Whale found dead in Wash. had swallowed golf ball

Whale found dead in Wash. had swallowed golf ball - A gray whale found dead in Washington state's Puget Sound had been feeding on shrimp and also had some debris, including a golf ball, in its stomach, but scientists don't know what killed the animal.

The stomach examination Monday found the shrimp, woody debris, algae, pieces of rope and plastic, the golf ball and some flat spongy material, NOAA Fisheries said.

The garbage was minimal and not the cause of death, which remains under investigation with tissue tests, spokesman Brian Gorman said. It's common for whales to pick up debris near urban areas because they are filter feeders. There were no signs of trauma or entanglement on the whale, he said.

The carcass was spotted Sunday on the west side of Camano Island and towed to a secure location at the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, about 50 miles north of Seattle for the necropsy by biologists and volunteers from Cascadia Research, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Central Puget Sound Marine Mammal Stranding Network.

The skeleton of the 37-foot sub adult male will be cleaned and sent to the Smithsonian Institution.

"We don't get these that often that are the right size and in good shape," Gorman said Tuesday.

A representative of the Smithsonian will help oversee the cleaning, said Kristin Wilkinson, marine mammal stranding coordinator for the Northwest region with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Whale skeletons, baleen and other marine mammal bones or seal and sea lion pelts, are commonly made available to schools or institutions for education and outreach, she said.

Even with results of tests for contaminants and diseases, the cause of the Camano whale's death may never be known, Wilkinson said.

"Sometimes we're able to put pieces of the puzzle together and other times those samples don't shed any light on cause of death," she said.

The Camano whale's death is unusual because the body was in good condition with oily blubber. The two to 10 gray whales that typically die each year in Washington waters usually are in poor health or have lost weight.

"It's puzzling, there's no apparent cause of death," said John Calambokidis of Olympia-based Cascadia Research.

"It doesn't seem to be the typically emaciated animal we normally see," said Calambokidis, who often responds but was not with the Cascadia Research group that helped with the Camano Island whale.

He noted there was less debris in the whale's stomach than in a whale that was found dead off west Seattle in April 2010. Its stomach contents included plastic bags and a pair of sweat pants. That whale's skeleton was preserved and is now on display at Highline Community College's Marine Science and Technology Center in Des Moines.

The Camano whale is the third stranded gray whale in Washington so far this year and the first in inland waters, NOAA Fisheries said. The gray whales most often die during the spring months during the migration from their breeding grounds off Baja California, Mexico, to feeding grounds in the Bering Sea, off Alaska.

Gray whales can pick up debris because of the way they feed, scooping up sediment from the sea floor and filtering it through baleen. They eat ghost shrimp in Washington waters, Wilkinson said.

"Whatever trash and debris sitting on the sea floor in that sediment is trapped inside the mouth, and it will then swallow," she said. ( Associated Press )

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Global Warming Makes Elephant Seals Dive Deeper

Global Warming Makes Elephant Seals Dive Deeper, Study Suggests - Lumbering elephant seals in Antarctica seem to be taking the heat from global warming, as scientists have found the mammals must dive to deeper than normal depths in warmer seas to snag food. The deeper dives may also mean less time to get food, the researchers say.

The southern elephant seals from Marion Island in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica are some of the most extreme divers, spending 65 percent of their time deeper than about 330 feet (100 meters), with a maximum diving depth of 6,560 feet (2,000 meters). Southern elephant seals are also the largest of the seals, with males reaching up to 22 feet (6.7 m) long and weighing some 11,000 pounds.

Their dive depth, it seems, depends on the prey the elephant seals are searching for. And as their watery world warms, the researchers found, the squid and fish that are usually in waters above 3,280 feet (1,000 m) are forced to deeper waters.

The elephant seals, to get their meals, must follow.

"This prey is moving down to greater depths presumably due to the increasing water temperatures and this is forcing the seals to follow them," researcher Horst Bornemann from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research said in a statement.

Bornemann and his colleagues, including seal researchers from the Mammal Research Institute in South Africa, attached fist-size satellite transmitters to the heads of more than 30 elephant seals. The transmitters measured dive depth, water temperature and salt levels in the water every time the seals took a dive. When an elephant seal resurfaced for air, that information was sent via satellite to research institutions involved.

The data showed the elephant seals made deeper dives in warmer water so that they ultimately had less time to actually search for food, the researchers said.

"There appears to be substantial variation between individual seals in depths dived to at different temperatures," study researcher Trevor McIntyre of the Mammal Research Institute told LiveScience. Their models suggest that female elephant seals dive between 30 and 33 feet (9 and 10 meters) deeper for every 1.8 degree Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) increase in temperature. "However, a number of individual seals displayed much stronger relationships, diving more than 100 meters deeper per 1 degree Celsius increase in water temperature," McIntyre said.

