The rufa Red Knot navigates from the top of the world to the bottom, and back, each year. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, however, the knot — a subspecies of one of the largest and most colorful sandpipers — is likely to become in danger of extinction in the foreseeable future.

The Service recently issued a proposal to add the shorebird to the threatened species list on the Endangered Species Act. The proposal followed several lawsuits urging the Service to “emergency list” the shorebird, whose population has declined by about 75% since the 1980s.

If approved, the knots will join more than 1,200 species in the U.S. on the Endangered Species List. Only a handful of species have been removed from the list because of recovery. Full Article »

When the largest volcanic eruption in the last 70,000 years spewed giant clouds of ash and debris into the air, millions of tiny microorganisms got caught up in the blast and hitchhiked hundreds of miles to new locations, researchers have found. The first record of microbes being distributed by volcano, these diatoms can help scientists figure out the volcanic source of ancient ash deposits, which offers a new, more reliable way to unlock the mysteries of Earth’s past.

The most common way to identify layers of volcanic material has been carbon-14 dating, which estimates the age of non-living substances using the decay rate of radioactive carbon atoms, but that measurement is notoriously finicky, according to Alexa Van Eaton of the U.S Geological Survey. “It’s much easier to identify a diatom than volcanic matter,” Van Eaton says, adding, that this approach “is something people haven’t thought about before.” Full Article »

“Our chance to lead against climate change” is the motto of a new student group at MIT, which has joined the growing national movement calling for universities and other organizations to divest from fossil fuels.

The group argues that MIT, as a leading university in energy and technology research, is in a unique position to send a powerful message to other universities, the government, and the world about the future of energy and the environment.

“We’re at MIT; we know the science and we know what needs to be done,” said Patrick Brown, a 5th-year graduate student in Physics and one of the group’s founding members. Full Article »

A new non-destructive computational technique that measures the strength and condition of the canvas beneath great works of art could one day help museum curators determine if it is safe to loan rare pieces, according to art conservators.

A research team led by Dr. Marta Oriola of the University of Barcelona and Dr. Matija Strlic of University College London tested the new method on twelve Dali paintings. They found that the painted canvases were strong enough to travel to other museums.

Interestingly, their method also revealed that Dali used cheaper cotton canvases during his student days in Paris before later upgrading to linen. Previously, it would have been impossible to identify the canvas material without cutting out a piece to examine under the microscope. Full Article »

Shark fishing on coral reefs can threaten herbivorous fish that help to protect the reefs after natural disturbances such as cyclones, according to new study findings.

In areas where commercial shark fishing has occurred, there were declines in parrotfish and other types of herbivorous fish, and increases in carnivores, such as snappers.

Herbivorous fish help to clean and maintain coral reefs by eating algae off of the coral. “They are really essential to the recovery process of reefs,” said Dr. Jonathan Ruppert, a post-doctoral researcher at York University and lead author on the study. “Herbivores help in removing algae from the reef to allow coral to repopulate or reestablish on the reef.”

Researchers looked at the effects of the presence or absence of sharks before and after a traumatic event, either a cyclone or coral bleaching – a process through which warmer water temperatures cause algae to disappear from the corals. They found there was a link between the presence of sharks and populations of other types of fish further down the food chain. Full Article »

Unlike high-profile tornado events such as the deadly, 1.3-mile wide twister in Moore, Oklahoma earlier this year, many tornadoes have gone unnoticed and unreported. That is, until storm chasers began traversing the Midwestern plains and populations expanded further into rural areas.

This historical underreporting of tornadoes in rural areas has made it difficult for researchers today to assess the tornado risk of any given area and the possible effects of climate on tornadoes—studies which require data collected over long periods of time.

To correct this, researchers led by Florida State University Geography Professor James Elsner developed the first statistical model that takes into account population bias, or the fact that tornadoes near populated areas have been better reported than those in less populated areas, as well as changes in population densities over time. Full Article »

If you haven’t had the terrible experience of experiencing the sometimes fatal disease personally or witnessed a loved one rushed to the ER after developing symptoms, you might have witnessed it on the popular television drama Downtown Abbey. The death of a Crowley sister following back-breaking seizures and sky rocketing blood pressure shocked viewers around the world.

The BBC didn’t dramatize a rare, outdated disease to drum up ratings. “3-5% of pregnancies will develop preeclampsia. And that increases to 8% of all first time births,” explains James Roberts, an NIH researcher studying the condition.

Now, researchers from Brown University and the University of Iowa have reconfirmed that as a woman comes in contact with her partner’s semen, that contact may produce as much as a 70% reduction in the risk of preeclampsia.

Previous studies had seen similar outcomes, but this study went a step farther, showing that certain immunity genes provided an early warning for development of the disorder. Full Article »

With a little genetic tweaking, the temperamental cherry tree in your backyard could really start bearing fruit. Armed with recent advances in plant genomics, botanists are gaining the power to tell plants how to grow.

Humans have been modifying plants for their own ends since the advent of agriculture. By picking out plants with desirable qualities like extra sweet fruit or resistance to frost and then crossing them, plant breeders have crafted nearly every fruit and vegetable we eat today. The produce section of any modern American grocery store serves as a kind of trophy case for this approach.

The catch is that traditional plant breeding is generally a slow, tedious and frequently haphazard process. Crosses often don’t turn out as expected, and a fruit tree, for instance, can take years before producing.

That’s beginning to change. Breeders can increasingly target the specific traits they want to alter. Dramatically increasing a plant’s yield can be as simple as hitting a genetic switch. Full Article »

Do you have a memory you’d rather forget? If you do, chances are that over time it will seem to fade away as you begin to associate the words or places or smells that trigger that unpleasant recollection with a more positive experience. Researchers call this process fear memory extinction, but that’s a bit of a misnomer. We actually don’t delete memories; we write new ones called extinction memories that come to mind faster than our older associations. Our brains accomplish this trick by flipping genetic switches on and off in the process of learning and forming the new memory.

Recently, researchers at MIT identified a molecular mechanism that contributes to memory extinction. They did so using mice lacking a single gene that helps regulate a part of our genetic control system, a chemical process called methylation. Surprisingly, those mutant mice were unable to forget fearful memories.

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