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Tag: "seasonal" at biology news

Vital ocean prey play active role in environment

...hasizes krill's active role in exploiting a highly seasonal environment. Nicol's model separates the species into different life stages: larvae, juveniles, gravid females, and other adults. These groups are believed to remain geographically separate. In summer, adults remain close to the edge of the contine...

Scientists develop malaria forecasting tool to predict disease risk

...sts for rainfall to predict unusual changes in the seasonal pattern of disease in Botswana. The team based their study on Botswana as its climate makes it susceptible to malaria epidemics. Dr Morse said: "The risk of an epidemic in tropical countries such as Botswana increases dramatically shortly after a...

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

...have," Lee said. Lee accounted both for daily and seasonal dryness in the Amazon, and showed that the two together have a large impact on the climate over the region. The increased moisture in the soil created by hydraulic redistribution during the dry season allows the plant to carry on photosynthesis at a ...

Amazon rainforest greens up in the dry season

... analyzed data from flux towers, which measure the seasonal gas exchange by vegetation. The new research confirms the local studies and indicates that the greener-in-the-dry-season pattern is basin-wide. "With the satellite, we can say the whole Amazon basin is doing something," Huete said. The team's next ...

Growing crops to cope with climate change

... in barley that controls how the plant responds to seasonal changes in the length of the day. This is key to understanding how plants have adapted their flowering behaviour to different environments. The John Innes Centre researchers have discovered that the Ppd-H1 gene in barley controls the timing of the a...

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

...ssociated with poverty." An estimated 4.2 million seasonal and migrant farmworkers and their families live in the United States. Most farmworkers are Hispanic, with a majority being from Mexico. Due to language barriers ?44 percent indicate they speak no English ?they have limited access to health education ...

2005 was the warmest year in a century

...re. Over the last 50 years, the largest annual and seasonal warmings have occurred in Alaska, Siberia and the Antarctic Peninsula. Most ocean areas have warmed. Because these areas are remote and far away from major cities, it is clear to climatologists that the warming is not due to the influence of pollutio...

NASA's AURA satellite peers into Earth's ozone hole

...a from the agency's AURA satellite, determined the seasonal ozone hole that developed over Antarctica this yea...e ozone layer over Antarctica annually undergoes a seasonal change, but since the first satellite measurements in 1979, the ozone hole has gotten larger. Human-...

In SAD patients, autumn antidepressants can prevent winter depression

For patients with seasonal affective disorder (SAD), starting treatment with ...ications, despite having many previous episodes of seasonal depression. Starting antidepressant treatment in the fall offers a new option for reducing the rate...

Johns Hopkins flu expert calls for mandatory vaccination of health care workers

... call in sick so it is difficult to precisely link seasonal hospital absenteeism and high rates of non-vaccination, she notes. "We need to close the very serious gap between knowledge and behavior that exists among health care workers," Perl argues, and it can be done, she says. In 2003, her team, along wit...

Overfishing may drive endangered seabird to rely upon lower quality food

...ts feed upon, including rockfish, have had to have seasonal closures because of heavy harvest for commercial markets. Similarly, the anchovy fishery in central California has declined by 75 percent since 1974." The study results support the need for fisheries to be managed to address their broader impacts on...

Science's Breakthrough of the Year: Watching evolution in action

...d down the identity of a signal that initiates the seasonal development of flowers. Other research focused on a gene involved in stimulating flowering, and another study highlighted a surprising cache of RNA. The Nature of Neutron Stars: In 2005, new instruments yielded vivid insights into the most violent b...

Chernobyl: The true scale of the accident

...in hunting to avoid consumption of game meat where seasonal levels of radiocaesium may be high. Low income levels in some areas cause local residents to disregard these rules. What were radiation-induced effects on plants and animals? Increased mortality of coniferous plants, soil invertebrates and mammals ...

Beach pollution is worst during new and full moon

...and biological factors, including tidal cycles and seasonal rainfall. This complexity makes beach water monitoring difficult, with levels of bacteria in a certain area changing in just a few minutes. For the new study, the researchers examined monitoring data compiled for beaches throughout Southern Californ...

Agricultural workers at increased risk for infection with animal flu viruses

...among pigs a year-round occurrence rather than the seasonal event they once were. As a result, there is a constant opportunity for people who are occupationally exposed to pigs to become infected with influenza viruses and, conversely, a continual opportunity for human flu viruses to mix with swine or bird fl...

New technology shows our ancestors ate…everything!

...humans evolved and altered their diet according to seasonal and other changes in order to survive," said Mark ... food scarcity. "If members of a species live in a seasonal environment, they can get all the soft fruit they need during the wet season," Teaford added. "But c...

Elusive salamanders have role in developing new sampling models

... and time-consuming sampling." Of more than 1,000 seasonal ponds at the 280,000-acre military facility in southeastern Georgia, 483 have been identified as potential candidates to support this particular salamander, technically known as Ambystoma cingulatum. Until April 21, however, none had been found over ...

Birds and bats sow tropical seeds

...ey carried. Fruit will be available all year, so a seasonal progression of seeds from longer-living deep forest species should be carried with the bats and birds. Other tracts will be planted with wind-dispersed trees and will be far less likely to accumulate tree species from nearby forests. "In the tropics...

New understanding of jet lag

...o the slow changes and is in fact adapted to these seasonal cycles. But transmeridian flight is an unnatural m...ay be part of a complex evolutionary adaptation to seasonal light changes, but the mechanism, in effect, becomes confused when confronted with unnatural and dra...

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

...cted and could play a substantially larger role in seasonal air pollution than previously believed. Nitrogen oxide emissions total more than 40 million metric tons worldwide each year, with 64 percent coming from fossil fuel combustion, 14 percent from burning and a surprising 22 percent from soil, said Lyat...

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