Courtesy of UC San Diego News

The tail of a seahorse can be compressed to about half its size before permanent damage occurs, engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have found. The tail’s exceptional flexibility is due to its structure, made up of bony, armored plates, which slide past each other. Researchers are hoping to use a similar structure to create a flexible robotic arm equipped with muscles made out of polymer, which could be used in medical devices, underwater exploration and unmanned bomb detection and detonation. Researchers, led by UC San Diego materials science professors Joanna McKittrick and Marc Meyers, detailed their findings in the March 2013 issue of the journal Acta Biomaterialia.

“The study of natural materials can lead to the creation of new and unique materials and structures inspired by nature that are stronger, tougher, lighter and more flexible,” said McKittrick, a professor of materials science at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego.

Seahorses get their exceptional flexibility from the structure of their bony plates, which form its armor. The plates slide past each other. Here the seahorse’s skeleton, as well as the bony plates, are shown though a micro CT-scan of the animal.

“The tail is the seahorse’s lifeline,” because it allows the animal to anchor itself to corals or seaweed and hide from predators, said Michael Porter, a Ph.D. student in materials science at the Jacobs School of Engineering. “But no one has looked at the seahorse’s tail and bones as a source of armor.”

Most of the seahorse’s predators, including sea turtles, crabs and birds, capture the animals by crushing them. Engineers wanted to see if the plates in the tail act as an armor. Researchers took segments from seahorses’ tails and compressed them from different angles. They found that the tail could be compressed by nearly 50 percent of its original width before permanent damage occurred. That’s because the connective tissue between the tail’s bony plates and the tail muscles bore most of the load from the displacement. Even when the tail was compressed by as much as 60 percent, the seahorse’s spinal column was protected from permanent damage.

McKittrick and Meyers’ research group uses a unique technique that applies a series of chemicals to materials to strip them of either their protein components or their mineral components. That allows them to better study materials’ structures and properties. After treating the bony plates in the seahorse’s tail with the chemicals, they discovered that the percentage of minerals in the plates was relatively low—40 percent, compared to 65 percent in cow bone. The plates also contained 27 percent organic compounds—mostly proteins—and 33 percent water. The hardness of the plates varied. The ridges were hardest, likely for impact protection—about 40 percent harder than the plate’s grooves, which are porous and absorb energy from impacts.

“Everything in biology comes down to structures,” Porter said.

This image shows how joints are connected in the armored plates in the seahorse's tail.

The next step is to use 3D printing to create artificial bony plates, which would then be equipped with polymers that would act as muscles. The final goal is to build a robotic arm that would be a unique hybrid between hard and soft robotic devices. A flexible, yet robust robotic gripper could be used for medical devices, underwater exploration and unmanned bomb detection and detonation. The protected, flexible arm would be able to grasp a variety of objects of different shapes and sizes.

Courtesy of UC Berkeley

A new report on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in California warns of the risks of irreversible contamination of surface and groundwater near oil drilling sites, unless the technique is carefully monitored and controlled. The report Regulation of Hydraulic Fracturing in California: A Wastewater and Water Quality Perspective is an independent analysis produced by the UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE) and its new initiative, the Wheeler Institute for Water Law & Policy (Wheeler Institute).

Fracking is a technique that injects highly pressurized chemical fluids into underground rock to create cracks that release tightly bound oil or gas. It’s become a financial boon to fossil fuel companies nationwide, but it comes with inherent dangers.

The risks of fracking include toxic chemicals and known carcinogens that can seep into ground and surface waters, posing a threat to human health, aquatic life, and ecosystems. If the fracking wells and wastewater are mishandled, according to the report, the results may be harmful, costly, and impossible to reverse.

The general practice of fracking is not new—oil and gas producers have employed it in California for many decades. What is new, and potentially alarming, are projections of dramatically increased activity in California driven by advanced technologies and a demand for oil.

