest

...n through the understory of frontier forests every dry season. These areas are already slated for destruc... leaving holes in the canopy; longer, more intense dry seasons provoke leaf thinning; and both of these changes allow the litter to become dry enough to su...

Hybrid grass may prove to be valuable fuel source

...aid. Full-grown plants produce 10-30 tons per acre dry weight each year. Miscanthus yields in lowland are...ilar to the Midwest, are at least 25 tons per acre dry weight, wrote Heaton and colleagues in a paper published in 2004 in the journal Mitigation and Adapt...

MERIS monitoring tracks planetary photosynthesis levels

... for Spain and Portugal, due to unusually cold and dry conditions at the beginning of the year, leading to plant stress. In the past the effects of the 2003 European drought were detected in a similar way, but in the absence of any long-term continental-scale perspective on vegetation growth. Forget fo...

Past droughts geographically widespread in the West, according to tree-ring data

When it's dry, it's dry all over, according to a new analysis of more than...rsheds have experienced both record wet and record dry episodes. The findings of the second phase will likely be available in the summer of 2007. Key proj...

Study uncovers dirty little secret: Soil emissions are much-bigger-than-expected component of air pollution

...When the rains come to the Sahel after a six-month dry season, dormant soil bacteria reawaken and begin p...e expected," she said. "The biggest areas were the dry topical regions like the Sahel, and in the mid-latitude regions where there is a lot of agriculture....

Locusts' built-in 'surface analysis' ability directs them to fly overland

..." The sea reflects polarized light much more than dry land (which reflects mainly diffused, non-polarized light), enabling a distinction to be made between the two. "When the locusts are presented with a situation of choice between surfaces reflecting either polarized or diffused light, they exercise th...

Trio of plant genes prevent 'too many mouths'

...rning ?both key to plants being able to survive on dry land ?are using the same signaling components," says Jessica McAbee, a University of Washington research associate in biology. She's one co-author of a report in the July 8 issue of Science about work with Arabidopsis, a weed-like member of the cruci...

Green diesel: New process makes liquid transportation fuel from plants

...ydrates to store energy." About 75 percent of the dry weight of herbaceous and woody biomass is comprised of carbohydrates. Because the UW-Madison process works with a range of carbohydrates, a wide range of plants, and more parts of the plant, can be consumed to make fuel. "The current delivered cost ...

Acid water in East Java threatens biodiversity and local welfare

...iver at various locations. She determined the loss dry matter over a period of several months. Solution According to Lohr, one possible solution for the acidification problem is simply to prevent the crater water from mixing with both neutral rivers. She believes that this could be realised by chann...

Freeze-dried mats of microbes awaken in Antarctic streambed

An experiment in a dry Antarctic stream channel has shown that a carpet o...tive streambed in the McMurdo Dry Valleys into the dry streambed, she said. A time series of aerial photographs, coupled with carbon isotope analyses of th...

Hurricane aftermath: Infectious disease threats from common, not exotic, diseases

... excess moisture, and much will need to be done to dry out New Orleans and clean up mold growth. Some environmental molds can cause allergic reactions. ...

Fluoride poisoning in China due to clay, not coal

...large blocks of coal. The combined fuel is used to dry corn before storing it. Corn, however, absorbs more smoke than other grains, such as rice or wheat. Zheng's team found that only 15 per cent of the fluoride released when the coal and clay mixture is burnt comes from the coal. The fluoride that con...

New technology shows our ancestors ate…everything!

...d during the wet season," Teaford added. "But come dry season, they may have to process something very hard or tough in order to survive." "For years, it's been a dream of many researchers interested in our lineage to obtain this kind of information," continued Teaford. "And the computer software is phe...

NCAR analysis shows widespread pollution from 2004 wildfires

...mer of 2004, largely because of unusually warm and dry weather. To quantify carbon monoxide emissions from the fires, the research team used a remote sensing instrument known as MOPITT (Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere) that is operated by NCAR and the University of Toronto and flown on NASA'...