The change in depth may mean the animals find less food. "We therefore assume that the animals will find less prey in warmer water masses," researcher Joachim Plötz of the Alfred Wegener Institute said in a statement.

To figure out if the elephant seals are indeed nabbing less prey, the researchers plan to return to Marian Island in April and attach jaw-movement sensors to the seals.

"So far, we can only derive from the dive profile whether an elephant seal was probably following a fish swarm," Plötz said. "With this new measuring device we [can] learn whether he has actually eaten."

The researchers don't know whether this colony of elephant seals will be able to adapt to the warming of the ocean. They see two options for the colony in the future: The seals can extend their hunting grounds to the colder water masses of the Antarctic or they must dive even deeper. However, the team notes, the Marion elephant seals are already close to reaching their physiological limits in diving depth. ( LiveScience.com )

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Do lazy mammals live longer?

Do lazy mammals live longer? - Small furry mammals partial to a daily dose of hibernation in winter are probably extending their lifespan at the same time, according to a study published Wednesday.

Experiments with Djugarian hamsters native to Siberia showed that when the tiny rodents temporarily lower their metabolism and body temperatures, a state called torpor, it stops and even reverses a natural breakdown of chromosomes linked to ageing.

Previous studies had hinted at a causal link between hibernation and longevity, but this is the first one to show the biological mechanism that may account for it.

In the laboratory, researchers led by Christopher Turbill of the Institute for Wildlife Ecology in Vienna created an artificial environment for 25 adult virgin female hamsters, offering only eight hours of light per day.

The faux-winter conditions were designed to trigger a hibernation response, according to the study, published Wednesday by the British Royal Society in the journal Biology Letters.

Small furry mammals partial to a daily dose of hibernation in winter are probably extending their lifespan at the same time, according to a study published Wednesday

For 180 days, half the rodents basked in a relatively balmy 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit), while the others half lived in a chillier clime, about 9.0 C (48 F). Both groups enjoyed all-you-can-eat buffet.

In measuring the results, the researchers distinguished between shallow torpor, when body temperature dipped below 29 C (84 F), and deep torpor, when temperature dropped under 25 C (77 C), nearly 10 C (18 F) below normal.

They inserted micro-transponders under the animals' skin to keep track of the changes.

Turbill and colleagues suspected that the energy-saving, coma-like state had an impact on telomeres, which sit like tiny caps on the ends of chromosomes, protecting the precious strands of genetic code.

Telomeres and telomerase, the enzyme that control them, are a key agent in ageing and longevity.

Every time a cell divides, the telomeres get worn down a little bit. The enzyme's job is to partially rebuild them. Eventually, when the telomeres are worn beyond repair, cell death is triggered.

Australian-American cell biologist Elizabeth Blackburn, who shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine for her work in the field, likened telomeres to the "tips of shoelaces" -- lose the little plastic end, and the lace starts to fray.

For the hamsters, daily torpor, which typically lasted several hours, somehow acted to preserve these protective tips and even to restore them, the study found.

"This effect was stronger in hamsters using deep torpor, which was primarily in the cold," Turbill said in an email exchange.

Interestingly, these same hamsters also expended more energy, reflected in their higher food intake.

The findings, he added, "are probably applicable to all animals that use some form or torpor or hibernation."

That, alas, does not include humans.

"Torpor and sleep are completely different -- and possibly incompatible -- states," Turbill said. Humans do not significantly lower their body temperature when sleeping, nor is there a comparable slowdown in metabolic rate.

"So far, science has not come close to finding a way for humans to enter some form of hibernation." ( AFP )

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Spectacular discoveries in New Guinea

Spectacular discoveries in New Guinea - A frog with fangs, a blind snake and a round-headed dolphin are among more than 1,000 new species recently found on the incredible Melanesian island of New Guinea, environment group WWF said.

Scientists made the astounding discoveries, which also included a river shark and dozens of butterflies, on New Guinea at a rate of two a week from 1998 to 2008, WWF said in a new report on the island's natural habitat.

"This report shows that New Guinea's forests and rivers are among the richest and most biodiverse in the world," said WWF's Western Melanesia programme representative, Neil Stronach.

New Guinea, divided between Indonesia in the west and Papua New Guinea to the east, has one of the world's least spoilt and most stunning ecosystems.

Its rainforests are the third biggest in the world after the Amazon and the Congo, and, while the island covers just 0.5 per cent of the Earth's landmass, it contains up to eight percent of the world's species, according to WWF.

