Author: Discover Main Feed

This spring, many beekeepers across America opened their hives and found ruin within. At a time when they should have been buzzing with activity, the hives were half-empty, with most adult bees having flown off to die. A new federal survey indicates that 2010 has been the worst year so far for bee deaths. Another study suggests that pesticides might be to blame for the mass wipeout of adult honeybees.

This winter’s die-off was the continuation of a four-year trend. At any given point, beekeepers can expect to see 15 to 20 percent of their bees wiped out due to natural causes or harsh weather. But this alarming phenomenon, termed colony collapse disorder (CCD), has seen millions of bees perish in a mysterious epidemic, with some farmers losing 30 to 90 percent of their hives.

As for the cause of this epidemic, experts say their best guess is that many factors are combining to sicken bees, with the list of culprits including parasites, viruses, bacteria, poor nutrition, and pesticides. Now a new study published in the scientific journal PLoS ONE strengthens the case for pesticides’ culpability.

In the study, researchers found about three out of five pollen and wax samples from 23 states had at least one systemic pesticide — a chemical designed to spread throughout all parts of a plant [AP]. The scientists say that in the 887 wax, pollen, bee, and hive samples, they found 121 different types of pesticides. The pesticides weren’t present in sufficient quantities to kill the bees, they say, but when combined with the other detrimental factors the mix could prove lethal for the tiny workers.

This is the fourth year of honey bee losses across the United States. In 2007, the nation’s beekeepers lost 32 percent of their colonies. In 2008 they lost 36 percent. In 2009, 29 percent [Discovery News]. With the official 2010 numbers (which will be announced in April) expected to be even worse, farmers across the United States are worried. About one-third of the human diet is from plants that require pollination from honeybees, which means everything from apples to zucchini [AP]. Almond growers in California are particularly concerned; the state is one of the largest producers of almonds in the world, and with the decline in the bee population, pollinating the trees has been a challenge. CCD has also dealt a tough economic blow to the beekeepers who truck their hives to the orchards. For Zac Browning, one of the country’s largest commercial beekeepers, the latest woes have led to a $1 million loss this year [AP].

As federal, state, and private agencies hunt for the elusive bee killer, the USDA has advised people not to use pesticides indiscriminately—especially at midday when honey bees are most likely out foraging for nectar. The agency is also asking people to plant and encourage the planting of good nectar sources like red clover, foxglove, bee balm, and joe-pye weed to give the besieged honey bees a boost.

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DISCOVER: Beepocalypse

Image: Flickr / Todd Huffman

The Kennecott Garfield Smelter of the Bingham Canyon Mine is located 17 miles west of downtown Salt Lake City, Utah. It sits between the south shore of the Great Salt Lake and the Oquirrh Mountains. As the tallest free-standing structure west of the Mississippi River, the Kennecott stack rises 1,215 feet from a 124-foot-diameter base. The Bingham Canyon Mine, owned by global mining giant Rio Tinto, has the distinction of being the biggest man-made excavation on the face of the earth, daily producing 150,000 tons of copper ore and 270,000 tons of “overburden.” Called “The Richest Hole on Earth,” it is nearly a mile deep and about three miles wide at the top, and still expanding.

As photographer Michael Light points out, if you look closely at this photograph, you will see the beach of the prehistoric freshwater Lake Bonneville, behind the top half of the stack, to the left. Shooting from the open side of a helicopter, with nothing between him and the void but a lap belt, Light was in the air for about two hours, shooting some 450 exposures using a large format aerial camera loaded with 5” roll film. “Photographing Bingham Canyon is an act of looking at one geological epoch precisely as it merges into another, the Holocene becoming the Anthropocene,” writes Light.

Garfield Stack, Oquirrh Mountains, and Ancient Beach of Great Salt Lake.

All images are by Michael Light, courtesy Radius Books/Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco

There are aliens among us!

Don’t believe me? Then gaze upon this picture, O Foolish Human:

BABloggee Jeremy Theriot sent this picture to me. It looks innocent, doesn’t it? Ah, certainly, until you see it from a different angle…

J’accuse! Obviously, they walk among us! Or, more accurately, they are rooted among us. If prickly pear cacti have roots. I think they do. Yeah, let’s assume they do.

