http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. While policymakers across of the globe are relying on environmental restoration projects to fuel emerging market-based environmental programs, an article in the July 31 edition of Science by two noted ecologists warns that these programs still lack the scientific certainty needed to ensure that restoration projects deliver the environmental improvements being marketed. http://www.physorg.com/news168183657.html Space & Earth Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:41:37 EST news168183657 Scientists have joined forces in a groundbreaking assessment on the status of marine fisheries and ecosystems. The two-year study, led by Boris Worm of Dalhousie University and Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington and including an international team of 19 co-authors, shows that steps taken to curb overfishing are beginning to succeed in five of the ten large marine ecosystems that they examined. The paper, which appears in the July 31 issue of the journal Science, provides new hope for rebuilding troubled fisheries. http://www.physorg.com/news168183004.html Space & Earth Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:32:54 EST news168183004 Mounting evidence that human activity is changing the world's oceans in profound and damaging ways is outlined in a new scientific discussion paper released today. http://www.physorg.com/news168085384.html Space & Earth Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:24:40 EST news168085384 Governments must act urgently to halt loss of habitats and invading species that are posing major threats to biodiversity and causing species extinctions across Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, according to a landmark new study. http://www.physorg.com/news167996768.html Biology Tue, 28 Jul 2009 10:46:53 EST news167996768 A rare April freeze in 2007 provided researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory with further evidence that climate change could have negative effects on stream and forest ecosystems. http://www.physorg.com/news167579953.html Space & Earth Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:20:02 EST news167579953 A reduction of as little as five per cent in fisheries catch could result in as much as 30 per cent of the British Columbia coastal ecosystems being protected from overfishing, according to a new study from the UBC Fisheries Centre. http://www.physorg.com/news167476630.html Space & Earth Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:18:49 EST news167476630 Researchers are proposing in a new report that a major experiment be conducted to reintroduce wolves to a test site in the Scottish Highlands, to help control the populations and behavior of red deer that in the past 250 years have changed the whole nature of large ecosystems. http://www.physorg.com/news167311315.html Biology Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:23:09 EST news167311315 (PhysOrg.com) -- Wolves have caused elk in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to change their behavior and foraging habits so much so that herds are having fewer calves, mainly due to changes in their nutrition, according to a study published this week by Montana State University researchers. http://www.physorg.com/news166894603.html Biology Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:56:25 EST news166894603 The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) today published a final rule in the Federal Register prohibiting the harvesting of krill in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) off the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington. The rule goes into effect on August 12, 2009. Krill are a small shrimp-like crustacean and a key source of nutrition in the marine food web. http://www.physorg.com/news166720076.html Biology Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:40:02 EST news166720076 (AP) -- A fast-growing kelp from the Far East has spread along the California coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco Bay, worrying marine scientists and outpacing eradication efforts. http://www.physorg.com/news166461000.html Space & Earth Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:10:29 EST news166461000 (Santa Barbara, Calif.) -- Coastal marine ecosystems are at risk worldwide as a result of human activities, according to scientists at UC Santa Barbara who have recently published a study in the Journal of Conservation Letters. The authors have performed the first integrated analysis of all coastal areas of the world. http://www.physorg.com/news166365764.html Space & Earth Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:43:23 EST news166365764 Climate change is rapidly expanding the size of the world's tropical zone, threatening to bring disease and drought to heavily populated areas, an Australian study has found. http://www.physorg.com/news166081900.html Space & Earth Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:52:09 EST news166081900 More than 40 percent of a sample of amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds that are restricted to mangrove ecosystems are globally threatened with extinction, according to an assessment published in the July/August issue of BioScience. http://www.physorg.com/news165643703.html Biology Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:09:32 EST news165643703 (PhysOrg.com) -- An international team of researchers is surveying the Mid-Atlantic Ridge halfway between Iceland and the Azores to determine its biodiversity and perhaps discover new species and clues to deep-sea food webs. The project is part of a 16-nation effort to determine if the underwater mountain chain in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean has its own distinct animal communities. http://www.physorg.com/news165590343.html Space & Earth Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:19:43 EST news165590343 An international team of scientists warns that accelerating losses of seagrasses across the globe threaten the immediate health and long-term sustainability of coastal ecosystems. The team has compiled and analyzed the first comprehensive global assessment of seagrass observations and found that 58 percent of world's seagrass meadows are currently declining. http://www.physorg.com/news165515435.html Space & Earth Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:32:02 EST news165515435 The recent increase in area burned by wildfires in the