Dear Kitty. Some blog

This video is called Birth of a baby orang-utan.

From VOVNews:

Fossils discovered in Tuyen Quang province

December, 25 2009

Vietnamese and French archaeologists have discovered a palaeontological site dating back to over 100,000 years in Da Den Cave in the northern mountainous province of Tuyen Quang.

Quan Van Dung, Director of the Tuyen Quang Museum, said on December 24 that the scientists have found hundreds of artefacts, including bones and teeth of pigs, long-tailed macaques, rhinoceros, deer, orang-utans and other animals.

The archaeologists have also found fossil vestiges of Cobosafia anthropoid, proving the existence of human beings in Tuyen Quang province since the dawn of mankind’ s history, he added.

Dung said that the Tuyen Quang Museum is building plans to protect the relic site and coordinating with domestic and foreign scientists to continue excavating in the coming time.

In Tuyen Quang province, archaeologists have so far discovered thousands of artefacts in nearly 10 sites home to primitive man. The palaeontological site in Da Den Cave houses the most artefacts in the province.

This video is called Leatherbacks: Litoghahira, Solomon Islands.

From the University of Exeter in England:

Turtles‘ Christmas journey tracked by scientists

December 23, 2009

The journeys of two marine turtles around the world’s oceans will be available to view online this Christmas, thanks to a new research project launched by the University of Exeter.

Noelle and Darwinia are two adult female leatherback turtles that nest in Gabon, Western Central Africa. The research team has fitted each turtle with a small satellite tracking device, which enables the scientists to monitor their precise movements and observe where and how deep they dive. The tracking began on 7 December 2009 and so far the turtles have travelled 800 miles between them.

Their progress can now be viewed online: www.seaturtle.org/tracking and people can also get the latest news on the turtles by signing-up for daily email alerts. Noelle and Darwinia are members of the world’s largest nesting population of leatherback turtles, but their environment is threatened. The waters around Gabon are increasingly subject to industrial fishing and oil exploitation, particularly from nations outside West Africa, including countries in Europe.

Leatherbacks are of profound conservation concern around the world after populations in the Indo-Pacific crashed by more than 90 percent in the 1980s and 1990s. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists leatherback turtles as critically endangered globally, but detailed population assessments in much of the Atlantic, especially Africa, are lacking.

By Michael Reilly in the USA:

Ancient tree (almost) older than dirt

Tree in California survives for more than 13,000 years

updated 12:47 p.m. ET Dec. 23, 2009

At the top of a small hill in suburban southern California, there is what appears to be a thicket of stunted, gnarled oak trees wedged between a pile of boulders. A passerby would likely miss this ancient, biological wonder.

The entire grove of trunks is in fact one plant, a newly discovered Palmer’s oak (Quercus palmeri) that researchers estimate is over 13,000 years old, making it one of the oldest plants on Earth.

See also here.

This video is called David Attenborough - Animal behaviour of the bowerbird - BBC wildlife.

From Cosmos Magazine in Australia:

Eight weird instances of animal sex

Wednesday, 23 December 2009

by Cat O’Donovan

SYDNEY: The animal world is full of strange diets, peculiar social structures and, of course, weird mating behaviours. From courting to intercourse, animal reproduction involves dramas that make the love lives of daytime soap operas seem tame.

GRAND DESIGNS

British TV naturalist David Attenborough described bowerbirds of Papua New Guinea as having “a passion for interior decoration”. To impress the ladies, a male constructs his bower, or courtship arena, out of twigs and decorates it with colourful objects such as feathers, beetle wing cases, flowers and chewed up vegetation. If the female is suitably impressed by his decorating skills - and his courtship dance out front - she takes up residence in the bower and mates with him.

GARDEN OF LOVE

The bright red velvet mite (Trombidium holosericeum) is a teeny gardener. Males deposit sperm in small mounds on sticks and twigs, then carefully construct an intricate silken trail to it. When a female stumbles across an impressive ‘garden’ of silk, she follows the trail and if she approves, she’ll sit on the sperm and fertilise her eggs. But watch out! If a rival male strolls past a garden, he’ll rip it up. All’s fair in love and gardening.

SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE?

You’ve heard of birds dancing and singing to attract a mate, but what about spiders? When a male jumping spider (Habronattus dossenus) sees a potential mate, he pulls out his best moves, and provides the music too. A U.S. study used a laser vibrometer to record a male spider’s rhythmic repertoire. The spider moved his abdomen to create ‘thumps’, ’scrapes’ and ‘buzzes’ in time to his crazy foreleg-waving dance. He’s bad.

SICKLY SWEET

Several species of parrot, including pet budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus), regurgitate food as part of a courtship ritual. Unlike humans, it’s not because they’re nervous or have had too much to drink: it’s a sign of male quality! If he vomits up a large heap, it suggests he’s fit, healthy and a good provider for a family. The more he chucks up, the more likely he is to get lucky. Not so likely to impress human females, though.

FIGHT CLUB

Sex can be strenuous, especially for haermaphroditic flatworms, such as Pseudoceros bifurcus. During sex, the flatworms use their penises as weapons in a battle to inseminate each other. When one stabs the other, it injects sperm into the body cavity and - hey presto! - the winner becomes the de facto male. The loser has to invest time and energy developing the eggs, whilst the winner can move on to their next sex battle immediately.

BODYGUARD

A team of researchers at the University of California, in Berkeley, tracked a pygmy species of octopus called Abdopus aculeatus during mating season. Not only did each male octopus court and guard his selected female (they preferred the larger ladies that could produce more eggs), he also fought off rival males that came too close. To mate, the male extends a modified arm to the female, and uses it to to pass sperm packets to her. It almost looks like they’re holding hands.

TWO-IN-ONE

Marsupials split from placental mammals over 100 million years ago. So while they share a lot of mammalian characteristics like fur and breast feeding, there are some notable differences. One is in their genitals. Male opossums, for example, have a bifurcated penis, meaning it has two ends. Why? To go in the female’s two vaginas of course! Both are fully functional, with fertilisation possible through both. During birth, the vaginas join to form one larger birth canal.

NIL BY MOUTH

In these species, fertilisation depends on oral sex. Cichlid fish are found in the Rift Valley lakes of Africa, such as Lake Victoria and Lake Malawi. They carry their eggs or young in their mouths to protect them until they are big enough to fend for themselves. To achieve fertilisation by stealth, the male of some species has egg-shaped spots on his anal fin. When a female approaches and attempts to gather up the ‘eggs’, the male ejaculates and the female gets a mouthful of sperm to fertilise her eggs.

From British daily The Guardian:

Kew discovers new plant species in one of its own glasshouses

Botanists at Kew unveil a bumper crop of new plant species for 2009 including one that had been growing under their noses for 50 years

* Ian Sample, science correspondent
* Tuesday 22 December 2009 00.00 GMT

The quest to catalogue Earth’s rich flora has taken botanists to the farthest flung and most treacherous corners of the world, from the humid rainforests of the Amazon to the highest peaks of Borneo.

Which made it all the more surprising when Iain Darbyshire stumbled upon a species of plant unknown to science while taking a lunchtime stroll around the Royal Botanic Gardens in west London.

Darbyshire, an expert in African botany at Kew, happened upon the foot-tall plant in full bloom, its striking green and grey heart-shaped leaves set off by tiny white and pink flowers.

“I just happened to take a different route through the glasshouse that lunchtime and stumbled across it,” Darbyshire told the Guardian. “I knew instantly that it was a new species. It was just sat there waiting for someone to study it.”

Record books revealed the plants had been donated by Swedish botanists in the 1990s after an expedition to the Eastern Arc mountains of Tanzania. Unsuspecting gardeners had tended them for more than a decade, using them as tropical bedding in Kew’s Princess of Wales Conservatory.

The plant was officially named Isoglossa variegata last month and is among more than 250 new plant and fungus species discovered and described by the gardens’ botanists in the past year.