So maybe they’re not a major threat, but have you ever seen one up close? I’m positive I don’t want one probing me, I assure you. There’s a reason they’re prickly…

P.S. This one provides even more evidence that they photosynthesize among us.

After six months in the International Space Station, two astronauts, a Russian and an American, returned to earth on Thursday, March 18th, 2010 in the Soyuz TMZ-16. The Soyuz dropped into four feet of snow in a remote region of Kazakhstan. NASA photographer Bill Ingalls, who has been shooting for NASA since 1991, says that one of the hardest parts of shooting a landing is trying to catch the rockets on the spacecraft that are supposed to fire milliseconds prior to landing, in order to cushion it. Ingalls arrived in the first group of recovery helicopters on the scene that circle the landing zone. The same snow that blocked the ground recovery vehicles from reaching the Soyuz also made it difficult for Ingalls to tell how high above the ground the it was, and when the rockets would fire.

He shot at a high shutter speed using motor drive to capture it all. Ingalls had made his shot, but for the astronauts, the journey was hardly over. Coming all the way from outer space back to earth is only part of the commute from the Space Station. After recovery from the snow at the landing site near Arkalyk, these hardy spacemen then traveled two and a half hours by helicopter to Kustanay, Kazakhstan. There they participated in a ceremony at the airport, where the locals presented them with traditional hats. Then they hopped on a plane for another two and a half hour ride before finally coming to rest at Star City, outside of Moscow.

Image courtesy Bill Ingalls/NASA

Today Discover gains two new bloggers: Razib Khan and Ed Yong. But while they’re new to Discover, they’re far from new to the science blogosphere. I’m a long time reader of both of their blogs, and urge everyone to check them out, too. Welcome!

When a person has a heart attack, the heart repairs its damaged muscle by forming scar tissue. As a result, the heart never truly goes back to the way it was. But when a zebrafish has a heart injury, like having a large chunk of it chopped off, it grows a brand new piece to replace it.

Two independent reports published in the journal Nature show that within days of an injury to its heart, the zebrafish has the remarkable ability to regenerate most of the missing cardiac tissue using mature heart cells–not stem cells, as some researchers had suspected.

The findings help explain why human beings can’t regenerate a heart or missing limbs. The reports contradict a previous study (pdf) done by one of the research teams in 2006 that suggested that stem cells, the general all-purpose cells that develop into all the mature and functional cells of the body, were responsible for self-repair.

The finding suggest that doctors have been on the wrong track with recent stem cell-based therapies for heart attack patients. Many heart patients have received injections of stem cells, often ones taken from their own bone marrow. But the beneficial effects have generally been unremarkable [The New York Times].

In one study, a team led by Chris Jopling and Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte genetically engineered the fish’s heart muscle cells so that when they proliferated they would synthesize a fluorescent green protein [The New York Times].Then they chopped off part of the fish’s heart and watched to see if the fish would employ stem cells to regrow the heart or use mature heart muscle cells, known as cardiomyocytes.

In just a few days, scientists found the zebrafish had regrown the missing piece of heart. On further observation, scientists found that all the cells in the new part of the heart glowed green, proving that existing heart muscle cells were the principal or only source of the new tissue [The New York Times]. Further experiments showed that the cardiomyocytes near the injury site seem to take a step backward in development, detaching from one another and losing their typical shape—presumably to make it possible for them to start dividing again as they replenish the lost tissue [ScienceNOW]. Experiments conducted by Kenneth Poss, the researcher behind the 2006 study, showed similar results. Both teams say the next step is to identify the cellular signals that trigger the regeneration process.

The scientists say that prior to heart failure, mammalian heart cells go into a state called hibernation, where the muscle cells stops contracting in an effort to save themselves. Hibernating cardiomyocytes are also seen in zebrafish, but unlike the mammal cells, the fish cells then take another step and begin proliferating. Scientists are trying to understand what gives the fish cells the ability to start multiplying, and hope to conduct further studies on mice to see whether mammalian cells can be induced to follow suit. “Maybe all they need is a bit of push in the right direction,” Jopling said [HealthDay News].