This photo provided by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on June 27, shows a large green tree-dwelling frog, Litoria dux, that was discovered on the northern side of the Huon Peninsula. A frog with fangs, a blind snake and a snub-nosed dolphin are among the more than 1,000 new species recently found on the incredible Melanesian island of New Guinea, according to WWF

This photo provided by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on June 27, shows a snub-finned dolphin, Orcaella Heinsohni, in an undisclosed location in the waters south of Papua New Guinea. A frog with fangs, a blind snake and a snub-nosed dolphin are among the more than 1,000 new species recently found on the incredible Melanesian island of New Guinea, according to WWF

What was previously known about New Guinea's biodiversity was already breathtaking, such as the world's biggest butterfly -- with a 30-centimetre (12-inch) wingspan -- and giant rats that can grow up to a metre long.

Scientists believe that one square kilometre (247 acres) of the island's lowland rainforest may contain as many as 150 bird species, according to WWF.

The 1,060 species confirmed by scientists as new discoveries between 1998 and 2008 are believed to have only scratched the surface of New Guinea's dazzling ecosystems.

"Such is the extent of New Guinea's biodiversity that new discoveries are commonplace even today," WWF said in its report, titled "Final Frontier: Newly Discovered Species of New Guinea".

One of the most notable finds documented in the WWF report was a round-headed and snub-finned dolphin, which swims in protected, shallow coastal waters near rivers and creek mouths.

Discovered in 2005 in Papua New Guinea, it was the first new dolphin species recorded anywhere in the world in three decades, and is now known to also exist in Australia, WWF said.

Another of the 12 mammals found over the decade was an anteater named in honour of British naturalist Sir David Attenborough, Sir David's Long-beaked Echinda or, scientifically, Zaglossus attenboroughi.

One of the 134 frogs discovered was dubbed Litoria sauroni because its striking red and black spotted eyes reminded scientists of the evil character Sauron in the "Lord of the Rings" movies.

Another new frog was notable because of its tiny size -- just one centimetre in length, while one had vampire-like fangs.

Nine snail species, some so colourful as to be almost unrecognisable from the backyard-garden-type variety, were among the 580 new invertebrates discovered.

One of the snails was bright yellow, while another was green and yellow.

Among the other new invertebrates was a brightly coloured apricot crayfish, part of the family of creatures called "yabbies" in Australia and some other parts of the world, which was nine to 12 centimetres long

New fish totalled 71, with a kaleidoscope of colours, including one in the coral reefs of Milne Bay in Papua New Guinea that thrilled scientists with its dazzling blue hue.

WWF said the most extraordinary freshwater discovery was a 2.5-metre-long river shark found in Papua New Guinea that has since also been located in northern Australia.

Of the 43 reptiles discovered, one could claim to be the most innocuous snake in the world -- it was just 12-14 centimetres long, had scales over its eyes so that it could not see, could not bite and had no venom.

But WWF said the excitement of all the new discoveries had been tempered by the fact that, like in the Amazon and Borneo rainforests, human actions were destroying New Guinea's natural habitat at an "alarming rate".

Some of the growing threats it listed were illegal and unsustainable logging, forest conversion for palm oil plantations, mining, road construction and unsustainable fishing.

"These environmental threats are exacerbated by global climate change which is increasing the number of fires within forests and savannas, erosion, and seawater incursion into coastal habitats," WWF said. ( AFP )

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Inflatable Shark Among 300 New Species Discovered in Philippines

Inflatable Shark Among 300 New Species Discovered in Philippines - A treasure trove of hundreds of new species may have been discovered in the Philippines, including a bizarre sea star that feeds exclusively on sunken driftwood and a deep-sea, shrimp-eating shark that swells up to scare off other predators.

Scientists braved leeches and a host of venomous creatures from the mountains to the sea to uncover more than 300 species that are likely new to science. These findings include dozens of new insects and spiders, more than 50 colorful new sea slugs and a number of deep-sea armored corals "which protect themselves against predatory nibbles from fish by growing large, spiky plates," said researcher Terrence Gosliner, dean of science and research collections at the California Academy of Sciences and leader of the 2011 Philippine Biodiversity Expedition.

Researchers at the California Academy of Sciences and their colleagues from the University of the Philippines and the National Museum of the Philippines conducted a 42-day expedition this past spring to survey Luzon Island, the largest island in the Philippine archipelago, as well as its surrounding waters.