“The rapid spread of fracking has outstripped the ability of state agencies to effectively monitor and regulate it. Our recommendations include a greater investment in industry oversight, stronger regulations, and heightened inter-agency cooperation,” said Jayni Foley Hein, a report co-author and executive director of CLEE. “Regulators need to protect the public interest by demanding greater transparency and increased accountability across all fracking operations.”

The report coincides with a request by the state’s Department of Conservation for comment on its “discussion draft” regulations. The agency’s draft addresses elements such as well construction, testing, and storage and handling of wastewater. But it fails to adequately address risks to California’s water resources, according to Hein.

“The draft regulations are an important first step, but the state must widen its scope to protect public health and avoid any contamination of surface and groundwater,” Hein said.

In an unusual twist that is contrary to its role as a leader in environmental protection law, California lags behind other states on hydraulic fracturing regulation. Wyoming, Ohio, and other states set stronger standards for transparency, safety, and environmental stewardship. But, even in those cases, gaps in agency oversight may have contributed to water contamination and greater seismic activity.

California needs to raise the bar even higher, said co-author Michael Kiparsky, associate director of the Wheeler Institute.

“Part of the challenge of fracking is that the technology is constantly evolving,” said Kiparsky, an environmental scientist. “It’s essential that regulators not only understand the impacts of new technologies, but also study the lessons learned elsewhere to prevent an increased risk of earthquakes, water pollution, and toxic air emissions.”

Kiparsky said scientific uncertainty, due to a lack of peer-reviewed studies, drives the need for more research on fracking’s potential risks.

The report’s key recommendations include:

Advance notice and disclosure

• Operators should provide at least 30 days public advance notice of any hydraulic fracturing event.
• State agencies should develop a formal process for concerned citizens to respond to proposed fracking events in their communities.
• Tracking waste and disposal
• Agencies should require more extensive recordkeeping and reporting on disposal of wastewater.
• Agencies should consider using new techniques like tracers to identify and track potential contaminates.

Protecting underground sources of drinking water

• The state should strengthen its definition of underground sources of drinking water to match or exceed that of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Well abandonment

• California should develop a well closure and monitoring program, following EPA guidelines.

Seismic risk

• Underground injection should be prohibited near risky faults based on a seismic analysis.

Reuse and recycle

• The state legislature should consider tax exemptions to encourage recycling of fracking wastewater.

Treatment

• Regulations should explicitly prohibit direct discharge of wastewater from oil and gas operations to publicly-owned treatment works until the EPA issues pretreatment guidelines.
• The state should fund a comprehensive scientific review of the risks to California water supplies from fracking wastewater.

Courtesy of the University of Melbourne

The first continental-scale reconstruction of temperatures over the past 2000 years has found 20th Century warming was a global event that has produced the hottest global average temperature in 1400 years.

The study by 78 scientists from 24 countries was published in Nature Geoscience and combined Northern and Southern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions has highlighted the unusual nature of the 20th century warming.

The findings are in stark contrast to the Mediaeval Warm Period and Little Ice Age, which the study revealed did not occur simultaneously across the globe.

The international study led by the Past Global Changes (PAGES) network in Switzerland, included Australian scientists from the University of Melbourne, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science at the University of New South Wales and the Australian Antarctic Division.

Co-author of the paper from the University of New South Wales’ ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, Dr Steven Phipps said the striking feature about the sudden rise in 20th Century global average temperature is that it comes after an overall cooling trend that lasted more than a millennium.

“This work has transformed our understanding of temperatures over the past 2000 years,” he said

“This research shows that in just a century the Earth has reversed 1400 years of cooling.

“Armed with this information, future researchers will able to better understand the causes of climate variability at a regional and global level and help forecast the changes we can expect as our planet warms.”

To reconstruct 2000 years of temperature, the researchers used data from 511 individual proxy records. The majority of these records came from tree ring measurements but also included coral reefs, cave formations, ice cores, lake sediments and some historical documents.

