Yesterday I blogged how Spring 2012 was the earliest on record. This year was a little different. The average temperature across the 48 contiguous states was 48 degrees F, which was the coolest since 1997. As many in the central U.S. know, April had unusual late snow - more than any year since 1981 and the 5th largest snow cover since record keeping began.
Ever the contrarian, while most of the country was experiencing low temperatures, California had its 12th highest temperatures ever.
Spring blossoms, MA.
Image Credit U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Okay, so April and the last part of March this year were not very spring-like for most of the nation. But Spring 2012 Earliest on Record explains that March 2012 set records for warm temperatures and early leafing and flowering over the 48 continental states.
Those with good memory remember there were some late frosts last year that damaged fruit trees in the midwest and Great Lakes. It is possible there is correlation with the early spring and the summer drought.
Records suggest that spring is occuring 20-30 days earlier since 1900. It most noticeable in the upper midwest and the Great Lakes region.
Multicolored Asian lady beetle
Image Credit: Susan Ellis, Bugwood.org
Harmonia axyridis is native to eastern Asia, but it was introduced (on purpose) to Europe and the United States for controlling aphids in greenhouses. But like the fictional raptors of Jurassic Park, they have established themselves in the wild.
Invasive ladybirds wage 'biological war' on natives explains the immune system of the little bugs is especially powerful. New antibiotics may actually come from the body fluid of the insect.
The BBC explains that the little beetles also have tiny fungi named microsporidia. These remain inactive in the beetle's blood until under attack. Then they become active and kill the native beetles. Eruope is especially alarmed because when the beetles' preferred food supply aphids, is unavailable, they will dine upon grapes. A single beetle can ruin the taste of wine.
Invasive ladybugs eat their native competition, but a shared enemy determines who survives adds that invasive species sometimes benefit from having a competitor - it represents a food supply. In many parts of the U.S., the invader has eliminated the native populations. The shared enemy of the invader and native beetle is the parasitoid wasp.
Image Credit: Maggie Bartlett, NHGRI
Scientists report first success in cloning human stem cells explains researchers have broken a barrier toward human cloning. For animals, cloning has been an established process since 1996, when Dolly was cloned using nuclear transfer.
The technique requires a quality unfertilized egg cell with the nucleus removed. The nucleus from a donor cell is inserted into the egg cell and then with electrical or chemical stimulus, the egg begins dividing as if it had been fertilized with sperm.
The techique has worked for decades with animals, but never humans. As the Time article describes, a researcher at Oregon Health and Science Center has succeed in producing a dividing human embryo. His goal was not to clone a human, but rather, to create embryonic stem cells that could be coaxed into any type of cell within the body. It is believed this is on the path to regenerating body organs with the patient's own DNA, eliminating the requirement of anti-rejection drugs.
(My novel, Roman DNA, is based upon nuclear transfer, so check it out if you want to read one perspective of where all of this might lead.)
Troubling to many people, including myself, is that the harvesting of embyronic stem cells requires the destruction of a human embryo. After nuclear transfer, the embyro is permitted to divide for almost a week, when it is ball of cells with the highly-prized embyronic stem cells on the outside. These are harvested for whatever purpose, and a viable human embryo is then lost.
For a while, it almost seemed that human cloning was prevented by some unknown mechanism, similar to the tale of Edwin Corley, The Jesus Factor. In his novel, he develops the idea that a nuclear bomb cannot explode if it is moving - hence the title, The Jesus Factor. The idea being, that mankind was protected from nuclear armageddon by divine design. From a science perspective, it is pure bunk, but from a philosophic perspective, it is an intriguing tale.
So now it seems there is no divine design to prevent human cloning. I hope we are careful.
Image Credit: CDC/ Amanda Mills
Become a Marathon Runner With the Protein PGC-1-alpha explains that long distance training coaxes muscles to have more endurance. The mechanism is a bit more surprising than their conclusion.
Non-long distance runners, including body builders and sprinters reach a phase in the workout when the muscles produce energy without oxygen. That results in lactate buildup in the muscles. Before long fatigue sets in and the legs become wooden.
Long distance training however,conditions the muscles to produce protein PGC-1a, which inibits the production of lactate.
The Science Daily article adds that PGC-1a could help diabetic and obese patients who have improper lactate production. The protein could assist in the treatment of their condition.
Methane gas bubbles rise from the seafloor.
Image courtesy of Deepwater Canyons 2013 - Pathways to the Abyss, NOAA-OER/BOEM/USGS.
Sometimes called a cold seep, a new methane seep has been discovered in the mid-Atlantic. About a mile deep, methane seeps have some unique living organisms.