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Image: Chris Jopling. The green-glowing heart cells are shown at 7, 14, and 30 days after injury.

I am delighted to welcome two of our favorite science bloggers on the planet to their new home with us at Discover Blogs! Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science and Razib Khan of Gene Expression begin settling in today and I cannot imagine two better additions to the family! In case you’re not already familiar with these phenomenal blogs, Ed’s an award-winning science writer who breaks down research papers into easy to understand posts like no one else. He only uses the primary literature and Not Exactly Rocket Science was just named Research Blog of the Year, Best Lay-Level Blog, and home of the Best Post of the Year in the Research Blogging Awards. In other words, Ed’s writing is a must-read for anyone interested in science online. Razib’s also a superstar blogger and covers genetics better than anyone! He not only reports on the latest research, but he synthesizes and analyzes the data from primary sources in novel ways–ways that often impress those scientists originally engaged in the studies. Razib offers new insights on topics from human migration to standards of beauty and I always learn something new when I visit his site. He also makes me laugh. On top of …

You would think that kids these days would have something better to do with their time than balancing 15 books on their heads while manipulating Rubik’s cubes and reciting the mathematical constant pi to a hundred digits.

But no. In the latest geek-tastic viral video, a young lady who calls herself “Bookonmyhead” carries out just this stunt. The video was posted in November but just went viral in the last few days; by now it has racked up more than 131,000 hits. Mashable says the girl is 18-year-old Lauren.

The 42-second video is pretty cool but comments left on YouTube allege that Lauren had solved the Rubik cube prior to the taping and that the books were superglued together—which is why they didn’t slither right off her head. Whatever! When was the last time you balanced 15 books on your head, messed with a Rubik cube, and got so many pi digits right? We thought so. Now watch.

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According to my understanding of the new reform, courtesy of CNN:
Citizens will be required to have acceptable coverage or pay a penalty of $95 in 2014, $325 in 2015, $695 (or up to 2.5 percent of income) in 2016. Families will pay half the amount for children, up to a cap of $2,250 per family. After 2016, penalties are indexed to Consumer Price Index.
Um, okay, so I will definitely have to buy health care by 2015 or so. That I get. After that, dodging it starts to hurt. Meanwhile, my current MIT health care ends in May with the end of the Knight Fellowship. At that point, it seems likely that I’ll return to being a freelance writer, so for about 3.5 years, I’m not sure what I’ll be doing for health care. My previous strategy was to buy something relatively cheap with a high deductible–catastrophic coverage, essentially. But I can’t say the approach was particularly satisfying. I spent some $ 1300 per year (premiums increased each year) and barely went to the doctor, because I essentially had to pay 100 % for anything routine, like a check up or a bad cold that wouldn’t go away. To obtain significantly better coverage, I …

The Sun is displaying its individuality — I guess the manager at Chochkies finally got through to it — by showing a nice little flare the other day:

This image, taken by the STEREO spacecraft (for Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory), shows the Sun in the far ultraviolet, almost at X-ray energies. The bright flare is on the left. The slightly tilted elongated diamond is not real; it’s what happens when an electronic detector gets flooded with light. Detectors like this convert photons of light into electrons, and if too many photons hit it, the electrons leak out and “bloom” into nearby pixels.

Flares happen when the magnetic field lines of the Sun get tangled up. A huge amount of energy is stored in those lines! If the magnetic field gets too entangled, they can suddenly reconnect and release that energy. In my book, I make the analogy to a bunch of bed spring coils all under tension and thrown into a bag. If one snaps back, it hits the others which then snap, and you get a very quick and very violent release of energy. For the Sun, that means a solar flare is released. The one shown here is little, but big ones can release as much as 10% of the Sun’s total energy! They roar out, vast and powerful across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to gamma rays, and unleash a flood of subatomic particles as well.

If you look to the right of the flare, you’ll see some arcs extending up from the Sun’s surface. Those are also loops of magnetic energy, and a little time after this image was taken they too snapped, releasing a coronal mass ejection; it’s spread out more than a flare, so it’s less intense, but CMEs can blast out huge amounts of energy as well.