These swell sharks can make like giants by inflating their bellies with water. View more images on LiveScience.com. (Photo credit: Stephanie Stone, California Academy of Sciences)

A new species of Nembrotha nudibranch (also known as a sea slug) that was discovered during the California Academy of Sciences' 2011 Philippine Biodiversity Expedition. View more images on LiveScience.com. (Photo credit: Terry Gosliner, California Academy of Sciences)

A new species of Phyllidia nudibranch (also known as a sea slug) that was discovered during the California Academy of Sciences' 2011 Philippine Biodiversity Expedition. View more images on LiveScience.com. (Photo credit: Terry Gosliner, California Academy of Sciences)


A likely new species of Petalomera crab from the deep sea, discovered during a 2011 expedition to the Philippines. View more images on LiveScience.com. (Photo credit: California Academy of Sciences)

This colorful worm is likely a new species of the genus Myrianida, which was found in coral rubble in the Philippines. View more images on LiveScience.com. (Photo credit: Chrissy Piotrowski, California Academy of Sciences)

Challenging field work

Working in the field is always a challenge, Gosliner noted. "We had our work both on the coral reefs and rain forest interrupted by an early typhoon; we were out of the water for two days," he said.

"One of the biologists working in the mountains was sleeping in a hammock; during the night, one of the trees his hammock was tied to was uprooted and he was suddenly on the ground," Gosliner added. "One researcher knelt on a venomous lionfish and later found himself on a mountain kneeling on poisonous plants."

The hard-won result of their efforts was the most comprehensive scientific survey effort ever conducted in the Philippines.

"I have been working in the Philippines on my own research for 20 years — I thought it would be great to bring a large team of researchers together to study from mountaintops to the deep sea, to determine if all of these places harbor new species," Gosliner said. "I was delighted that my hunch proved to be correct."

Their novel discoveries include a cicada that makes a distinctive "laughing" call, a crab whose pincers are lined with needlelike teeth, and a wormlike pipefish that hides among colonies of soft coral. In addition, they discovered a possible new species of swell shark — a shark that pumps water into its stomach to puff up — which unlike its relatives possesses a very distinctive camouflaged color pattern.

A number of species live in places rarely, if ever, visited by people, such as a primitive plant called a spikemoss from the perilously steep upper slopes of Mount Isarog and a snake eel from the bottom of the ocean. Many others have avoided detection in the past because of their diminutive size, such as goblin spiders and barnacles that all measure just a few millimeters long.

"One of the likely new urchins is very small — it's called a pea urchin, and yes, it's about the size of a pea," Gosliner said.

Hot hotspots

All these new findings help support the idea that the Philippines "is one of the hottest of the hotspots for diverse and threatened life on Earth," Gosliner said. "We found new species during nearly every dive and hike as we surveyed the country's reefs, rainforests and the ocean floor."

In fact, the researchers suggest the waters of the Philippines may house more species than any other marine environment on Earth. The deep-water channel they sampled is nutrient-rich, allowing life to flourish, and has existed for about 60 million years, giving species a great deal of time to evolve. "All of those factors together have led to the high diversity," Gosliner told LiveScience.

The researchers are sharing their results with Filipino agencies and international groups to develop strategies to best protect the island nation's extraordinarily rich life. This includes outlining the most important places for establishing or expanding marine protected areas, suggested locations for reforestation and reduction of plastic waste.

"We are hoping the findings will result in recommendations that will translate into policies that will produce a more sustainable future for Filipinos while simultaneously protecting the unique biodiversity," Gosliner said.

"This expedition has led us to want to undertake more expeditions to the Philippines in other unexplored areas," he added.

The scientists will present their preliminary results on June 30, during the California Academy of Sciences' weekly NightLife event. ( LiveScience.com )

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Gene machines may help save endangered Tasmanian devil

Gene machines may help save endangered Tasmanian devil - Scientists are using high-tech gene sequencing machines in a desperate attempt to save the Tasmanian devil from an infectious cancer called devil facial tumor disease that is threatening to wipe out the species.

"The disease is like nothing we know in humans or in virtually any other animal. It acts like a virus but it actually is spread by a whole cancerous cell that arose in one individual several decades ago," Penn State University's Stephan Schuster, who is working on the project, said in a statement.

The cancer, first observed just 15 years ago, is quickly spreading among populations of the already endangered Tasmanian devil, the world's largest surviving carnivorous marsupial that lives on the Australian island state of Tasmania.

Devil facial tumor disease disfigures the victim and causes death from starvation or suffocation.

"It has 90 to 100 percent lethality in a few months. In many regions of Tasmania, it is completely lethal," said Schuster, who worked on the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Conservation experts have been isolating and breeding a population of healthy animals and plan to release them in the wild once the cancer runs its course.

