Science News Releases

Multiple species of seacows once coexisted

Sirenians, or seacows, are a group of marine mammals that include manatees and dugongs; today, only one species of seacow is found in each world region. Smithsonian scientists have discovered that this was not always the case. According to the fossil record of these marine mammals, which dates back 50 million years ago, it was more common to find three, or possibly more, different species of seacows living together at one time. This suggests that the environment and food sources for ancient seacows were also different than today. The team’s findings are published in the journal PLoS ONE.

seacow species seagrass

Sirenians, or seacows, a group of marine mammals that include manatees and dugongs. It was more common to find three or more different species of seacows living together at one time. Image credit: Carl Buell.

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New Insights Into Cloud Formation

Clouds have a profound effect on the climate, but we know surprisingly little about how they form. Erika Sundén has studied how extremely small cloud particles can dispose of excess energy. This knowledge is necessary to understand processes in the atmosphere that affect global climate change.

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Another Bumper Year for Chinese Science

Another year, another chance for scientists here to pop the champagne corks. In a draft budget released today at the opening session of the annual National People’s Congress, China has earmarked 32.45 billion yuan ($5.14 billion) for basic research in 2012—up 26% from last year’s appropriation

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New methods for better purification of wastewater

Before wastewater reaches recipient waters, nutrients must be removed in order to avoid eutrophication and large algal blooms, which may result in serious damage to animal and plant life. Robert Almstrand at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, has shown in his thesis that better removal of nitrogen from wastewater can be achieved by providing the bacteria that purify the water with alternating high and low levels of nutrients.

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NASA satellites see Tropical Storm Irina getting loopy

Tropical Storm Irina

his image from NASA's TRMM satellite shows rainfall in the remnants of Tropical Cyclone Irina on March 5 at 2:23 a.m. local time/South Africa. Numerous intense storms in the southern and eastern quadrant were dropping rainfall at a rate of over 50mm per hr / ~2 inches (red). Light to moderate rainfall is depicted in blue and green was falling at a rate between .78 to 1.57 inches (20 to 40 mm) per hour. Credit: Credit: SSAI/NASA, Hal Pierce

Two NASA satellites have been measuring rainfall and cloud top temperatures in Tropical Storm as it has been “going loopy” in the Mozambique Channel over the last couple of days. Irina is making a cyclonic loop, something that a tropical cyclone does on occasion whenever there are a couple of weather systems that push it in different directions.

On March 5, 2012, Irina’s maximum sustained winds had increased to near 50 knots (57.5 mph/92.6 kph), , up from 40 knots (46 mph/74 kph) over the last several days. Forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center expect Irina to strengthen more at sea over the next day, and then begin to weaken.

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Sharing the Blame for the Mammoth’s Extinction

Wooly mammoths

The wooly mammoths may have succumbed to a combination of rapid climate change and human depredation, possibly by overhunting. Credit: Creative Commons/Wikimedia

The past few tens of millennia were hard times for the megafauna of the world. Hundreds of big-bodied species—from the mammoths of North America to the 3-meter-tall kangaroos of Australia to the 200-kilogram-plus flightless birds of New Zealand—just disappeared from the fossil record. A new, broad analysis continues the century-long debate over the loss of the big animals, coming down on the middle ground between blaming migrating humans for wiping them all out and climate change alone for doing them in.

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Oceans acidifying faster today than in past 300 million years


An international research with Spanish research members alerts of the unprecedented characteristics of changes in marine chemistry happening in the near future.

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