Marine mammals are on the frontline of failing ocean health
...low-level exposure. Animals like killer whales and polar bears, who share many of our marine foods, accumul...anohalogens and mercury are higher in animals like polar bears and seals that have fish and marine mammal-based diets, while cadmium (a heavy metal associate...Climate change, terrorism two big risks of 21st century
...the opening line of a joke -- "what does a melting polar cap and a suicide bomber have in common?" -- is actually at the center of how society understands and responds better to risk. Climate change and terrorism are two of the most pervasive risks of the 21st century and among the most taxing to policy m......icant detriment to that fragile and interconnected polar ecosystem, and that doesn't bode well for other ocean ecosystems in the future. That's the word from University of Miami Rosenstiel School's Dr. Sharon Smith who will speak on "Potentially Dramatic Changes in the Pelagic Ecosystems of the Marginal Se...International symposium on radar altimetry in Venice, 13 to 18 March 2006
... monitor changes in the elevation and thickness of polar ice sheets and floating sea ice. These data will h... explain the connection between the melting of the polar ice and the rise in sea levels and how this is contributing to climate change. Radar altimeters wer...Countdown to International Polar Year
...enormous range of science. From the ecology of the polar oceans, the dynamics of massive ice sheets and their effect on global sea level to the impact of space weather on global communications. The three fastest warming regions on the planet over the last 50 years have been Alaska, Siberia and parts of the...New test of snow's thickness may 'bear' results key to polar climate studies, wildlife habitat
...s hailing from one of the world's coldest regions: polar bears. From mid-March to mid-April, researchers em...of satellite measurements of snow's thickness atop polar sea ice. Snow thickness is just one of several cutting-edge measurements taken by the Advanced Micro...Through a satellite darkly: Night views of European seas improve ESA ocean heat map
...h Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) sensors on US NOAA polar orbiters, and a pair of Japanese-built instruments, the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR) and TRMM TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) instruments, aboard NASA's Aqua and the JAXA-NASA Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) spacecraft respect...Scientists in dogged pursuit of snow research embark on Arctic trek
...ss the Arctic through May with two dog teams of 25 polar huskies with names like Ginger, Jupiter and Hershey, to collect samples of hydro-meteorological snow data. The samples, to be gathered in five communities spread across the Alaskan Arctic, will be analyzed to help validate snow pack observations from...Glimpse to past adds weight to global warming forecasts
...rs, which is amplified to as much as 10 degrees in polar regions due to what are known as feedback cycles. The short-term result will be melting sea ice, and in the longer term a northward encroachment of the Boreal forest, and ultimately the disappearance of the Greenland ice sheet. The authors report tha...Starving diamond-back still grows; rattler cuts metabolism 80 percent, use lipid energy source
...ours or months. In the arctic winter, penguins and polar bears store up huge amounts of fat but stay active. Hibernators such as squirrels and groundhogs fatten up for the winter then lower their metabolism by sleeping off. But desert snakes don't display any such outward manifestation that might hint at ...Evolutionary scrap-heap challenge: Antifreeze fish make sense out of junk DNA
...of these antifreeze proteins is directly driven by polar glaciation, by studying their evolutionary history...nt the time of onset of freezing conditions in the polar and subpolar seas. Professor Cheng will present her latest results at the Annual Main Meeting of the...Satellite instrument helps tackle mysteries of ozone-eating clouds
...g (MIPAS) is unique in its possibilities to detect polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) since it is the first ...lity to observe these clouds continuously over the polar regions especially during the polar night," Michael Hpfner of Germany's Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe ...Global warming capable of sparking mass species extinctions
...one, yet facing enormous threats. "It isn't just polar bears and penguins that we must worry about anymore," said Lee Hannah, co-author of the study and senior fellow for climate change at Conservation International. "The hotspots studied in this paper are essentially refugee camps for many of our plane...Research into salt, oil, ice and fossils
... other research interests are the use of so-called polar components of mineral oil as an indicator of oil redistribution, its biological degradation, and molecular biological markers. Markus Konz, 26, Hydrology, University of Basel, Switzerland Glaciers and glacial runoff are the areas of specialisation ch...North Pole's ancient past holds lessons for future global warming
...that in addition to greenhouse gas concentrations, polar clouds or hurricane-induced ocean heat transport were involved, since the tropics maintained livable conditions during the PETM. Mechanisms that feed back onto global warming also are poorly understood and poorly represented in current models. These ...Salk scientists get to the root of plant cell fate
...lant biology. Like animals, plants develop along a polar axis, but with a root on one end and a shoot on the other. A defective TOPLESS gene, however, causes plant embryos to develop into a seedling with two oppositely oriented root poles hence the gene's name. Long asked how mutations in TOPLESS can swit...New method of testing eggs for abnormalities could solve problems of embryo freezing
... stage. The technique involves analysing the first polar body, a small membrane-bound cellular structure th... team decided to see whether analysis of the first polar body could be a safe and effective tool for choosing viable eggs for fertilisation. Previously, no o...First global bird map provides new clues to future extinctions
...mallest in the tropics and larger in temperate and polar regions. A smaller range area means that many different types of creature can be accommodated in the same space, explaining why regions such as the Amazon Basin contain such a rich variety of species. Conversely, temperate areas contain a smaller num...Scientists to employ Arctic ice and polar bears to protect diversity of world's crops
...-term survival of the world's vital food crops. As polar bears prowled the island, the head of the Trust ca...lity planners also cite the ubiquitous presence of polar bears, not known for their hospitality toward humans, as a security measure. The seeds placed in th......ecies for tracking from salmon to whales and from polar bears to penguins and priority areas for ocean floor acoustic monitoring arrays. "These are key questions: which species do we want to track and exactly where do we wire up the world to create an effective global system of watching the oceans in mot...