Tasmanian devil


A pair of Tasmanian Devils tussles for a piece of rabbit in a new breeding centre at Sydney's Taronga Zoo

To help select the best animals for the effort, a team led by Schuster and Webb Miller of Penn State and Vanessa Hayes of the Venter Institute in San Diego sequenced two Tasmanian devils, Cedric and Spirit, from the extreme northwest and southeast regions of Tasmania, respectively, to determine the genetic diversity of the animals.

GENETIC DIVERSITY

Then they compared the range of genetic diversity to that of humans, the most studied species on the planet.

"In the case of the Tasmanian devil, those two only have 20 percent of the genetic diversity that living humans have," Schuster said in a telephone interview.

The study is one of the first to use whole genome sequencing as a tool to conserve an endangered population, Schuster said.

Whole genome sequencing technology allows researchers to read all the little bits of code -- the A, C, T, G sequences -- that are the building blocks of DNA.

It took 10 years and $3 billion for the international Human Genome Project to get the first draft of the human genome a decade ago.

The scans now cost $10,000 to $20,000 each, but companies such as Illumina, Life Technologies Corp, Pacific Biosciences and Roche Holding are working hard to bring the cost down even more.

Schuster's scan of the two Tasmanian devils showed the population already had low genetic diversity, which likely made them vulnerable to the infectious cancer, which is spread by skin-to-skin contact.

"Transmission is through biting, fighting and mating," he said, and the disease has the potential of "burning through the entire population within a decade."

Using the genetic code from the two animals, the team devised a test that could look for specific genetic differences within the species to find the most genetically diverse animals for the breeding program.

"It costs $150 per animal, whereas the sequence of the complete genome is in the $10,000 range," Schuster said.

The team used a new gene sequencing platform from Roche Holding AG, which helped pay for the research.

Schuster said the findings show that whole genome sequencing can be a useful tool in conservation. He said future studies are planned in cattle and other domestic animals. ( Reuters )

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Danger heats up for Australia's platypus

Danger heats up for Australia's platypus - Global warming could shrink the habitat of Australia's duck-billed platypus by a third, researchers warned Friday, with hotter, drier temperatures threatening its survival.

A confusion of bird, mammal and reptile characteristics, the timid platypus is one of Australia's most cryptic creatures, feeding at night and living in deep waterside burrows to dodge predators such as foxes and eagles.

But its thick, watertight fur coat -- one of the key tools to ensuring its survival in the cool depths of rivers and waterholes -- could spell disaster in a warming climate, according to a new study from Melbourne's Monash University.

Using weather and platypus habitat data stretching back more than 100 years, researchers were able to map declines in particular populations in connection with droughts and heat events.

The team then extrapolated their findings across a range of climate change scenarios laid out by the government's science research agency, CSIRO, to model how global warming would affect the unusual native species.

Global warming could shrink the habitat of Australia's iconic duck-billed platypus by a third, researchers warned in Melbourne, with hotter drier temperatures threatening its survival



A confusion of bird, mammal and reptile characteristics, the timid platypus is one of Australia's most cryptic creatures, feeding at night and living in deep waterside burrows to dodge predators such as foxes and eagles

"Our worst case scenario at the moment suggested a one-third reduction in their suitable habitat," researcher Jenny Davis told AFP of the work published in the journal Global Change Biology.

Other human impacts, including land clearing and the damming of waterways for hydroelectric projects, had and would continue to diminish platypus homes, she added.

"Under a drying climate we'll be taking more water away from the environment because of our human needs, and predators are going to become more of an issue for (the) platypus," she said.

The most dire predictions suggested the platypus would disappear from Australia's mainland entirely, able only to live on Tasmania and the southern King and Kangaroo islands, said Davis.

Davis said the nocturnal creature already appeared to be responding to increases in Australia's average temperature, with certain populations receding from the 1960s, when a warming trend first became evident.

"Compared with 50 years ago some places have become too warm for them. Their habitat is shrinking," she said.

Classed as "common but vulnerable", the platypus is already extinct in the wild in South Australia state, and Davis said she feared it could meet a similar fate to the Tasmanian devil, whose numbers had dwindled rapidly.

"What could happen is that we could see a crash in an iconic animal and by the time that happens it's too late to do something about it," she said.

Platypus fur is finer and denser than that of a river otter or polar bear, and it has two layers: a long sleek outer and a woolly undercoat, ensuring it stays dry even when fully submerged in water.

Their average body temperature is 32 degrees Celsius (89 Fahrenheit) -- lower than most other mammals -- and they overheat rapidly when exposed to warm conditions out of the water.

Of most concern, however, is the drying up of waterways where they forage for aquatic invertebrates, with the platypus needing to eat about 30 percent of their own body weight every day to survive.