Images like this, and more observations by STEREO, help astronomers understand our nearest star better. And this isn’t just academic knowledge: flares and CMEs can damage or even destroy satellites, which represent billions of dollars of assets. The government and private companies take this threat very seriously indeed, of course. Just imagine the number of TPS reports they’d have to fill out!

Image credit: NASA, STEREO

Life: Ain’t it grand?

That seems to have been the starting point for the new nature documentary series LIFE, which spotlights some of the planet’s most gloriously unusual critters. The series, which airs on Sunday evenings on the Discovery Channel, presents animals that belong in the evolution hall of fame. Many have developed remarkable tricks to survive in inhospitable environments, while others have developed fascinating mating rituals that ensure that the fittest individuals pass on their genes, generation after generation.

Click through the gallery for some of our favorite hall-of-famers from the show.

A Restless Trail-Runner

Size does matter, especially for the tiny rufous sengi, an “elephant shrew” whose small size and constant movement makes it hungry—all the time! But movement in a forest full of predators is dangerous, so the sengi devised a clever method to forage for food.

The tiny mammal constructs a series of neatly cleared trails between its regular feeding spots and memorizes their details. Then it launches itself on a trail patrol at breakneck speed, stopping only to check for tasty insects and to clear the trail of any debris. A single twig can be fatal, so the sengi spends up to 40 percent of its time running the trails and clearing away obstacles.

Details here. The bill will be signed into law Tuesday by President Obama. Yes we did.

The media glorifying burns: a hindrance to burn prevention.

“The media have a profound influence on the actions of children and adults. Burns and burn prevention tend to be ignored or even mocked. The purpose of this presentation is to reveal the callousness of the media in its dealings with burns and burn prevention. Printed materials with a relationship to burns, risk of burning, or disrespect for the consequences of burns were collected. The materials were tabulated into four categories: comics, advertisements (ads), articles that made light of burns, and television shows that portrayed behavior that would risk burn injury. Most burn-related materials were found in comics or advertisements. Several comics made light of high-risk behavior with flames, scald injury, contact injury, or burns. In addition, several advertisements showed people on fire or actions that could easily lead to burns. Several articles and televisions shows portrayed high-risk behavior that, in some instances, led to copycat injuries. Flames are frequently used to sell items that target adolescent boys or young men. The high incidence injuries that frequent this population parallel the high-risk behaviors portrayed by the media. The media portrays flames and high-risk behavior for burn injury as being cool, funny, and without consequence. The use of flames on clothing and recreational equipment (skateboards, hot rods) particularly targets the high-risk adolescent male. The burn community should make the media aware of the harm it causes with its callous depiction and glorification of burns.”

Photo: flickr/happysweetmama

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News here. It’s great to see such a staunch champion of the teaching of evolution, and of embryonic stem cell research, winning this award. There is no better demonstration, I think, that science and religion don’t have to be at war all the time–for after all, Ayala is also a former priest and has been exceedingly prominent in making the argument against the problematic “conflict thesis.” Meanwhile, those who embrace that thesis, and dislike the Templeton Foundation, will still have a hard time saying anything bad about Ayala, I would imagine. In addition to fighting doggedly in defense of evolution, his scientific credentials include winning the National Medal of Science and serving as president and chairman of the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In congratulating Ayala, the National Center for Science Education adds:
Among his contributions to the defense of the integrity of science education was his testimony for the plaintiffs in McLean v. Arkansas and his coordination of support for evolution education at the National Academy of Sciences, including his lead authorship of the publication Science, Evolution, and Creationism (National Academies Press, 2008). NCSE’s executive director Eugenie C. Scott commented, “Ayala’s contributions to NCSE and its goal …

NOVA Science Now has a nifty feature they’re doing online where they spotlight “The Secret Life of Scientists”. I have some reservations about it, because one thing scientists aren’t, is secretive. We talk about what we do constantly.

Anyway, they have a series of short videos about teen astronomer Caroline Moore, who recently discovered a rare type of supernova. She found this supernova, by the way, when she was 14.