Tropical dry forests receive international recognition

...y are not the only kind under threat--the tropical dry forest is in as much danger as its popular cousin ...y formed TROPI-DRY, a research network on tropical dry forests housed in the Faculty of Science. The Inter American Institute for Global Change Research ha...

Scientists must offer solutions for conserving tropical forests in a rapidly changing world

...nd subtropical moist forest and 9% of all tropical dry forests are nominally protected by governments. Increasingly, even these areas seem to be bearing the indelible marks of human activity. On Barro Colorado Island (BCI) administered by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in the Republ...

Discovering the first steps in transcription-coupled repair

...ight typically causes hyper-pigmented skin that is dry and parchment-like, and is followed by multiple skin cancers. If carefully shielded from ultraviolet light, for example by window filters and protective clothing, many XP sufferers can lead seemingly normal lives. XP results from mutations in any one...

Sahara's edge studied from ground, air and space to improve water management

...and parameters such as leaf area index and wet and dry biomass. Measurements had to be as authoritative as possible, for example close-up three-dimensional photographs were taken of plant rows and soil roughness while sap flow measurements made for olive trees. Samples were analysed in Tunisian laborator...

Predators keep the world green, ecologists find

...rcent. Most of the vertebrates present in regional dry forest ecosystem had disappeared from small islands, including fruit eaters and predators of vertebrates, leaving a hyperabundance of generalist herbivores such as iguanas, howler monkeys and leaf-cutter ants. "Mere numbers do not do justice to the ...

Skin disease common among Hispanic farmworkers in North Carolina, research shows

...e. Among the women, diagnoses included excessively dry skin, foot fungus and acne. "While these may not be a direct result of farmwork, it is likely a result of resources and living environment," said Arcury. He explained that workers often must share shower facilities and often have limited access t...

The world's deepest dinosaur finding - 2256 metres below the seabed

...nce a huge area where big rivers meandered through dry plains. Now the landscape has been compressed to form a pattern of fossil alluvial sand between banks of red shale. ...

The Amazon in 2050: Implementing the law could save a million square kilometers of rainforest

...not affect all forests and watersheds equally. The dry forest formation of Mato Grosso will virtually disappear by the year 2050, and many watersheds (including the Xingu and Tocantins Rivers) will lose most of the forest cover in their catchments, increasing flooding and sedimentation. The region of gre...

Amazon rainforest greens up in the dry season

...forest puts on its biggest growth spurt during the dry season, according to new research. The finding sur...d lush during the rainy season and then during the dry season, leaves fall because there's not enough water in the soil to support plant growth," said lead...

Formation of cellulose fibers tracked for the first time

...lulose fibers make up a significant portion of the dry weight of most plants. Because the fibers can be broken down into the sugar glucose, which can then be converted into ethanol and other biofuels, there are huge incentives to learn more about how plants produce and modify the molecule. Cellulose is a...

Deep-rooted plants have much greater impact on climate than experts thought

...on uptake and localized atmospheric cooling during dry periods. The researchers estimate this effect inc...plants, called transpiration, by 40 percent in the dry season, when photosynthesis otherwise would be limited. "This shifting of water by roots has a phys...

Parts of the Caribbean and Central America are likely to have less summer rain

...-- for example, whether the wind is flowing from a dry region into the convection zone, or whether the wind is blowing past the convection zone without going into it -- can cause one model to have a drought in a particular region, while another model does not. You have to be careful when talking about pr...

Exotic crab poised for widespread UK invasion

...lonisation is increased by the fact they can cross dry land and can migrate up to 1,000km while growing to adult size. A decrease in river pollution and a prolonged period of drought in the late 1980s - which together improved habitat conditions for mitten crabs - are potential reasons for the recent...

Report shows deforestation threatens Brazil's Pantanal

...es the hydrological processes, which determine the dry and wet cycles and are largely responsible for the biological richness of the region. That in turn can compromise resources such as food and breeding sites offered by the forests and other types of vegetation. An example is the hyacinth macaw, a spec...