The 2000-year temperature snapshot revealed by the researchers showed a long-term cooling trend before human influences began to become significant. This trend was primarily driven by natural cycles in the Earth’s orbit. At the same time there were also natural fluctuations caused by volcanic eruptions and variations in solar activity.

It is these natural variations, and in particular the changes in the Earth’s orbital cycle, that explain why some of the average global temperatures prior to AD 600 were as warm as today. However, none of these natural influences account for the dramatic global temperature rises of the 20th Century.

Palaeoclimatologist Professor Jonathan Overpeck from the University of Arizona, US who is a Visiting Fellow of the Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research at the University of Melbourne and Visiting Scientist with the ARC’s Centre of Excellence For Climate System Science, said the work was very exciting.

“The work has confirmed that there was no period of global warmth similar to that of the last 60 years in the preceding circa 2000 years, and adds to the evidence that the so-called Medieval Warm Period was quite different from the recent period of human-caused warming,” he said.

“This paper has provided confirmation that recent global and continental scale warming was very unusual in recent Earth history, and that this recent warming is driven mostly by human emissions of greenhouse gases.

“The evidence in the paper is overwhelming that Australia will continue to warm, and this means the region will likely also experience more periods of unusual dryness unless global warming is stopped.”

A juvenile North American red squirrel in the Yukon. (Photo: Ryan W. Taylor)

University of Alberta biologist Stan Boutin uses a simple analogy to describe a breakthrough research paper on the behaviour of squirrels.

“You try to prepare your kids for what they’ll face when they get out in the big, real world,” said Boutin. “Female squirrels in our study were doing that too for their offspring.”

Boutin is the senior investigator of a long-running squirrel research project in the Yukon and co-author of a paper showing that female red squirrels use stress hormones to give their offspring an edge in the competition for survival.

“A key challenge for squirrels is the population density of other squirrels and the food supply they all depend on,” said Boutin.

It’s well established that squirrels are very territorial, and identify and defend their living area with shrill chattering noises. Boutin says the level of communications between squirrels in an area of the forest is a cue by which females gauge future density and levels of competition to establish and maintain a territory.

Researchers in the field decided to test the squirrel’s reaction by manipulating these density cues. They played audio recordings of squirrel chatter, tricking female squirrels into reacting as if the number of competitors were suddenly heightened.

“What graduate student Ben Dantzer found is that the babies of females subjected to the audio recordings grew at a much more rapid rate,” said Boutin. “The mothers perceived a tough future for their offspring because density appeared higher, and babies that grow more quickly can sooner fend for themselves and outcompete other squirrels for valuable territories.”

Boutin admits to being surprised by what happened next.

Researchers found that the offspring’s growth kick-start was the result of the mothers producing a stress hormone.

The stress hormone cortisol was found at elevated levels in the droppings of female squirrels exposed to the audio recordings.

In another experiment, females received peanut butter treats laced with the stress hormone. “Sure enough,” said Boutin, “the offspring of those squirrels also grew at a faster rate than control females given just peanut butter.”

The researchers say their results fly in the face of long-held theories that stress in females only spells trouble such as lower birth rates, smaller litters and smaller babies.

Boutin describes the research team’s field work as elegant.

“The females are doing something for the future,” said Boutin. “It’s an adaptive and predictive response showing females are running the show in terms of preparing their offspring for what they’re going to face.”

The research was led by Ben Dantzer at Michigan State University. It was published April 18 in the journal Science Express.

Courtesy of The University of British Columbia News

Coral reef destroyed by blast fishing. Photo: Claudio Contreras Koob/iLCP

A rare double-barrier reef in the Philippines is facing grave threats and urgently needs increased protection, according to new photographic evidence released today by a team of marine conservationists and photographers organized by Project Seahorse, a partnership of the University of British Columbia and the Zoological Society of London.

