nature
Latest
Scientists raised endangered coral species in the lab
Elkhorn is a critical reef-building species in the Caribbean, and the fact that it's endangered proves that our coral reefs are in huge trouble. In an effort to help the planet's reefs recover, SECORE International grew Elkhorns in the lab four years ago, which have now reached sexual maturity. Instead of snapping off pieces of coral from the wild to induce asexual reproduction, the team waited until it's time for the species to release gametes. Since that only happens once or twice a year, they didn't waste their chance in August 2011, placing special nets over the marine invertebrates to capture germ cells.
Floating Bonsai trees are better than floating speakers
Floating things on magnets makes most things cooler. Bonsai trees are certainly no exception. Kickstarter project "Air Bonsai" combines together magnetic levitation, wee plants and traditional Japanese "monozukuri" (craftsmanship). Using the same magnetic floating trick we've seen in speakers, everything that the tree -- or plant of your choosing -- needs is contained within the floating ball. The team has already passed its goal of $80,000 but you can still add to the money pot, with $200 enough to land you a basic starter kit.
Venus flytraps are far from 'dumb'
When I was a kid, I had a Venus flytrap that lived all of about a week. I couldn't figure out why it hadn't eaten the morsel of raw hamburger I'd put in its "mouth," and it died of starvation shortly after the beef grew white fuzzies on it. Turns out I hadn't triggered the hairs inside the plant's jaws that cause them to close and its digestive system to start producing the enzymes that break down food. In a recent research paper noticed by the BBC, scientists from the University of Würzburg discovered that the amount of times those follicles are triggered corresponds to what the carnivorous plant's guts do, in addition to how it absorbs nutrients from captured-and-digested prey.
Tiny cameras spy on crows making tools
It's well-known that crows are smart enough to make tools. However, catching that crafting on video is sometimes a big challenge -- unless you lure the birds to a feeding site, you probably won't see the behavior. That's where the University of Exeter is coming to save the day. It recently developed cameras that are small and light enough to sit on crows and record their activity, letting scientists get the first footage of New Caledonian crows making foraging tools in the wild. The cams even have microSD cards and radio beacons to help recover footage when the devices slide off after a few days.
'Gene drive' mosquitoes could end malaria once and for all
The scourge of malaria could be going away for good in some regions, thanks to a groundbreaking discovery by researchers at the Universities of California, Irvine and San Diego. Their study, published Monday in the journal PNAS, has reportedly uncovered a method that all but guarantees that specific gene sets will be passed to offspring.
NASA to study how higher temps affect the Earth's ability to absorb CO2
Our atmosphere's carbon dioxide levels are through the roof -- it's the highest it's ever been at 400 parts per million within the past 400,000 years. The situation would have been much, much worse, however, if it weren't for the Earth's forests and oceans. All the plants, trees, the ocean's salt water, marine plants and animals absorb 50 percent of our carbon dioxide emissions. That's why NASA has launched a multi-year project to figure out how exactly our planet absorbs carbon dioxide, as well as to determine whether Earth's continuously warming environment can affect its absorption rate.
Politician wants to give 200 NYC trees email addresses
You read that right: Upper West Side Councilmember Mark Levine plans to give 200 trees in New York City their own email addresses. His spokesperson, Tyrone Stevens, told Gothamist that the goal is to deepen "public engagement with the trees" -- we're guessing the politician believes residents can connect more personally with them that way. People, however, are welcome (encouraged, even) to report a tree's plight, such as broken branches, blight and rotting parts, by sending it an email. Levine himself told the publication that the project's only expense should be the creation of the signage that will display the chosen specimens' email addresses, prominently installed on or near them.
Scent-dispensing chips help researchers snap wild wolverines
Wildlife experts in the US have a cunning technique to track "high-elevation" animals such as wolverines, lynx and gray wolves. Small survey stations known as "camera traps" use tempting scents to lure them in, before snapping a quick shot that can be used for research. The problem? The scent runs out after a few weeks, forcing conservationists at places like Woodland Park Zoo and Idaho Fish and Game to trek out and replace them manually. Microsoft researcher Mike Sinclair has been working with Dr. Robert Long, a senior conservation fellow at Woodland Park Zoo, and Joel Sauder, a wildlife biologist for Idaho Fish and Game, on a solution. The trio have developed an ultra-low power control processor, powered by lithium batteries, that's programmed to dispense just three millilitres of liquid scent through a tiny peristaltic pump each day. Just enough to lure the animals, but more importantly, the hardware can last six to nine months without any maintenance.