Davis said the creature's demise was "just another warning sign" of global warming's impact on Australia's unique wildlife. ( AFP )

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Fatal bat disease confirmed in all New England with Maine find

Fatal bat disease confirmed in all New England with Maine find – White nose syndrome, a devastating disease that has killed more than one million bats in the Northeast, has been found in Maine, the last New England state to discover it, wildlife officials said on Tuesday.

Diminishing populations of bats, an important predator of insects, could have harmful consequences for humans, experts say.

Bats at two sites in Maine's Oxford County that displayed signs of a fungal pathogen linked with white nose syndrome tested positive for the disease, said scientists with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Until this year, Maine appeared insulated from white nose, although nearby states and Canada were not.

Since its discovery in an upstate New York cave in 2006, white nose has been confirmed in 17 states and four eastern Canadian provinces, and it appears to be steadily trekking westward.

North America's loss of bats, a key predator of mosquitoes, beetles and pests that can harm plants, could cost agriculture at least $3.7 billion a year, according to a study published in the journal Science in April.

Scientists predict the disease could wipe out some bat species in New England within 15 years.

In Maine, susceptible species are big brown and little brown bats, northern long-eared and tri-colored bats and eastern small-footed bats.

"It is possible that bats that winter in Maine spent the summer in contact with bats from WNS-infected sites in other states, and then carried the fungus back with them to their winter hibernaculum (caves and mines that are homes to bats) in Maine," said John DePue, a biologist with the Maine agency.

The syndrome gets its name from a white fungus that settles in tufts on infected bats' muzzles and invades their skin. It causes them to use limited body-fat reserves, retreat deeper into chilly caves or exhibit odd behavior, such as flying in daytime and cold weather, when insects they eat are not found.

Oklahoma is the furthest west the fungal pathogen Geomyces destructans linked with white nose has been detected, while full-blown white nose has gone as far west as Kentucky and Tennessee.

Little brown bats are the ones worst hit so far by white nose nationally, and the endangered Indiana and Southeast-based Gray bats potentially could be most acutely affected as well.

White nose is mainly spread bat to bat, but humans can transport fungal spores via clothes and gear from contaminated sites, such as caves and mines. People can help slow the spread by staying out of sites that are homes to bats.

About a dozen species out of a total 45 U.S. bat species are affected by white nose, which is nearly half of the 26 bat species that are cave-hibernating bats.

In some Northeast caves, 90 to 100 percent of populations have died. About 1,100 bat species exist worldwide. ( Reuters )

READ MORE - Fatal bat disease confirmed in all New England with Maine find

What is your ultimate status symbol?

World's most expensive dog at $1.5m - What is your ultimate status symbol? An expensive car, a duplex apartment or bungalow? Maybe even expensive jewellery and designer clothes. But that is not so in China.

What is your ultimate status symbol? An expensive car, a duplex apartment or bungalow? Maybe even expensive jewellery and designer clothes. But apparently, that is not so in China.

We hear that an ancient breed of dog is the highest status symbol for rich Chinese.

London's Daily Telegraph yesterday reported of an 11-month-old Tibetan mastiff male puppy that has gained the title of the world's most expensive dog!

'Big Splash' was bought for 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) by a wealthy Chinese coal baron.

DID YOU KNOW? Genghis Khan is believed to have had kept Tibetan Mastiffs as pets too.

According to a Tibetan Mastiff breeder, Kathryn Hay, the dogs are a very untouched, unspoilt breed. "They can be great pets but you have to be a strong owner because they're not overly domesticated," she says. The interesting thing about this breed is that even though their size is substantial, they don't eat too much. Traditionally used as guard dogs, that trait is still seen today, but they are also fond of lazing around.

Makes you wonder about the value of money, doesn't it? What are your thoughts? If you had the money to spend, would you keep a $1.5 million dog for a pet? ( yahoo.com )

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Sexual assault of American women soldiers on the rise

Sexual assault of American women soldiers on the rise - In a bid to address sexual crimes within the American defence forces more effectively, the United States Air Force will release a survey later this week in which it states that one in five women have been sexually assaulted since joining the military service.

The survey conducted by Gallup, interviewed 18,834 male and female airmen between July and August 2010 and had a response rate of nearly 19 percent.

Experts say the results, which will be published on the Air Force website will be important for the Air Force and the entire military, as top officials will be forced to acknowledge and confront the scope of the problem for the first time.

Charlene Bradley, an air force assistant deputy for force management integration said: " If we're ever going to get to the point where we know how much progress we're making or not making, our leadership has to find out the extent of the problem," adding that the Air Force leadership was "very concerned" when they reviewed the survey's findings.

She added: "They were concerned before, but they were very concerned when they saw this."