One of only six double-barrier reefs in the world and home to nearly 200 threatened species, Danajon Bank is an evolutionary birthplace of fish and other species found all over the Pacific ocean. Currently, 500,000 people depend on it as a source of food and income. As a result, the region is coming under increasing human pressures, including overfishing.

“Project Seahorse has helped establish dozens of small marine protected areas in Danajon Bank over the past two decades,” says Amanda Vincent, Project Seahorse Director and Canada Research Chair in Marine Conservation at UBC. “But the world needs to see the state of this ‘centre of the centre’ of marine biodiversity and help establish a marine reserve for the region.”

The team from Expedition: Danajon Bank today unveiled first photographic proof of the region’s biodiversity and destruction. The expedition was a partnership with the International League of Conservation Photographers.

“I have photographed marine ecosystems all over the world and the Danajon Bank is one of most memorable and complex I have ever seen,” says Thomas P. Peschak, expedition photographer and winner of multiple BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year and World Press Photo awards.

“Amid the vast stretches of badly damaged habitat, you can see an incredible array of species still surviving,” says Peschak. “It gives you an idea of how vibrant and full of life the Danajon Bank once was, and how vibrant it could again be – with the right protection.”

A tiger-tail seahorse (Hippocampus comes) on Danajon Bank reef. Seahorse populations have declined in recent years. Photo: Luciano Candisani/iLCP

For more information, visit UBC News.

Courtesy of University of Alberta News

Leaving evidence in its wake: Artist's rendering of a carnivorous two-legged dinosaur swimming in a river, making claw marks as it touches bottom with its tiptoes. (Illustration: Nathan E. Rogers)

Dinosaurs are long extinct but their role in understanding life on Earth in the 21st century is vital, says a dinosaur researcher at the University of Alberta.

“Humans have been around for about 200,000 years; dinosaurs ruled for Earth for 160 million years,” says U of A paleontologist Scott Persons. “From dinosaurs we’ve learned about colour vision in some of today’s animals, and the ancient animals are linked to the evolution of other life we take for granted, like birds and flowering plants.”

Persons’ latest PhD research has produced some of the strongest evidence ever found that dinosaurs could paddle long distances. Persons arrived at that conclusion after examining unusual claw marks on fossilized rocks found in China.

Persons’ swimming-dinosaur study involved working with an international team of researchers in China’s Szechuan Province. Persons determined that a series of claw marks found in now well-known dinosaur tracks were left by the tips of a two-legged dinosaur’s feet.

“The dinosaur’s claw marks show it was swimming along in this river and just its tiptoes were touching bottom,” said Persons.

The claw marks cover a distance of 15 metres, which the researchers say is evidence of a dinosaur’s ability to swim with co-ordinated leg movements. Persons says the tracks were made by a carnivorous, two-legged dinosaur he estimates to have stood roughly one metre at the hip.

The research was conducted with a team of paleontologists on the ground in China, but Persons says he and his fellow U of A dinosaur hunters don’t have to go far afield to make important discoveries—one of the reasons he decided to study at the university.

“I don’t even have to leave the Edmonton city limits, and when I do, the fossil treasure trove in the Alberta badlands is less than a day’s leisurely drive away,” said Persons.

Persons and his colleagues from the Szechuan Province fossil site will continue to analyze the dinosaurs’ swimming prowess with hopes that it will yield evidence related to today’s animals. In the meantime, Persons offers a few links paleontology has already established between life on Earth 65 million years ago and today.

“Want to know why our pet dogs or livestock have limited colour vision? It’s because early mammals sacrificed cones for rods in their eyes so they could see better in the dark and better avoid dinosaurs.

“Want to understand the widespread success of modern flowering plants? Well, they evolved under the selective pressures of herbivorous dinosaurs.

“Want to know where birds come from? Dinosaurs.”

Persons was a co-author on the research, which was published April 8 in the journal Chinese Science Bulletin.

Darcy McKinley in Australia

Darcy McKinley Lester does not like baked beans and spaghetti on toast for breakfast, but she said that dish is hard to avoid when you study abroad in Australia.