Giant rainforest trees, tiny fungi and wild coffee plants are among almost 300 species that have been described by UK botanists for the first time in 2009: here.

From British daily The Guardian:

Dinosaur with feathers and fangs prowled forests like a predatory turkey

Poison from the bird-like dinosaur’s fangs may have sent victims into shock, hampering their chances of escaping

* Ian Sample, science correspondent
*Monday 21 December 2009 20.00 GMT

The remains of a venomous, feathered beast that terrorised prehistoric forests like a predatory turkey have been unearthed by fossil hunters in northern China.

Palaeontologists uncovered a well-preserved skull and partial skeleton of the bird-like dinosaur, Sinornithosaurus, that lived in the region 128 million years ago.

The creature, a close relative of the velociraptor, had fangs similar to those seen in modern poisonous snakes and venomous lizards, such as the Mexican gila monster.

Analysis of the dinosaur’s fang-like teeth revealed grooves that could channel poison from glands set into each side of the creature’s jawbone, researchers said.

“This is an animal about the size of a turkey,” said Larry Martin, curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Centre at the University of Kansas. “It’s a specialised predator of small dinosaurs and birds.”

The discovery, reported in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first evidence of a venomous relative in the velociraptor lineage.

The venom was probably not potent enough to be lethal, but may have sent victims into shock, hampering their chances of fighting back or escaping.

“You wouldn’t have seen it coming,” said co-author David Burnham. “It would have swooped down behind you from a low-hanging tree branch and attacked.”

“Once the teeth were embedded in your skin the venom could seep into the wound. The prey would rapidly go into shock, but it would still be living, and it might have seen itself being slowly devoured by this raptor,” Burnham added.

One of the beast’s close relatives was the four-winged glider, the microraptor, which some scientists believe may also have been poisonous. Sinornithosaurus’ fangs were long enough to penetrate thick feathers and pierce the skin beneath to a depth of half a centimetre, enough to get venom into the prey’s bloodstream.

See also here.

Dinosaurs and Politics: A Toxic Combination: here.

Koala

From the University of New South Wales in Australia:

Loud and lazy but didn’t chew gum: Ancient koalas

Skull fragments of prehistoric koalas from the Riversleigh rainforests of millions of year ago suggest they shared the modern koala’s “lazy” lifestyle and ability to produce loud “bellowing” calls to attract mates and provide warnings about predators.

However, the new findings published as the featured cover article in the current issue of The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology suggest that the two species of koalas from the Miocene (24 to five million years ago) did not share the uniquely specialized eucalyptus leaf diet of the modern koala (Phascolarctos cinereus).

The shift to a wholly eucalyptus diet by modern koalas was an adaptation that probably came later as Australia drifted north, causing its rainforests to retreat and Eucalypts to become the dominant tree of most Australian forests and woodlands.

Modern koalas – the sole living member of the diprotodontian marsupial family Phascolarctidae –are among the largest of all arboreal leaf-eaters. To attain this remarkable condition on a diet of eucalyptus leaves, a notoriously poor and somewhat toxic food source, the tree-dwelling marsupials developed unique anatomical and physiological adaptations including specialized chewing and digestive anatomies and a highly sedentary lifestyle. The dramatic differences between the skulls of extinct and modern koalas, especially in the facial region, are probably related to the change to a tougher diet of eucalyptus leaves.

Researchers from the University of New South Wales and the CSIRO have drawn these conclusions after making dozens of detailed anatomical comparisons between the brush-tailed possum, the modern koala and the two fossil species (Litokoala kutjamarpensis and Nimiokoala greystanesi).

The fossil species were unearthed from the Riversleigh World Heritage site in Queensland, Australia. The comparisons reveal similarities in the back of the skull between the modern and fossil koalas, but substantial differences in their teeth, palate and jaws.

Koalas are most closely related among living marsupials to wombats but the two species diverged some 30-40 million years ago. Among fossil koalas there are 18 named species representing five genera spanning the period from the late Oligocene (37 million years ago) to the present.

However, they are generally scarce in the fossil record and most species are only known from a few isolated teeth or jaw fragments. Therefore, it has been difficult to develop an accurate picture of their behaviour, diet and evolution.

