Ocean Acidification Threatens Coral Reefs
Mo’orea, it’s called—this island in French Polynesia that’s been dubbed the most beautiful island in the world. Extensive reefs of a coral named Porites and other species form atolls, or reefs that ring Mo’orea’s lagoons. These corals and other calcifying marine life, such as coralline algae, are also the world’s primary reef-builders. And therein lies the trouble. The seas in which these calcifying species dwell are turning acidic, their pH slowly dropping as Earth’s oceans acidify in response to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/new-Acidification-Threatens-Coral-Reefs-010912.aspx
Human Brains Are Primally Wired to Notice Animals
Surrounded by technology and urbanity though we may be, the human brain remains profoundly hard-wired to respond to animals.
When people are shown pictures of animals, specific parts of the amygdala — a structure central to pleasure and pain, fear and reward — react almost instantly.
Put another way, glimpsing a bird at the feeder or a shark on Animal Planet, or even a plankitten, could invoke cognitive tricks inherited from ancestors who walked on four legs in shallow water.
The effect is large and consistent, and “may reflect the importance that animals held throughout our evolutionary past,” wrote researchers led by California Institute of Technology neurobiologist Florian Mormann in an Aug. 29 Nature Neuroscience paper.
The researchers had access to a unique group of research subjects: 41 people receiving surgery for drug-resistant epilepsy. Prior to surgery, doctors needed to map their minds, a task performed by inserting electrodes into different parts of their brains, then measuring neuron-by-neuron responses to stimuli.
For decades, biomedical companies have been collecting blood from horseshoe crabs. The blood is collected from the animals’ hearts. It contains protein in the cells and therefore acts like a primitive immune system, enabling scientists to test vaccines and bacterias that can be fatal to humans. For example, the crabs’ blood coagulates instantly when it touches pathogens like E. coli and Salmonella.
Once harvested (for approximately 20% of their blood), the crabs are released back into the sea. Estimates of mortality rates following blood harvesting vary from 3% to 15%.
