Amur tigers on ‘genetic brink’

A wild Amur tiger is a rare sight.

The world’s largest cat, the Amur tiger, is down to an effective wild population of fewer than 35 individuals, new research has found.

Although up to 500 of the big cats actually survive in the wild, the effective population is a measure of their genetic diversity.
That in turn is [...]

Bald eagles succumb to poison in rat eradication on Alaskan island

Last month we reported on bald eagles and other birds found dead after a rat eradication project in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. The National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis., has confirmed that the birds were casualties of brodifacoum, the poison used in bait scattered around Rat Island by helicopter.

Every one of the liver samples tested [...]

New Class Of Black Holes Discovered

ScienceDaily (July 2, 2009) — A new class of black hole, more than 500 times the mass of the Sun, has been discovered by an international team of astronomers.

Artist’s impression of the new source HLX-1 (represented by the light blue object to the top left of the galactic bulge) in the periphery of the edge-on [...]

Did Melting Snow Shape America’s Southern Rocky Mountains?

Southern Rocky Mountains

ScienceDaily (July 2, 2009) — Is it possible that something as insubstantial and transitory as snow could be responsible for large scale vertical movements of Earth’s surface and the excavation of deeply incised gorges?

Extensive regions of the southern Rocky Mountains of the Southwestern United States have experienced more than 1.5 km of erosion [...]

Salamanders, Regenerative Wonders, Heal Like Mammals, People

ScienceDaily (July 2, 2009) — The salamander is a superhero of regeneration, able to replace lost limbs, damaged lungs, sliced spinal cord — even bits of lopped-off brain.

The axolotl salamander (Ambystoma mexicanum). The salamander is a superhero of regeneration, able to replace lost limbs, damaged lungs, sliced spinal cord — even bits of lopped-off brain. [...]

Blackest Black Ever: Ultra-thin Material Absorbs Almost 100% Of Light

ScienceDaily (July 2, 2009) — It appears to be a paradox: ultra-thin material that absorbs all the incident light. Nonetheless, it does exist.

How much light is reflected and how much is absorbed depends on two factors: the angle at which the light falls onto the material, and the polarisation (the direction of oscillation) of the [...]

Plants Save The Earth From An Icy Doom

ScienceDaily (July 2, 2009) — When glaciers advanced over much of the Earth’s surface during the last ice age, what kept the planet from freezing over entirely? This has been a puzzle to climate scientists because leading models have indicated that over the past 24 million years geological conditions should have caused carbon dioxide levels [...]

Dense Knots Of Cold Cosmic Dust — Potential Birthplaces Of New Stars — Discovered In Inner Regions Of The Milky Way

ScienceDaily (July 1, 2009) — Astronomers have unveiled an unprecedented new atlas of the inner regions of the Milky Way, our home galaxy, peppered with thousands of previously undiscovered dense knots of cold cosmic dust — the potential birthplaces of new stars. Made using observations from the APEX telescope in Chile, this survey is the [...]

In The Warming West, Climate Most Significant Factor In Fanning Wildfires’ Flames

 
Forest fire near Bailey, Colorado. (Credit: iStockphoto/David Parsons)

ScienceDaily (July 1, 2009) — 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 [...]

Cash for Pirate Bay file-sharers

The Pirate Bay’s new owners say file-sharing will be encouraged.

The new owners of file-sharing website The Pirate Bay say users will be paid for sharing files.

Global Gaming Factory (GGF) paid 60m kronor (£4.7m) to take over the site.
In an exclusive interview with the BBC, GGF’s Hans Pandeya said that the only way to beat illegal [...]