Stable polymer nanotubes may have a biotech future

...e removed from the liquid solution and placed on a dry surface or in a different container. The optical tweezers can be used to custom build nanotube network structures. The work was supported in part by the Office of Naval Research. ...

Habitat microstructure drives salamander metamorphosis

...ic salamanders can access sub-surface water during dry months. However, if these spaces are filled in by small particles, metamorphosis is the only way they can survive when surface streams dry-up. ...

Study supports 'urgent' need for worldwide ban on lead-based paint

...applied in a single layer to a wood block, left to dry and then removed and analyzed in UC laboratories for lead content. About 50 percent of the paint sold in China, India and Malaysia--none of which appear to have regulations on lead--had lead levels 30 times higher than U.S. regulations. In contras...

Researchers show how brain decodes complex smells

...nd fresh bobcat urine shipped to the laboratory on dry ice. The researchers then exposed the mice to the original odor and its individual compounds. "We found that glomeruli, the functional units of the olfactory bulb, act as detectors for individual compounds," Lin said. "There are no single detectors ...

Promising cell protein may play role in infection and dry eye

...ies of the ocular surface such as eye infection or dry eye, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University. The researchers, led by Mina Massaro-Giordano, M.D., of the University of Pennsylvania's Scheie Eye Institute, and Marcella Macaluso, Ph.D., of the Sbarro Institu...

Exxon Valdez oil found in tidal feeding grounds of ducks, sea otters

...ldez oil buried in sand and silt that only becomes dry during the lowest tides. This biologically diverse zone is a prime feeding ground for sea otters, ducks and other wildlife. Previously, scientists believed most of the oil was deposited on beaches at higher tide levels.> The researchers rando...

Where have all the butterflies gone?

...ia was soaked, the southwest desert has had a very dry "La Nina" winter, leaving little food for the cate...he painted lady. Shapiro said that, as in previous dry winters, the painted lady butterflies had given up on trying to breed in the desert and headed north...

Beaver dams create healthy downstream ecosystems

... and providing moisture to plants in the otherwise dry valley bottom. The results will be published 8 Jun... table to sustain plant and animal life during the dry summer season. "This study broadens the view of the importance of beaver in the valley bottoms beyo...

MIT engineers probe spiders' polymer art

...dissolve," McKinley said. Like a cooked egg white, dry spider silk doesn't revert to its former liquid state. What started out as a water-based solution becomes impervious to water. The silk protein's long molecules are like tangled spaghetti. They form a viscous solution but are slippery enough to sli...

Solvent exposure linked to birth defects in babies of male painters

...g, furniture manufacturing, painting, printing and dry cleaning. ...

New moth variety disarms plants guarded by selenium

...elenium to extreme levels--up to 1% of the plant's dry weight. Selenium, an element with properties similar to sulfur, is an essential trace element for many organisms, but it typically is toxic at high levels, and the function behind the intriguing tendency of some plants to hyperaccumulate this element...

Developing uses for sugar-cane bagasse: Biotechnology applied to the paper industry

...ction increased, to a maximum level (90 U per g of dry bagasse support). This amounts to 45 times the yie...ined using bagasse and ethanol (90 000 U per kg of dry bagasse after 30 days, representing the quantity needed for processing, without input of fungus, an ...

Edible coatings will be the packaging of the future

...um protein. This is a polysaccharide that grows in dry and semi-arid regions of the north of Mexico. The result is a compound film that is resistant and that maintains suitable mechanical properties. The use of mesquite gum is an economical and efficacious alternative with a promising future, not only fo...

Dig deeper to find Martian life

... Three different surface scenarios were tested; dry regolith, water ice, and regolith with layered permafrost. The particle energies and radiation doses were measured on the surface of Mars and at regular depths underground, allowing the calculation of cell survival times. The team took the known r...

Manual dishwashing study digs up dirt on dish cleanliness

...borne disease outbreaks. After letting the food dry on to the dishes for an hour—a plausible wait in a busy restaurant dish room—they gave each utensil a few scrubs per side and measured the amount of microscopic organisms still clinging to the dishes. Lee and Pascall discovered that washing dishes...