The researchers believe that the prehistoric koalas also shared with their modern cousins the ability to produce loud “bellows” based on similar large bony prominences – the auditory bullae – that enclose structures in the middle and inner ear. However the auditory bullae of the extinct Nimiokoala and Litokoala species are not as exaggerated as in the modern koala, according to team member UNSW Professor Mike Archer.

“Modern koalas are extremely sedentary and vocal animals,” says Archer, who is perhaps best known for leading research into the extraordinary Riversleigh fossil deposits in Queensland, which led to the site being listed on the World Heritage Register.

“They produce low frequency vocalisations that pass through vegetation and can be heard up to 800 metres away – far exceeding the home range limits of male koalas. The fossil koalas share similar large bony ear structures to the modern koala and would have been well adapted to detecting vocalisations in the rainforest environment of Riversleigh in the Miocene era.”

“In order to accommodate both the mechanical demands of their new diet, as well as maintaining their auditory sophistication, the koala underwent substantial changes to its cranial anatomy, in particular that of the facial skeleton,” says Dr Julien Louys of UNSW’s School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences. “The unique cranial configuration of the modern koala is therefore the result of accommodating their masticatory adaptations without compromising their auditory system.”

From the daily News Line in Britain:

Friday, 18 December 2009

RESEARCH FUNDING CHANGES AN ATTACK ON SCIENCE – says UCU

Two UCU members hold up a picture of Einstein outside the House of Commons on Wednesday. Einstein who said about research ‘If we knew what it was what we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?’

THE government’s changes to research funding threaten the future of science in Britain, leading experts are warning.

According to Professor Donald Braben, Honorary Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University College London, virtually every major scientific discovery ever made would not have survived the current REF regime with its emphasis on ‘economic impact’.

The University and College Union (UCU) delivered a petition with 17,000 signatures to parliament on Wednesday against research cuts.

The UCU cited several examples of prize-winning scientific research in the UK that may never have occurred if the new funding arrangements had been in place then.

These included:

• Crick and Watson: Nobel Laureates Medicine, 1962.

Serious objections were raised to their proposed use of X-ray crystallography.

Neither Crick nor Watson had previously used X-rays. But they went ahead anyway and discovered the double helix structure for DNA.

• Peter D Mitchell, Nobel Laureate, Chemistry, 1978.

Mitchell proposed the chemiosmotic process in 1961, arguably the most important biological-sciences discovery of the 20th century.

His radical proposal challenged the conventional wisdom of the time, and was received by almost total hostility.

• Max Perutz and John Kendrew, Nobel Laureates, Chemistry, 1962.

They worked on the problem of haemoglobin structure for 25 years.

Dr Robert Kirby-Harris, chief executive of the Institute of Physics, recently said: ‘History shows us that in many cases it is basic research, undertaken purely out of curiosity to understand more about our world, that has delivered revolutionary breakthroughs.

‘X-rays, lasers and semiconductors – technologies which are widely used in every aspect of our lives – all stem from discoveries made through fundamental research, undertaken without any immediate application in mind.’

‘The Institute of Physics has produced the following set of case studies, showcasing the vital contribution that curiosity-driven physics research has made to a number of major technological developments,’ said the UCU.

These in turn, the union added, ‘have led to significant contributions to the UK’s gross domestic product and/or improved the quality of life of its people.’

• Cancer diagnosis and treatment.

‘Physics research has played, and continues to play, an essential role in improving the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.’

• DNA and physics.

‘The discovery of the structure of DNA heralded the birth of the field of molecular biology, in which physicists, chemists and biologists work together to unravel the basic processes of life.’

• The global positioning system.

‘Satellite-based navigation and positioning technology, underpinned by physics research, is no longer the preserve of the military but is now an invaluable aid in all aspects of life.’

• Holography.

‘A technique creating three-dimensional images based on the physics of light waves, and invented in the UK, has a range of applications – from security to data storage.

• Lasers.