That deep, there is very little sunlight striking the ocean bottom, hence little energy native to the bottom. Except with the methane seep, there is significant chemical energy available.
Discovery of a New Deep Chemosynthetic Community tells of mussels with specialized bacteria in their gills that obtain their energy from the methane. Because this life obtains energy independent of the sun, there are mussel patches packed with mussels and other organisms higher up the food chain along the seep.
These mussels are called chemosynthetic animals because instead of deriving their energy through photosynthesis, they generate energy by chemosynthesis. The mussels resemble their shallow water cousins for most of their cells because the chemosynthesis produces sugar similar to photosynthesis. The origin of the energy is different, but it is converted into a common denominator for life on earth - sugar.
Tongass Forest, Alaska
Image Credit USDA Forest Service
Boreal forests are upper latitude swaths of trees ringing parts of Canada, Europe, and Russia with coniferous trees. These forests are important carbon sinks. We don't want their carbon released into the atmosphere.
There is a new study - As Climate Changes, Boreal Forests to Shift North and Relinquish More Carbon Than Expected. It used a complex environmental model to determine the fate of boreal forests with climate warming.
Largely, many of the climate warming effections are translational. As an extreme example, the weather of Georgia might shift to Ohio and correspondingly we might expect Ohio to look like today's Georgia - kudzu included. By the end of the century, a forest near Alberta Canada, will have to move 100 miles northward to enjoy the same climate it enjoyed decades earlier.
Scientists had expected the boreal forests to simply translate farther northward. But that isn't what the complex simulations reveal. They do move northward, but their southern borders basically resemble what they are today. For much of the United States and Russia, that is grassland.
The consequences is that the boreal forests of the future will have much less timber and more grassland - think steppes than what we have today. That is a significant loss of natural carbon storage, because grassland sinks much less carbon than towering pine trees.
snapshot of animation
Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
I have commented before about the upheaval in the energy market caused by fracking in the U.S. The cheaper energy unfortunately still reduces greenhouse gases and because of its lower price, makes even the progressive-minded Euro carbon market Below Junk Status.
This means of course, that as the world's population continues to increase, there will be more rather than a decline in greenhouse gases. Thus the new NASA study on rainfall changes due to greenhouse gases is instructive.
The global water cycle is changed by additional greenhouse gases. Strangely, the greenhouse gases result in disruptive behavior. They cause greater extremes in rainfall - for every one degree Fahrenheit increase, regions with heavy rainfall increase by 3.9 percent, and regions with light rainfall increases by 1 percent. The global net rainfall is a wash - no more, no less. But the model shows some disturbing new desert regions. Those already on the bubble such as Australia or India could have a very dry future.
Only the western U.S. is affected. The midwest and east coast are largely immune to the macroscopic rainfall changes. Violent weather, similar to the rainfall variations is also expected to increase.
Pollinators
Image Credit: USGS
The US Department of Agriculture has released a new Report on the National Stakeholders Conference on Honey Bee Health. Since 2006, there has been a realization that bees internationally are dying at unprecedented rates. Governments and private institutions have studied the little pollinators and learned far more about their genome and health than previously known.
European and US scientists appear to disagree upon the cause of colony collapse disorder. Bee deaths: EU to ban neonicotinoid pesticides tells that the European Commission is going to restrict the use of pesticides linked to bee deaths.
Wikipedia reminds us that neonicotinoids are insecticides chemically related to nicotine. These pesticides were originally developed by Shell in the 80s and later Bayer in the 90s. The idea is that nicotine is highly toxic to insects, but the lethal dosage is much higher for mammals. Almost all the corn planted in the midwest is treated with neonicotinoids.
The US report though, considers colony collapse disorder as a perfect storm of multiple contributors. High on the US list is the parasitic mite Varroa destructor. Nutrition is suspect as are pesticides. The US report does not provide concrete recommendations - merely that additional research and education is necessary.
Mmm. I think the European Commission has a greater sense of urgency. Further, banning the pesticides might improve the life expectancy of bees, and it might do the same for humans.
This photo of Hurricane Frances was taken by Astronaut Mike Fincke aboard the International Space Station.
Image Credit: NASA
The Tropical Meteorology Project at Colorado State University has released their predictions for the 2012 hurricane season. (It is a bit ironic the school's web page is warning about the spring snow conditions on campus.)
From the Extended Range Forecast we learn - 18 named storms, 9 hurricanes with 4 of them major (category 3 or greater). The probability of major hurricane on the east coast is 48 percent. The probability of a a major hurricane from the Florida panhandle westward is 47 percent.
The explanation for an above-average hurricane season is the abnormally warm Atlantic Ocean and the absence of an El Nino.
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