They also asked her 10 questions, and while I might disagree with her choice of a news source, I think it’s great that they let her be her, and she shines right through in these videos. It’s also really terrific that she doesn’t compromise in these interviews, belting out whatever is on her mind. She’s a fantastic role model for kids interested in science, showing them that science really is cool, and you can do it and still be you.

A certain species of dung beetle has been crowned the world’s strongest insect. A male Onthophagus taurus can pull 1,141 times its own body weight — the equivalent of a 70-kilogramme (154-pound) person being able to lift 80 tonnes, the weight of six double-decker buses [AFP]. That power comes in handy not just to roll up a few extra dung-balls, but also to protect mates and stave off potential rivals.

Chronicling the insect’s amazing strength in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, scientists Rob Knell and Leigh Simmons explain that the beetle’s amazing strength is connected to his sex life. These female dung beetles dig tunnels beneath choice pieces of dung in which to lay their eggs. If another male enters a tunnel already occupied by a rival, then the dung beetles duke it out, each male using his immense strength in an attempt to push the other out. Usually, the male that guards the tunnel repeatedly mates with the female inside.

In the study, scientists calibrated the males’ strength by gluing a cotton thread to the beetles’ hard wing-cases, stringing the thread across a pulley, and tying it to a miniature bucket, to which they added drops of water [ScienceNOW]. The dung beetle’s coronation as the world’s strongest insect steals the thunder from the rhinoceros beetle, which can lift up to 850 times its own weight.

The weaker males in this brawny insect community aren’t entirely out of luck, as nature has endowed them with other survival advantages. Knell added that some male dung beetles are smaller and weaker, but do not have to fight for female attention due to their “substantially bigger testicles”. “Instead of growing super strength to fight for a female, they grow lots more sperm to increase their chances of fertilizing her eggs and fathering the next generation” [AFP].

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Image: Alex Wild. Two male dung beetles fight for supremacy. 

Skeptic Magazine’s website has a new feature I like: short bios of important skeptics.

Daniel Loxton, the creator of this series, also made banners to put a face on skepticism. The face featured here is for the tireless and wondrous and totally awesome Swoopy^*, who runs the Skepticality podcast with Derek Colanduno.

I suspect you might recognize some of the others there too. And if you don’t, get to know them! You’ll be happy you did. But don’t believe me. Prove it for yourself.

Our book reviews aren’t over yet–perhaps they will keep coming out all the way to the paperback release date in May. The latest is from David J. Tenenbaum of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, founding feature writer for the WhyFiles, who is reviewing in the journal Science Communication. Tenenbaum begins with a revealing vignette:
I e-mailed an eminent limnologist today, seeking to discuss an environmental issue that he’s considered important enough to study for several years. To my delight, he immediately responded with word that a new study was forthcoming in an important journal. Then, to my dismay, he added that the journal’s embargo would expire a couple of weeks after my publication date.
No problem, I replied. He’d watched the issue develop for years and would surely have a useful comment. Then I got the silent treatment.
Huh? When you contact scientists for a living (I admit, science journalism can seem a branch of telemarketing), you get used to nonresponses, to experts who think a “tight deadline” means 3 months, or are in Mongolia or at an invitation-only conference in Estonia. This latest wrinkle on the rejection letter told me that this expert would be happy to get help publicizing his newest research …

Here’s what we know about the social networking site, Facebook. It can mysteriously suck away large portions of your day, and make you sneaky, nosy, and narcissistic. It can also, in some extreme cases, cause carpal tunnel syndrome from clicking through the bazillion vacation pictures you posted online. But does Facebook cause syphilis? The short answer is “no.” The longer one is “Are you nuts?”

But that didn’t stop British tabloid The Sun from cranking up its imagination and posting an article titled “Sex diseases soaring due to Facebook romps.”

The piece was based on a British National Health Service (NHS) report that noted that syphilis cases in the Teesside region, an area of northeast England, were up four fold. It said casual sex in the area had spiked and as a result of people not using condoms, a surprising number of women had contracted syphilis. So, from fewer than ten cases in 2008, the number had now gone up to 30.