Western United States is a product not of higher temperatures or longer fire seasons alone, but a complex relationship between climate and fuels that varies among different ecosystems, according to a study conducted by U.S. Forest Service and university scientists. The study is the most detailed examination of wildfire in the United States to date and appears in the current issue of the journal Ecological Applications. http://www.physorg.com/news165228179.html Space & Earth Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:43:32 EST news165228179 According to the most recent report on the status of the world's fisheries by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, fisheries supply at least 15% of the animal protein consumed by humans, provide direct and indirect employment for nearly 200 million people worldwide and generate $US85 billion annually. This same report indicates that 28% of the world's fisheries stocks are currently being overexploited or have collapsed and 52% are fully exploited. http://www.physorg.com/news164962399.html Biology Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:54:15 EST news164962399 DNA might be the blueprint for living things, but proteins are the builders. Researchers trying to understand how and which proteins work together have developed a new crosslinking tool that is small and unobtrusive enough to use in live cells. Using the new tool, the scientists have discovered new details about a well-studied complex of proteins known as RNA polymerase. The results suggest the method might uncover collaborations between proteins that are too brief for other techniques to pinpoint. http://www.physorg.com/news164294615.html Biology Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:24:30 EST news164294615 Failing to see the forest for the trees may be causing us to overlook the declining health of Wisconsin's forest ecosystems. http://www.physorg.com/news163779836.html Biology Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:24:21 EST news163779836 Early action could be crucial to addressing the problem of major increases in jellyfish numbers, which appears to be the result of human activities. http://www.physorg.com/news163691961.html Biology Mon, 08 Jun 2009 15:00:17 EST news163691961 Researchers from Oregon State University, NASA and other organizations said today that they have succeeded for the first time in measuring the physiology of marine phytoplankton through satellite measurements of its fluorescence - an accomplishment that had been elusive for years. http://www.physorg.com/news162738187.html Space & Earth Thu, 28 May 2009 14:03:34 EST news162738187 Most polluted or damaged ecosystems worldwide can recover within a lifetime if societies commit to their cleanup or restoration, according to an analysis of 240 independent studies by researchers at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. Their findings will appear in the June edition of the journal PLoS ONE. http://www.physorg.com/news162640194.html Space & Earth Wed, 27 May 2009 10:52:53 EST news162640194 Overfishing and disease have decimated shellfish populations in many of the world's temperate estuarine and coastal ecosystems. Smithsonian scientists, led by Whitman Miller, ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md., have discovered another serious threat to these valuable filter feeders -rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide that contribute to the acidification of open ocean, coastal and estuarine waters. Their findings are being published in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE, May 27. http://www.physorg.com/news162625314.html Space & Earth Wed, 27 May 2009 06:42:21 EST news162625314 As climate change causes temperatures to increase in Hawaii's mountains, deadly non-native bird diseases will likely also creep up the mountains, invading most of the last disease-free refuges for honeycreepers - a group of endangered and remarkable birds. http://www.physorg.com/news162562227.html Biology Tue, 26 May 2009 13:11:09 EST news162562227 (PhysOrg.com) -- Experts say that more than half of the world's coral reefs could disappear in the next 50 years, in large part because of higher ocean temperatures caused by climate change. But now Stanford University scientists have found evidence that some coral reefs are adapting and may actually survive global warming. http://www.physorg.com/news162033865.html Biology Wed, 20 May 2009 10:29:54 EST news162033865 Excess phosphorus and nitrogen produced by human activities on neighboring land is making its way into our coastal waters and degrading both water quality and aquatic life. Although historically the priority has been to control phosphorus, Professor Hans Paerl, from the University of North Carolina in the US, argues that nitrogen imbalance is equally damaging. He adds that a dual nutrient strategy - tackling both phosphorus and nitrogen surplus - is necessary to manage effectively this nutrient over-enrichment and resulting habitat degradation of coastal waters in the long-term. His perspective is published online in Springer's journal Estuaries and Coasts. http://www.physorg.com/news161871031.html Space & Earth Mon, 18 May 2009 13:11:22 EST news161871031 More than 400 leading scientists from nearly two-dozen countries have signed a consensus statement on the major threats facing the Pacific Ocean. The threats identified as the most serious and pervasive include overfishing, pollution, habitat destruction and climate change. http://www.physorg.com/news161365434.html Space & Earth Tue, 12 May 2009 16:44:21 EST news161365434 An international team of scientists has proposed a set of basic rules to help save the world's imperiled coral reefs from ultimate destruction. http://www.physorg.com/news161256177.html Space & Earth Mon, 11 May 2009 10:23:32 EST news161256177 The lesson from Australia's Great Barrier Reef is that we have to protect its biodiversity - because biodiversity in turn protects us. http://www.physorg.com/news160924011.html Space & Earth Thu, 07 May 2009 14:07:38 EST news160924011 April 27, 2009 - A new study appearing in Restoration Ecology describes a novel technique for reattaching large sponges that have been dislodged from coral reefs. The findings could be generally applied to the restoration of other large sponge species removed by human activities or storm events. http://www.physorg.com/news160061112.html Biology Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:25:44 EST news160061112