‘Lasers provide the archetypal example of how a discovery in basic physics led to an invention, several decades later, that was unpredictably world-changing.’

• Liquid-crystal displays.

‘Liquid-crystal displays have become the image-display technology of choice, following a long chain of physics-based R&D initiated by pioneering work in the UK.’

• Magnetic resonance imaging

‘Magnetic resonance imaging, based on ideas from nuclear physics and developed in the UK, is now a routine, safe, clinical technique for seeing inside the body and diagnosing disease.’

• Optical fibres.

‘Light-carrying glass fibres have transformed communications, thanks to pioneering work carried out by UK physicists.’

• The ozone layer.

‘Understanding and protecting the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere has been a major achievement in physics-based environmental research.’

• The World Wide Web.

‘The World Wide Web is an outstanding example of how research in particle physics changed the world in a totally unforeseeable way.’

In the field of chemistry, the UCU cites the work of Sir Harry Kroto.

He said: ‘I had been fascinated by carbon chains ever since my PhD work (1961-64) and David’s polyynes re-awakened this interest and in particular initiated ideas about how very long carbon chains might vibrate.

‘The image in my mind was of the way I had seen a wave blip travel along a long slackish wire or rope and a travelling wave in a canal or river such as the Severn Bore.

‘I wondered how quantum mechanics would handle these sorts of problems.

‘Could we study the highly excited vibrational levels of such chains and observe quantum properties gradually metamorphose into this sort of classical visually-imaged behaviour as implied by the Bohr Correspondence Principle?’

The discovery of C60 will have its 25th anniversary next year and it is only now that applications appear to be on the horizon.

One of the most important properties of C60 is that it is an outstanding electron trap and the commercialisation of organic solar cells doped with fullerenes (which improve the efficiency of electricity production) and printed on inexpensive thin plastic is now imminent.

On the medical front the fullerene cages are able to trap biologically toxic atoms inside the cage physically, rather than chemically, and their application as non-toxic MRI imaging and radioactive anti-cancer agents appears also to be imminent.

The UCU commented: ‘History has shown time-and-again that the basics of the above story are very often the way that important breakthroughs occur.

‘Indeed it is blindingly obvious that the really unexpected and unpredictable discoveries are invariably more important than those that are the result of targeted initiatives.

‘The discovery of C60 was the result of an experiment to understand stellar and interstellar chemistry. . . Time-and-again it is only when discoveries are made that possible applications become obvious, and then almost invariably made by scientists in a totally different field from that of the original discoverer.’

Excellent examples of this, said the UCU, are the applications of lasers to eye surgery and bar-code scanners at supermarket cash desks.

Professor Donald Braben said: ‘Lasers are used today in everything from surgical procedures to light displays, but it was not until 20 years after the technology was invented by the Nobel prizewinning scientist Charles Townes that industry began to see its potential (Professor Townes certainly did not).

‘What would happen today if a scientist sought funding from UK research councils to pursue inquiry on similar lines?

‘The laser was described, for a very long time, as “a solution looking for a problem’’.’

The same is true in the field of mathematics, said the UCU.

Professor Ari Laptev, President of the European Mathematical Society, said: ‘It is true that many new results in mathematics do not have immediate applications but, eventually, most of them do become applicable.

‘Let me mention a few recent examples where the use of mathematics has proved crucial:

• ‘Integral geometry, dealing with so-called inverse problems, has provided a methodology used in:
medical imaging for identifying tumours, weather radars, the search for oil fields, astronomy, etc.

• ‘The creation of modern fibre optic cables would not be possible without the discovery of special solutions of non-linear equations called solitons.

• ‘The arrival of the Internet made people fear that the world would be drowned in vast amounts of information.

‘This problem has been successfully resolved by Google, which invariably delivers, instantly, the information sought.

‘It seems like magic but the searching algorithm of Google was in fact provided by mathematicians.

• ‘The theory of wavelets has been enormously important in telecommunications.

‘It allows us to transmit information in a most compact way and ultimately gives us the possibility of all sorts of wireless connections.

