Calculating species extinction rates is a tricky business at the best of times, but a new research paper in Nature suggests the most widely used methods are “fundamentally flawed” and overestimate extinction rates by as much as 160 percent. Paper co-author Stephen Hubbell, a distinguished professor of ecology at UCLA, explained why he believed extinction […]
Deforestation around the Amazon River in Peru has increased six-fold in recent years as miners, driven by record gold prices, blast and clear huge tracts of lowland rainforest, according to a Duke University led study. Published in the journal PLoS ONE, the study used NASA satellite imagery combined with economic analyses of gold prices and […]
Large numbers of young penguins in colonies around the Atlantic are suffering what is known as feather-loss disorder and scientists are baffled as to what might be causing the condition. A report on the disorder appears in the journal Waterbirds. “Feather-loss disorders are uncommon in most bird species, and we need to conduct further study […]
The American Chemical Society says there is a widespread public misconception about the estrogen-related hormones detected in drinking water supplies. Writing in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, researchers Amber Wise, Kacie O’Brien and Tracey Woodruff describe how their analysis shows that, contrary to popular belief, birth control pills account for less than 1 percent […]
Algal blooms that occur in rivers and waterways have been found to produce a previously unrecognized estrogen-like compound that adversely affects fish, plants and humans by disrupting the normal activity of reproductive hormones. University of Tennessee researchers, led by biotechnologist Theodore Henry, compared groups of larval zebrafish exposed to blue-green algae (Microcystis) cells with those […]
A comprehensive new survey that compared the past and present condition of oyster reefs around the globe has found that more than 90 percent of former reefs have been lost in most of the regions where the molluscs were formerly abundant. Writing in BioScience, the researchers note that in many places, such as the Wadden […]
There’s a significant amount of plastic trash floating in the northern Pacific Ocean, but claims that the “Great Garbage Patch” between California and Japan is twice the size of Texas are grossly exaggerated, according to a new analysis from Oregon State University. “There is no doubt that the amount of plastic in the world’s oceans […]