The Mechanicsburg, Pa., native studied at the Australian National University in Canberra last spring. Now a senior studying forest science, Lester wanted to travel to Australia because she considers the ecosystem Down Under to be fascinating. “The Australian ecosystem is different from anywhere else in the world,” she said.

“Many of Australia’s plants and animals are truly unique, and the country houses one of the most inhospitable habitats, the Outback,” she said.

“I also wanted to study at the Australian National University because it is one of the best schools in Australia, and it has a great forestry program. However, it is a little different from Penn State.”

The lectures all are recorded, so it is possible for a student to have several classes at the same time, go to one, then listen to the other online and stay on top of the work, she noted.

“My classes were a lot more gender-equal than at Penn State,” she said. “Forestry classes in the states tend to have more men than women, so it was nice to have more girls to talk to.”

Before starting her semester, Lester traveled through Australia for two weeks and saw a diversified group of animals, ranging from koalas to kangaroos.

“My friends there took me many places I wouldn’t have thought to go, and they tolerated my ridiculous excitement every time I saw a kangaroo, which was pretty much every day in Canberra,” she said.

It was a trip Lester will not soon forget. “I loved my classes, I loved the university and I loved my new friends. Australia truly is an amazing, beautiful and welcoming country.”

Learn more about the forest science major.

Courtesy of Arizona State University News

Governet, innovators of technology solutions for higher education institutions, announced today that Arizona State University, renowned for its academic leadership and achievements in sustainability, will adopt CurricUNET Meta, the award-winning online curriculum management system as part of its ongoing effort to reduce paper consumption and save resources.

Currently serving and connecting more than 550 colleges and universities via the Worldwide Curriculum Network, CurricUNET Meta will enable ASU to modernize, automate and streamline its curricular management while improving connectivity and integrating sustainable, paperless practices in all major curriculum processing functions throughout its six-campus system.

“Arizona State University is famous for its prolific leadership in technology, innovation and sustainability, and is setting a new ‘Gold Standard’ for American universities,” said George Tamas, Governet’s CEO. In recognition of its sustainability achievements, ASU has received a “STARS Gold” rating from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Education.

“Having demonstrated cutting-edge innovations in green technology, renewable energy, environmental conservation and climate science, ASU is among the most highly regarded research universities in the country,” he added. “It is gratifying that CurricUNET Meta has been selected as the technology that will move the institution toward more sustainable curriculum practices.”

Since 2001, Governet has been setting standards for best practices in curriculum management. Higher education institutions subscribing to CurricUNET’s suite of automation services have reported significant savings in terms of financial, human and natural resources, an advantage that is aligned with ASU’s Sustainability Plan.

Over the course of the next several months, Governet’s technology team will be configuring ASU’s CurricUNET Meta system, which will automate curriculum processes that streamline development, management, workflow, approvals and dissemination of course and program data across all ASU campuses. By adopting CurricUNET Meta, ASU expects to significantly reduce its use of natural, human and financial resources across the board.

“The opportunity to redesign and build our academic processes, from new curricular developments through course and catalog approvals, around a single system is very exciting,” said Maria T. Allison, ASU executive vice provost for Academic Affairs and graduate dean. “To date so much of the work requires a huge amount of human resource to handle electronic routing and archiving of word documents and PDF curricular documents. CurricUNET will not only allow ASU to work more efficiently with transparent and timely communication with the academic units, but it will also allow for historical archiving of all actions relevant to curricular and course approvals. Additionally, its benefits align perfectly with ASU’s long-term sustainability goals.”

As of 2013, ASU’s student enrollment reached more than 73,000 students, making it the largest student body in the United States. ASU students can choose from over 12,000 courses scheduled yearly in more than 850 academic programs offered at four campus locations in the Phoenix area as well as through ASU Online.