• ‘Credit card security is only possible thanks to cryptology, which uses a branch of number theory.

• ‘Mathematicians are involved in improving the understanding of fundamental problems in genomics research, cell signalling, systems physiology, infection and immunity, developmental biology, the spreading of disease and ecology.’

The mathematical theories used in these examples were not originally developed with any particular application in mind but purely as a result of the curiosity of scientists.

Capitalism and science: here.

From the BBC:

Tuesday, 15 December 2009

By Matt Walker
Editor, Earth News

A new species of warbler has been discovered in the forests of Vietnam and Laos.

The small green and yellow bird was first sighted in 1994, but at the time was thought to be a different species surviving 1000km from its usual home.

Now studies of the bird’s morphology, DNA and vocalisations have confirmed it to be a unique species. Scientists have named it the Limestone leaf warbler.

Details of the bird’s discovery are published in the journal Ibis.

“The bird was first seen at one place in Vietnam in July 1994 and again at the same place in April the following year, and in one area in central Laos in May 1995,” says taxonomist Professor Per Alstrom of the Swedish Species Information Centre, a part of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala.

“Initially, the bird was identified as a Sulphur-breasted warbler, in itself an interesting finding, since it was apparently breeding more than 1000km south of its previously known breeding areas in China.

“Later it was realised that its songs differed markedly from the songs of the Sulphur-breasted warbler, and further studies were undertaken.”

These studies by Prof Alstrom and colleagues, who included scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Lao Program and Birdlife International in Indochina, confirmed the bird’s unique identity.

Distinct voice

The plumage of the Limestone leaf warbler (Phylloscopus calciatilis) is almost identical to that of the Sulphur-breasted warbler (Phylloscopus ricketti), though the new species appears to have a colder yellow chest and more grey topside and stripped crown.

But the new species is smaller, with shorter wings, rounder wing tips and a proportionately larger bill.

“Its vocalisations, both song and contact call, are markedly different from those of the Sulphur-breasted warbler,” says Professor Alstrom.

DNA analyses also suggest that it is more closely related to the Yellow-vented warbler (Phylloscopus cantator) from eastern Himalayas, northern Laos and adjacent part of China, which is quite different in plumage.

BIRD-SPOTTING

In the past two decades, 19 new species of Phylloscopus warbler have been identified
Many warblers look similar but have very different DNA
Each species of warbler may produce very distinct songs

So the new species looks markedly different to its closest relative, Professor Alstrom explains, but very similar to its more distant relative.

See also here. And here.

This video is called Macaroni penguin facts - David Attenborough.

From British daily The Morning Star:

Penguin mapping plan to aid climate scientists

Monday 14 December 2009

Genetic “featherprints” are being used to map the movements of penguins to see how they are affected by global warming, scientists have said.

Scientists have found genetic markers in DNA from collected feathers that can help them track Antarctic penguins as they migrate between colonies.

They hope the technique will reveal whether climate change is driving the birds from their favoured breeding sites.

The DNA allows scientists to determine the relatedness of birds within a colony, enabling them to follow the movements of individuals and populations.

The markers have already been used to make a population map of macaroni penguins around South Georgia.

Genetic tracking is now being extended to all penguin species on the Antarctic peninsula.

Zoological Society of London scientist Dr Tom Hart said: “Knowing how penguins are responding to climate change is vital to conservation efforts.

“If we understand how their populations are changing, we can do something about it, such as making sure that our protected areas are in the right place for penguins in 100 years’ time.”

New pictures reveal rich Antarctic marine life in area of rapid climate change: here.

A proposal aimed at saving the world’s tropical forests has suffered a major setback after negotiators at the UN climate talks had to ditch plans for faster action on the problem because rich countries aren’t willing to finance it: here.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 21, 2009) — All insect-eating migratory birds who winter in Africa and breed in the Dutch woods have decreased in numbers since 1984. This has been revealed by research conducted by the University of Groningen, the SOVON Dutch Centre for Field Ornithology, Statistics Netherlands (CBS), Radboud University Nijmegen and Alterra, published on 16 December in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: here.