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. (PhysOrg.com) -- The area affected by the Montara oil spill off the Kimberley coast contains a huge amount of marine life, including some of the most iconic and threatened species in the ocean, according to a marine wildlife survey conducted by WWF. http://www.physorg.com/news175521536.html Biology Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:40:01 EST news175521536 Five giant non-native snake species would pose high risks to the health of ecosystems in the United States should they become established here, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report released today. http://www.physorg.com/news174665310.html Biology Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:00:02 EST news174665310 (PhysOrg.com) -- New studies suggest a 20 foot snake, the African rock python, is making its home in Florida and could soon invade the Everglades National Park. http://www.physorg.com/news172743431.html Biology Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:20:03 EST news172743431 While studying a way to more safely and effectively collect snake venom, University of Florida researchers have noticed the venom delivered by an isolated population of Florida cottonmouth snakes may be changing in response to their diet. http://www.physorg.com/news172318754.html Biology Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:20:19 EST news172318754 In a case closely followed by environmental and business interests, a rewritten plan for restoring endangered and threatened wild salmon runs on the Columbia and Snake rivers in Washington state and Idaho includes studying the possibility of breaching four major hydroelectric dams if other steps don't reverse the decline. http://www.physorg.com/news172257798.html Biology Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:01 EST news172257798 If the future warming trends that scientists have projected are realized, one of the country's most aggressive exotic plants will have the potential to invade more U.S. land area, according to a new study published in the current issue of the journal Invasive Plant Science and Management. The study found that tamarisk -prevalent today in some parts of the region, but generally limited to warm and dry environments -could expand its range into currently uninvaded areas. http://www.physorg.com/news172246709.html Biology Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:40:05 EST news172246709 The brains of the snake robots are still no more advanced than that of a one-year-old, but scientists at SINTEF (Norway) want to bring them up to the level of a teenager. At least. http://www.physorg.com/news172218212.html Electronics Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:40:03 EST news172218212 Reptiles are not known to be the most social of creatures. But when it comes to laying eggs, female reptiles can be remarkably communal, often laying their eggs in the nests of other females. New research in the September issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology suggests that this curiously out-of-character behavior is far more common in reptiles than was previously thought. http://www.physorg.com/news171193389.html Biology Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:10:01 EST news171193389 In a deadly game of heads or tails venomous sea snakes in the Pacific and Indian Oceans deceive their predators into believing they have two heads, claims research published today in Marine Ecology. http://www.physorg.com/news168764583.html Biology Thu, 06 Aug 2009 08:03:59 EST news168764583 (PhysOrg.com) -- Snakes coil up when they sense danger. Some snakes curl up in order to spring into action and strike. Snakes may also coil to preserve body heat, and this warming behavior could affect our understanding of ancient climates. http://www.physorg.com/news168536616.html Other Sciences Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:44:48 EST news168536616 (AP) -- One by one, seven slithering Burmese pythons were dumped into a snake pit surrounded by 400 feet of reinforced fence at the Savannah River Ecology Lab in South Carolina. http://www.physorg.com/news165079638.html Biology Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:00:01 EST news165079638 Forget the old folk tales about snakes hypnotizing their prey. The tentacled snake from South East Asia has developed a more effective technique. The small water snake has found a way to startle its prey so that the fish turn toward the snake's head to flee instead of turning away. In addition, the fish's reaction is so predictable that the snake actually aims its strike at the position where the fish's head will be instead of tracking its actual movement. http://www.physorg.com/news164557099.html Biology Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:40:01 EST news164557099 (AP) -- Ten years ago the government set out to test herbal and other alternative health remedies to find the ones that work. After spending $2.5 billion, the disappointing answer seems to be that almost none of them do. http://www.physorg.com/news163859117.html Medicine & Health Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:26:26 EST news163859117 The labelling for the first homoeopathic product to get a licence from the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) should be illegal, because they breach Unfair Trading regulations, argues a senior scientist today. http://www.physorg.com/news163822191.html Medicine & Health Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:11:00 EST news163822191 The threat of snakes gave primates superior vision and large brains -- and fueled a critical aspect of human evolution, UC Davis anthropology professor Lynne Isbell argues in a new book. http://www.physorg.com/news160389288.html Biology Fri, 01 May 2009 09:35:46 EST news160389288 Axel Barlow's paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B on saw-scaled vipers shows that snakes which have evolved to feed on scorpions have also evolved venom which is more lethal to scorpions, demonstrating that changes in diet have been an important factor in snake venom evolution. http://www.physorg.com/news158422449.html Biology Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:15:00 EST news158422449 Conserving Australia's most endangered snake might mean lighting more bush fires, ecologists have proposed. http://www.physorg.com/news157105645.html Biology Tue, 24 Mar 2009 09:28:37 EST news157105645 Opened in September as a world "first" in producing electricity from waves, a pioneering installation here is dead in the water having functioned for only a few weeks in a stormy process of research and development. http://www.physorg.com/news157098213.html Technology Tue, 24 Mar 2009 07:24:18 EST news157098213 Scientists have recovered fossils of a 60-million-year-old South American snake whose length and weight might make today's anacondas and reticulated pythons seem a bit cuter and more cuddly. http://www.physorg.com/news152969011.html Other Sciences Wed, 04 Feb 2009 11:24:21 EST news152969011 In the last 60 years, brown tree snakes have become the embodiment of the bad things that can happen when invasive species are introduced in places where they have few predators. Unchecked for many years, the snakes caused the extinction of nearly every native bird species on the Pacific island of Guam. http://www.physorg.com/news137389145.html Biology Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:39:05 EST news137389145 (PhysOrg.com) -- The world's smallest species of snake, with adults averaging just under four inches in length, has been identified on the Caribbean island of Barbados. The species -- which is as thin as a spaghetti noodle and small enough to rest comfortably on a U.S. quarter --was discovered by Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Penn State. Hedges and his colleagues also are the discoverers of the world's smallest frog and lizard species, which too were found on Caribbean islands. The most recent discovery will be published on 4 August 2008 in the journal Zootaxa. http://www.physorg.com/news136974112.html Biology Sun, 03 Aug 2008 09:21:52 EST news136974112