Neuroscientists accurately predict intelligence with an fMRI scan
If fingerprints can identify individual people, imagine what a brain-print could reveal -- namely, how you think and how intelligent you are. Neuroscientists studied fMRI scans of 126 patients in the Human Connectome Project, a consortium helping to map the human brain, and found consistent connections that accurately predicted "fluid intelligence," or abstract reasoning. Their findings were published today in the journal Nature. Researchers found that the more certain regions of the brain spoke to each other, the more likely a person was to quickly process information and make inferences, Yale grad student and study co-author Emily Finn told Wired. For example, a strong connection between the frontal and parietal lobes, two areas involved in high-level functions, accurately predicted a high fluid-intelligence score.
Just add water and this squid-inspired plastic heals itself
While you've been busy scarfing down fried calamari rings, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have been doing something else with squid. Namely? Studying the cephalopod's ring teeth for a way to create a material that heals when water's present, much in the way that those tentacle-bound choppers do. The way the report spotted by Popular Science tells it, the researchers were able to reproduce the type of proteins found in the self-healing squid teeth and trigger bacteria to make it in a lab environment.
Eagle takes umbrage with interloping drone
You know who hates drones -- I mean besides homeowners, fishermen, chimpanzees and the San Bernardino Fire Department? Eagles, that's who. When Melbourne Aerial Video recently sent one of its quadcopters over a wooded area to capture footage, a Wedge-Tailed Eagle with a 2-meter wingspan was having none of it. Within moments of taking off from its perch, the eagle had punched the UAV from the air and sent it tumbling to the ground.
Tiny robotic insect can jump on water like a strider
Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering has a history of creating tiny, insect-inspired robots, and its latest one can stand and jump on water just like a strider. The Wyss group has teamed up with scientists from Korea's Seoul National University and Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences to design a machine that can mimic a water strider's "most complex maneuver." In order to accomplish that, they captured actual insects jumping on camera and studied their movements closely to determine their secret.
Google's latest science camp for kids starts on July 13th
If you want your kids to learn something while they're out of school but would rather not ship them to some distant summer camp, Google is about to come to your rescue. It's kicking off the latest edition of its annual Camp Google on July 13th, and this year's virtual educational event promises themed weeks that might just sate your young ones' curiosity on big scientific subjects. They'll learn what the ocean is like through underwater panoramas, for example, and watch live video chats with astronauts. The whole shebang is free, so it won't hurt to tune in if you want your children to go back to school knowing more than they did when they left.
Here's what happens when a lithium-ion battery overheats
Lithium ion batteries are practically ubiquitous; they power everything from laptops and cell phones to cameras and tablets. But before they can start providing the juice for bigger and more demanding applications, research about their failure needs to happen. That's where the fine folks at University College London come in -- they've used 3D-and-thermal imaging to track exactly what happens when the power cells overheat, inside and out. As you can see in the GIF above, the results aren't pretty. After cranking the heat on a pair of the batteries to 250+ degrees Celsius (482 degrees Fahrenheit) and keeping an eye on them with the aforementioned techniques, researchers witnessed one of the batteries blow its top. Prior to that happening, during what's known as "thermal runaway," the core collapsed.
These exoskeleton heels could help stroke victims walk again
It isn't quite the soft exosuit that DARPA's working on, but scientists have developed a lightweight exoskeleton that'll take some of the work out of walking. Before you get too excited though, this is less Edge of Tomorrow and more along the lines of mechanical engineering. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon and North Carolina State University devised a way to use springs and ratchets to fashion a sort of boot that increases walking efficiency by seven percent compared to folks wearing regular shoes. The idea is to make it easier for the disabled, paralyzed or stroke victims to improve their walking ability without expensive motors and battery packs.
Watch baby geese gliding down a cliffside in the BBC's latest 4K documentary
In the early days of HDTV, BBC's nature docs were the go-to showpieces for your new home theater gear. Some time has passed since then, and Planet Earth on Blu-ray doesn't look quite as good as it used to. With Life Story, however, the outfit's jumped into the world of UHD 4K filming for the first time. How's it look? Terrifying. Not for the reason you might expect, though. The teaser clip is of the death-defying journey that Greenland's barnacle geese chicks take to leave their nests. Because they can't fly, the adorable goslings have to glide some 400 feet down a sheer cliffside, to their parents and the feeding ground below. And by glide, we mean enter a controlled fall for a bit and then miraculously survive after tumbling along the rock wall. If the streaming clip over at the source isn't enough for you, the full episode debuts on BBC One at 9 p.m. this Thursday and we've embedded the series' trailer just below.