Each year, ASU develops an average of 475 new courses to support new and existing programs. By adopting CurricUNET, ASU will gain access to the rapidly growing Worldwide Curriculum Network. Currently, CurricUNET’s member institutions have access to more than 600,000 courses and 47,000 degree path programs stored in CurricUNET’s global database.

“ASU’s academic achievement and credibility can be measured by the quality of educational offerings it provides,” noted Tamas. “In that regard, its presence in CurricUNET’s Worldwide Curriculum Network will benefit other member institutions as much as ASU will benefit by gaining access to our growing database.”

The Worth of Water from ASU Research on Vimeo.

The story of the American West is a story of water, and of our Herculean efforts to capture and spread that water across an arid landscape. As our western cities continue to grow, however, we need to find ways to curb our thirst. In this mini-documentary, ASU researchers talk about the West’s water history, our current situation, and some social and technological options for the future.

Written, produced and edited by Kirk Davis

Courtesy of Arizona State University News
By Skip Derra

Conversion of large swaths of Brazilian land for sugar plantations will help the country meet its needs for producing cane-derived ethanol, but it also could lead to important regional climate effects, according to a team of researchers from Arizona State University, Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science.

Conversion of large swaths of Brazilian land for sugar plantations could lead to important regional climate effects, according to a team of researchers. Photo by: Wikimedia Commons

The team found that anticipated conversion to sugarcane plantations could lead to a 1 degree Celsius decrease in temperature during the growing season, to be followed by a 1 degree Celsius increase after harvest.

“When averaged over the entire year, there appears to be little effect on temperature,” said Matei Georgescu, an assistant professor in ASU’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, a senior sustainability scientist in the Global Institute of Sustainability, and lead author of the paper. “However, the temperature fluctuation between the peak of the growing season, when cooling occurs relative to the prior landscape, and crop harvest, when warming occurs compared to the previous landscape, of about 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is considerable.”

The researchers published their findings March 7 in the early online edition of Geophysical Research Letters. Co-authors with Georgescu are David Lobell of Stanford University; Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science (both located in Stanford, Calif.); and Alex Mahalov, the Wilhoit Foundation Dean’s Distinguished Professor in the School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, an academic unit of ASU’s College of LIberal Arts and Sciences.

Countries worldwide are looking to cut their dependence on fossil fuels and bioethanol, and other biofuels are attractive alternatives. In Brazil, the second-largest global producer and consumer of bioethanol, this has led to a boom in sugarcane production.

Based on new laws and trade agreements, Brazil’s production of sugarcane-derived ethanol is expected to increase tenfold over the next decade, with considerable land being converted for growing sugarcane. Much of this expansion is expected to come at a loss of some of the country’s native cerrado lands (i.e., tropical savannas of Brazil).

Biofuels are attractive because they reduce the amount of carbon pumped into the atmosphere and mitigate global climate change, but for Brazil the shifting agricultural activity could have direct consequences on its climate by changing the landscape’s physical properties.

The researchers used multi-year regional climate model simulations to calculate the potential for local changes in temperature and precipitation patterns. Based largely on sugarcane having a higher albedo (reflectivity) compared to the existing vegetation, and the fact that the crop will undergo an annual harvest while the savanna does not, the researchers found that the shift to sugar plantations will lead to a strong seasonal temperature fluctuation.

They also found that the sugarcane harvest should lead to a net annual drop in the transfer of water from the land to the atmosphere, referred to as evapotranspiration (ET).

“When harvest occurs, the plant’s ability to transfer water from its extensive root system to the atmosphere is reduced,” said Georgescu. “As the crop matures during the growing season, ET is once again brought back to levels prior to sugarcane conversion. Overall, we find the annually averaged ET reduction is about 0.3 millimeters per day.”

The authors suggest that such conditions could cause a reduction in regional precipitation, though no such decrease was found to be statistically significant in the modeling study.

“We do notice a decrease in evapotranspiration and we are confident in these impacts,” Georgescu explained. “But there is much more uncertainty in regards to precipitation and more work is required in this area.”