According to the military sexual assault includes a number of things including "sexual contact without consent." Out of the 18.9 percent of the female airmen who reported having been assaulted, 58 percent said that they had been raped and 20 percent said they had been sodomized, which the military defines as nonconsensual oral or anal sex.

It is expected to serve as a new base for tracking the crime. The survey is likely to be conducted every 18 to 24 months, says Bradley.

The survey has brought out that a majority of assaults were against women, nearly 80 percent and the perpetrators are fellow US service members.

Bradley says: "The survey was designed to help the Air Force evaluate its prevention programs to find out "how much progress we're making or not making."

The survey makes it clear that only a small percentage of victims reported the crimes and in order to control this it was important to change this fact.

A majority of those who were victims of unwanted sex said they did not think it was serious enough to report.

Nearly 60 percent of women who were raped said they did not want their superiors to know and 63 percent, said they did not want their fellow airmen to know." Nearly half said that they did not want to cause trouble in their unit, The Christian Science Monitor reports.

To overcome this problem, the Air Force is making large scale efforts on a bystander training program as the findings suggest that many victims of assault do tell a friend or fellow airmen, whether they officially report the crime or not.

Bradley said that the Air Force has full-time trained sexual assault response coordinators (SARCs), at every base, as well as volunteer victim advocates.

David Lisak, sexual assault specialist and clinical psychologist at the University of Massachusetts, Boston said that the Air Force is also focusing on better training for military lawyers who in many cases have little experience compared to the specialized civilian sexual-assault defense lawyers that many alleged perpetrators hire. ( news.yahoo.com )

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New penguin found, 500 years after extinction

New penguin found, 500 years after extinction. Rare, endangered penguin leads to discovery of previously unknown species. Researchers studying a rare and endangered species of penguin have uncovered a previously unknown species that disappeared about 500 years ago.

The research suggests that the first humans in New Zealand hunted the newly found Waitaha penguin to extinction by 1500, about 250 years after their arrival on the islands. But the loss of the Waitaha allowed another kind of penguin to thrive — the yellow-eyed species that now also faces extinction, Philip Seddon of Otago University, a co-author of the study, said Wednesday.

Sanne Boessenkool / AP

Australian and New Zealand researchers studying the rare and endangered yellow-eyed penguin (pictured here) have uncovered a previously unknown penguin species that disappeared about 500 years ago. The newly found "Waitaha" penguin became extinct after Polynesian settlement of New Zealand but before A.D. 1500.

The team was testing DNA from the bones of prehistoric modern yellow-eyed penguins for genetic changes associated with human settlement when it found some bones that were older — and had different DNA.

Tests on the older bones "lead us to describe a new penguin species that became extinct only a few hundred years ago," the team reported in a paper in the biological research journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

Polynesian settlers came to New Zealand around 1250 and are known to have hunted species such as the large, flightless moa bird to extinction.

Seddon said dating techniques used on bones pulled from old Maori trash pits revealed a gap in time between the disappearance of the Waitaha and the arrival of the yellow-eyed penguin.

The gap indicates the extinction of the older bird created the opportunity for the newer to colonize New Zealand's main islands around 500 years ago, said Sanne Boessenkool, an Otago University doctoral student who led the team of researchers, including some from Australia's Adelaide University and New Zealand's Canterbury Museum.

Competition between the two penguin species may have previously prevented the yellow-eyed penguin from expanding north, the researchers noted.

David Penny of New Zealand's Massey University, who was not involved in the research, said the Waitaha was an example of another native species that was unable to adapt to a human presence.

"In addition, it is vitally important to know how species, such as the yellow-eyed penguin, are able to respond to new opportunities," he said. "It is becoming apparent that some species can respond to things like climate change, and others cannot. The more we know, the more we can help."

The yellow-eyed penguin is considered one of the world's rarest. An estimated population of 7,000 in New Zealand is the focus of an extensive conservation effort. (Associated Press )

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Oldest T Rex relative discovered in London

Dinosaur dynasty: Oldest T Rex relative discovered in London. Remains of the oldest-known relative of the Tyrannosaurus Rex have been discovered, more than 100 years after being pulled out of a Gloucestershire reservoir.

The near-complete 11inch skull has been identified as a 165-million-year-old ancestor of the fearsome dinoaur, called Proceratosaurus.

It was unearthed in the vast collection of London's Natural History Museum, according to research published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society today.

The fossil skull of Proceratosaurus the oldest-known relative of T.rex, which lived 165 million years ago

Proceratosaurus was probably only around 9ft long and lived 100 million years earlier that the 40ft long T- Rex. This gives scientists important clues about the early stages of the evolution of these fearsome predators.

A team of British and German scientists used computed tomography (CT) techniques to generate X-rays and then a 3D image of the delicate skull remains. This meant they could study its internal structure in minute detail.