Twigle Birds: A free app for identifying birds by look and sound
Twigle Birds is a free app for birders. It claims to contain a complete field guide to birds in North America and Europe, and has photos and information built into the app so you don't need a data connection to use it. One particular function does require a data connection, and I'll get to that later. The app lets you search for birds by color, habitat, bird size and other appearance clues. You can also listen to example bird songs from each species. The photos are zoomable so you can see the bird images in more detail. A unique feature of Twigle Birds allows you to use your phone's microphone to capture a bird call and upload it to the web where remote software tries to identify the sound. It's a bit like SoundHound or Shazam but for bird calls instead of music. The database built into the app seems reasonably complete. The text and pictures are sourced from Wikipedia and each entry contains a link back to the Wikipedia website. I couldn't test the accuracy of the bird call identification as I live in a desert area and things were pretty quiet this morning when I went outside to test it. I expect identifying bird calls is pretty tricky, especially from a distance, so I wouldn't have high hopes. I did try the app with some recorded bird sounds I got off the web, and the app thought what it heard was one of nine possible birds. One of the birds was the correct one, but it couldn't get more specific. There are plenty of paid apps for birders, including the very complete Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America (US$14.99). Twigle Birds is a nice app, with some good ideas. It uses your GPS location to help determine birds that might be near you, which helps the app narrow the list. Twigle Birds requires iOS 6 or later. It's not universal, and because of the amount of data that comes with the app it is a 518 MB download.
David Attenborough's next 3D nature doc and new VR experiences are coming soon
The 3D hype may have died down from its peak a few years ago, but Sir David Attenborough is continuing to make use of the technology (check after the break for a video explaining some of the infatuation with it) for his critically acclaimed nature documentaries. The latest one is Conquest of the Skies 3D, and Sky has announced that the three 60-minute episodes will air around Christmas in the UK. In order to "tell the evolutionary story of flight" Attenborough and crew are using new 3D macroscopic and high-speed filming techniques, as well as 3D octocopters. What it won't have is the Oculus Rift or Project Morpheus-compatible virtual reality version that was bandied about earlier this year, but that doesn't mean the tech is on the shelf. Newly-expanding Sky has teamed up with Atlantic Productions, and Atlantic's new division Alchemy is planning to have VR experiences (that combine live action 3D footage, 360 degree video and CGI) available this fall.
Incredible photo of a Snow Monkey using an iPhone
Forget Photoshop, what you're looking at is the real deal -- a Japanese Snow Monkey just chllin' in some water using an iPhone. The photo above (used with permission) was taken by the talented and award winning Dutch photographer Marsel van Oosten at the Jigokudani Monkey Park in Japan. As you might imagine, there's an interesting story behind this incredible photo of a Snow Monkey, which are otherwise known as Japanese macaques. Writing for 500px, Klassy Goldberg caught up with van Oosten who detailed how the shot came to be. While visiting the park earlier this year, van Oosten was joined by a group of tourists who put the cameras on their iPhones and iPads in overdrive taking photos of the unique and beautiful creatures. We were standing close to the edge of the hot spring, when one of the tourists started taking shots with her iPhone, moving the phone closer to the macaque after each shot. Suddenly, the macaque grabbed the iPhone from her hands-and quickly moved away towards the middle of the hot spring! The owner screamed in agony, but the macaque was too fascinated by its new toy to notice. The minutes that followed were downright hilarious. Monkeys already resemble humans in so many ways, but when they're holding an iPhone, the similarities are almost scary. At some point, it even managed to let the built-in flash of the iPhone go off. When the macaque decided to do some serious underwater testing, the owner of the phone almost fainted. Meanwhile, I was fully aware that this would result in some of the most original snow monkey shots ever. Can't argue with that. van Oosten already has a few wildlife photography awards under his belt and the shot above of a Snow Monkey -- perhaps using Facebook or checking up on World Cup scores -- might net him another. Make sure to check out the photo on the Wildlife Photographer Of The Year competition website. The photo is in the running for the People's Choice Award where you can give it a vote. Hell, maybe the Snow Monkey already voted himself! As an addendum to the story, van Oosten told me that the iPhone was eventually recovered but was no longer working.
David Attenborough's next documentary aims for Oculus Rift release
Along with traditional video formats, Atlantic Productions has revealed plans to release its upcoming documentary, Conquest of the Skies, in a special edition designed specifically for the Oculus Rift VR headset. "We're now filming for the Oculus Rift, so when we filmed our recent flight in Borneo, we filmed with an eight-camera rig, so you got the full [360 degree] experience," said Atlantic's commercial director John Morris in an interview with Real Screen. Later, Morris described the advent of VR technology as akin to the birth of the film industry. Perhaps even more notable than the Oculus Rift headset, is this film's inclusion of Sir David Attenborough. If you've seen a well-produced nature documentary at any point in the last four decades, odds are very good it was narrated by Attenborough. At this point his name is synonymous with thoughtful, majestic footage of our planet's many natural wonders, and Attenborough's inclusion in this project adds immediate legitimacy to Atlantic's attempt at cracking a new entertainment medium. Conquest of the Skies is currently filming in Borneo, and is slated for a debut broadcast later this year. [Image: Wikimedia Commons]