The Sun quotes Professor Peter Kelly, director of Public Health for NHS Tees:

“I don’t get the names of people affected, just figures. And I saw that several of the people had met sexual partners through these sites…. Social networking sites are making it easier for people to meet up for casual sex. There is a rise in syphilis because people are having more sexual partners than 20 years ago and often do not use condoms.”

So the professor is stating what’s in the report: More people are finding dates online and are having casual sex, which leads, in some cases, to syphilis. From his quote above, it’s clear that he makes no specific mention of Facebook, nor is he saying that people who meet sexual partners on Facebook–rather than in bars, through friends, or via online dating sites–are more likely to wind up with an STD.

But here is how The Sun sums up what the professor said:

And an NHS trust chief said Facebook and similar sites were to blame for a shocking rise in cases of potentially-lethal syphilis in the region.

Once The Sun was on the story, other tabloids followed suit, starting with The Telegraph’s article “Facebook Linked to Rise in Syphilis” and The Independent’s “Internet Casual Sex is Blamed For Rise in Syphilis.” The BBC states that while Facebook is Britain’s favorite social networking site, it wasn’t entirely unreasonable to make that connection, but to literally put words in the professor’s mouth was inaccurate and misleading.

Edward Kunonga, Professor Kelly’s colleague told the BBC:

Our press release was simply trying to highlight the risks of casual sex. We did not make the claim that social networking sites are causing the rise in the incidence of syphilis.”

Gawker meanwhile ran a quote by a Facebook spokesperson, who scoffed at the false reporting:

While it makes for interesting headlines, the assertions made in newspaper reports that Facebook is responsible for the transmission of STDs are ridiculous, exaggerate the comments made by the professor, and ignore the difference between correlation and causation. As Facebook’s more than 400 million users know, our Web site is not a place to meet people for casual sex – it’s a place for friends, family and coworkers to connect and share.

Most readers, luckily, recognize that using Facebook and practicing safe sex are two completely different things. But that hasn’t stopped the Internet from tittering about the latest story; as one person commented on The Telegraph’s article: “My suggestion, practice ’safe social networking,’ wear a condom when on Facebook.”

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Image: Flickr/benstein

What looks like a giant helmet, can potentially zip through congested city streets, has eco-friendly bona fides, and can “talk” with other vehicles on the road? It’s the new 2-person EN-V, an “Electric Networked Vehicle” from GM–a concept car that the company hopes will change the way people in crowded cities drive in the future.

GM unveiled several models of the helmet-shaped concept vehicle in Shanghai. The 2-wheeled vehicles, built in collaboration with Segway and GM’s Chinese partner S.A.I.C., are powered by electric motors and can travel up to 25 miles on a single charge. The two-seater EN-V is also a third of the length of a regular car at 1.5 meters [about 5 feet]. It will be equipped with wireless communication and GPS-based navigation that will help it avoid accidents and pick the fastest routes based on real-time traffic conditions, GM says [The Wall Street Journal]. A driver could either control the car manually or could put it into the more relaxing autonomous mode.

Says GM executive Kevin Wale: “It provides an ideal solution for urban mobility that enables future driving to be free from petroleum and emissions, free from congestion and accidents, and more fun and fashionable than ever before” [The New York Times].

But don’t expect to see the EN-V on roads anytime soon. GM says the concept car is meant to showcase “what might be possible by 2030,” when infrastructure for networked vehicles might be in place. The company says that if the EN-V is eventually put into production, it will cost less than a small car but more than a moped.

GM’s decision to unveil the EN-V in Shanghai underscores China’s importance for GM’s future plans. It is GM’s second-largest market after the United States and a strategic battleground for all foreign automakers, with the likes of Volkswagen AG (VOWG.DE) and Toyota fighting fiercely for bigger market share [Reuters]. The country also has some of the most congested cities in the world, making it well-suited for tiny cars like GM’s EN-V.

The EN-V, however is not GM’s first eco-friendly offering. Its Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid is slated to hit showrooms later this year.

Here’s a closer look at the new EN-V in action.

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Image: General Motors