They found that its teeth, jaws and braincase all closely resemble the structures found in the gigantic predator.

‘It was quite a surprise when our analysis showed we had the oldest known relative of T.rex,’ said Museum dinosaur expert, Dr Angela Milner.

‘We care for over nine million fossils here at the Museum and this discovery highlights the importance of museum collections in current and future research. Fossils collected a century ago can now be studied again with the benefit of much greater knowledge of dinosaurs from around the world.’

Tyrannosaurus rex grew up to 40ft long, while its ancestor grew to 9ft

Some of the bones were still covered in rock and had to be carefully cleaned before the skull could be fully examined.

‘This is a very fragile skull,’ says Museum fossil expert, Scott More-Fay, ‘so removing the rock, especially from around the teeth, was a delicate and time-consuming task that had to be done under a microscope, using very fine tools.’

The skull was uncovered during excavations for a reservoir close to Minchinhampton in Gloucestershire. In 1910, it was described as a new species of Megalosaurus.

The fossil was presented to the Natural History Museum in 1922 by F L Bradley, but its links to the most famous dinosaur family of all remained undiscovered until now.

Tyrannosaurus rex lived around 67 to 65 million years ago at the end of the dinosaur era in the Cretaceous period, and is a member of a larger group, called Tyrannosauroidea, after its most famous member.

Dr Oliver Rauhut from the Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geology in Munich said: ‘This is still one of the best-preserved dinosaur skulls found in Europe. It is really surprising that it has received so little attention since its original description.’

And, there are many possibilities to discover and identify new species using techniques such as CT modelling, as Dr Rauhut explains: ‘I’m sure that many more tyrannosaurs are still out there to be found. I think we have just scratched the tip of the iceberg so far.’ dailymail

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Picking Up Mates at the White Shark Cafe

Picking Up Mates at the White Shark Cafe. Sharks Gather at 'White Shark Cafe' in Pacific Ocean. Great whites aren't all alike. Even though the sharks travel all over the Pacific Ocean to hunt, they tend to mate with others from the same area, forming genetically distinct groups.

That's what local great whites revealed to Barbara Block of Stanford University in California and her colleagues.

The team headed out into the Pacific to find the sharks, which they lured to the surface using a silhouette of a seal. They then used a pole to attach two different tags to the sharks and took a sneaky biopsy at the same time.

GPS tags were used to track the long-distance movements of the creatures, allowing the team to follow their migration during the colder months from coastal areas to the deep ocean.

The other tags gave off sonic "pings" that were picked up by sensors moored in coastal areas, providing more precise location fixes than the satellite measurements, so that the team could tell if the sharks returned to the same areas.

Café Culture

Block noted that the sharks tended to follow a predictable, if mysterious route every year.

"They go to an area we call 'the white shark café'," she says. Why this is such a cool place to hang out isn't clear, however.

The tags revealed that the females weave in and out of the males, and because there doesn't seem to be much in the way of food at the café 2000 kilometres off the California coast, Block thinks they may be mating.

The tags also confirmed the team's theory that the sharks return to specific coastal sites in the summer. "These animals aren't just wandering aimlessly through the sea," says Block. "They seem to maintain neighbourhoods."

Australian cousins

The tissue samples taken from the sharks showed that their mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from the mother, was significantly different from that of great whites from the south-west Pacific.

The group reckon that great white sharks originated around Australia and New Zealand and formed a separate group on the other side of the Pacific around 200,000 years ago, during the late Pleistocene epoch.

Isla Guadalupe is located 160 miles off the coast off Baja California and over 220 miles southwest...

Isla Guadalupe is located 160 miles off the coast off Baja California and over 220 miles southwest of San Diego in open ocean water that has over 100 feet of visibility. It's rapidly becoming the World's Best Destination to dive with Great White Sharks (Carcharodon carcharias). It hosts one of the most prolific populations of White Sharks on the planet

(Kike Calvo via AP Images)

Knowing Migratory Routes Could Aid Conservation Efforts

"Californian sharks share a female ancestry with the Australian sharks from which they are derived," says geneticist Carol Reeb, co-author of the study. "The fact that males and females show similar, constrained migration patterns suggests that males are not breeding with other populations."

"This study adds important new layers of information to the story of sharks," says Kevin Weng, manager of the Pelagic Fisheries Research Program at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. "The genetic analysis confirms what previous satellite-tracking data suggested – that north-eastern Pacific sharks are separate from the south-western Pacific sharks near Australia and New Zealand."

The team hopes that knowing the migratory route of the great whites will aid conservation efforts, as the sharks are still threatened with extinction. abcnews.com

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