Green Options

A team of Dutch researchers (Verweij and Kema) , reporting in last December’s edition of the medical journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases suggest that over-use of the farm fungicide may be contributing to the growing resistance of the Aspergillus fungus to the disease-fighting chemicals.

Recently, researchers have performed large scale genetic analysis of DFTD tumor cells and have discovered many clues to the cause and nature of the cancer. After sequencing tumor cell genes and analyzing small pieces of genetic material known as microRNAs (miRNA), the team has determined that the cancer is a “single clonal cell line propagated as a tumor allograft” and is transmitted from devil to devil through biting. An “allograft” is a transplantation of cells (or tissue) from one (non-genetically [...]

Over the past several years, the world’s blue whales have begun singing a different tune, of sorts; the frequency range of their songs has gotten significantly lower. And, this is happening, “in concert” all over the world–where ever these massive cetacea migrate, feed, congregate and mate.

The butterfly research team’s findings were dramatic: half of the monitored sites showed declines in “species richness” (the total biodiversity or numbers of species of a certain type). The monitored sites range in elevation from sea-level to nearly one and half miles above sea-level–with lower elevation sites showing the greatest reduction in richness.

This writer contacted lead researcher David Graham and asked him to explain how these antibiotic resistant soil microbes and/or genes might impact humans. “The genes themselves do not get passed directly to humans per se. The genes get passed from exposed bacteria to bacteria whom might ultimately end up in humans, some of which might be pathogenic. An example is on food or in water that has been exposed to resistance bacteria.”

A scientific team from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, led by Jacquelin L. Gill, chose to analyze fossilized dung samples (known as coprolites) to detect the presence of spores from a dung fungus called Sporormiella. The fungus requires ingestion by animals (herbivores and some birds) as part of its life cycle. The resulting digestion leaves fungal spores in the animals’ dung. The spores are also found in lake sediments where, it has been determined, they end up via [...]

In what is being touted as the first time humans have remotely controlled insects, University of California at Berkeley engineers successfully implanted radio-equipped, “miniature neural stimulation” systems into flying beetles–most notably, the “elephant” beetle Megasoma elephas (pictured above), which can grow up to 20 cm (about 7 + inches) in length.

NASA director (at the Goddard Space Flight Center) and top climate scientist James Hansen criticizes all ‘cap and trade’ strategies as doing “little to slow global warming or reduce our dependence on fossil fuels…[and which] allows polluters and Wall Street traders to fleece the public out of billions of dollars..” Hansen then offers an alternative, consumer-driven strategy (and a more radical one) that he calls ‘fee and dividend’.

Past attempts to reintroduce these last remaining, truly, wild horses to the Central Asian steppe country have been unsuccessful. Now, after assessments of two horse projects–one at Hustai National Park (with 171 horses living on their own, as of 2006) and the other at Takhin Tal (with 115 horses, as of 2007)–ecologists and wildlife conservationist are confident enough in the animals’ chances for long-term survival to upgrade its status from “extinct in the wild” to “critically endangered”.

The destruction of the Earth’s protective ozone layer (and the growth of the “hole” in this layer over the South Pole) due to the action of human-made chemicals was the leading environmental issue of the last century (entering the public lexicon sometime in the mid 1980’s), and no doubt prompted wider concerns about “greenhouse” effects and global warming that occupy so much climate science reporting today. The main (or most publicized) culprit of this ozone loss was a chemical called [...]