Disposable 'Bio-Battery' Gets Its Power From Bacteria

Microbes live in our body, in the soil, in water and in waste. As they feed, they harvest electrons from the environment and then excrete them.

Many scientists have figured out how to capture those electrons in microbial fuel cells and turn them into a power source. But Seokheun "Sean" Choi, assistant professor and director of the Bioelectronics & Microsystems Lab the State University of New York, Binghamton, has figured out how to do it using paper.

His foldable, paper-based battery is a bacteria-powered fuel cell that could be used to run small biosensors. Because it's made from paper, the device is cheap and disposable. Because it runs on microbes, it can generate energy wherever and whenever it's needed.

"Theoretically, the microorganisms are everywhere. I thought that the bacteria-based battery could be activated even in the most resource-limited settings," Choi told Seeker.

This might mean using it in disaster areas, on the battlefield or in clinics that serve impoverished communities.

Fundamentally, Choi's battery has the two main components of all batteries: an anode, considered the negative end, and a cathode, considered the positive end. The anode is typically the source of the electrons, which flow to the cathode to create a current.

With this battery, Choi created an anode on one side of paper that's made of a tiny amount of bacteria-laden water housed in a reservoir formed in a conductive polymer. On the other side of the paper is the cathode, a ribbon of silver nitrate underneath a thin layer of wax.

By folding the paper so that the two sides come into contact, electrons from the microbes flow toward the cathode to create an electric current. Folding the battery in different shapes varies the electrical output. For example, by crimping it accordion-style so that six rows of six fuel cells are touching, the battery produces 44.85 microwatts at 105.89 microamps.

Choi acknowledges that this is a very small amount of power. In the early days, when he first considered making paper electronics, he was skeptical they'd have any use. But then he realized that biosensors, like those that detect pathogens or monitor the blood sugar levels, didn't need much power to begin with. He also liked the idea of tapping a ubiquitous source of energy.

"Now, this work uses wastewater, but the devices can be workable with any liquid like body fluids, such as blood, sweat, urine, or saliva," he said.

This is not Choi's first paper battery. Earlier this year, his team introduced a design that folded up into a Ninja star-shaped frame.

Read more at Discovery News

Britain’s Most Famous Diamond Has a Mysterious and Bloody Past

Many precious stones have a blood-soaked history, but a new book reveals the world's most famous diamond the Koh-i-Noor surpasses them all, with a litany of horrors that rivals "Game of Thrones."

The Koh-i-Noor ("Mountain of Light"), now part of the British Crown Jewels, has witnessed the birth and the fall of empires across the Indian subcontinent, and remains the subject of a bitter ownership battle between Britain and India.

"It is an unbelievably violent story... Almost everyone who owns the diamond or touches it comes to a horribly sticky end," says British historian William Dalrymple, who co-authored "Kohinoor: The Story of the World's Most Infamous Diamond" with journalist Anita Anand.

"We get poisonings, bludgeonings, someone gets their head beaten with bricks, lots of torture, one person blinded by a hot needle. There is a rich variety of horrors in this book," Dalrymple tells AFP in an interview.

In one particularly gruesome incident the book relates, molten lead is poured into the crown of a Persian prince to make him reveal the location of the diamond.

Today the diamond, which historians say was probably first discovered in India during the reign of the Mughal dynasty, is on public display in the Tower of London, part of the crown of the late Queen Mother.

The first record of the Koh-i-Noor dates back to around 1750, following Persian ruler Nader Shah's invasion of the Mughal capital Delhi. Shah plundered the city, taking treasures such as the mythical Peacock Throne, embellished with precious stones including the Koh-i-Noor.

"The Peacock Throne was the most lavish piece of furniture ever made. It cost four times the cost of the Taj Mahal and had all the better gems gathered by the Mughals from across India over generations," Dalrymple says.

The diamond itself was not particularly renowned at the time — the Mughals preferred colored stones such as rubies to clear gems. Ironically given the diplomatic headaches it has since caused, it only won fame after it was acquired by the British.

"People only know about the Koh-i-Noor because the British made so much fuss of it," says Dalrymple.

India has tried in vain to get the stone back since winning independence in 1947, and the subject is frequently brought up when officials from the two countries meet. Iran, Pakistan and even the Afghan Taliban have also claimed the Koh-i-Noor in the past, making it a political hot potato for the British government.

Over the course of the century that followed the Mughals' downfall, the Koh-i-Noor was used variously as a paperweight by a Muslim religious scholar and affixed to a glittering armband worn by a Sikh king.

It only passed into British hands in the middle of the nineteenth century, when Britain gained control of the Sikh empire of Punjab, now split between Pakistan and India.

Sikh king Ranjit Singh had taken it from an Afghan ruler who had sought sanctuary in India and after he died in 1839 war broke out between the Sikhs and the British.

Singh's 10-year-old heir handed over the diamond to the British as part of the peace treaty that ended the war and the gem was subsequently displayed at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London — acquiring immediate celebrity status.

"It became, for the Victorians, a symbol of the conquest of India, just as today, for post-colonial Indians, it is a symbol of the colonial looting of India," Dalrymple says.

Read more at Discovery News

Proxima Centauri's Origins Could Mean Its Exoplanet Really Is Habitable

After decades of uncertainty, it seems that astronomers may have found the strongest evidence yet that Proxima Centauri is indeed "gravitationally bound" to Alpha Centauri. This is interesting for many reasons, primarily because now we're pretty sure the Alpha Centauri system is a triple-star system, with two stars (Alpha Centauri A and B) orbiting closely and one oddball sibling (Proxima Centauri) with an extremely wide orbit.

But with the recent discovery of a small rocky exoplanet in orbit around Proxima, this new finding will boost hopes that this little world may be habitable for life as we know it.

Proxima Centauri is located around 4.25 light-years away making it the nearest star to Earth beyond our sun. The star's planet, called Proxima b, is approximately the same mass as Earth and orbits within the star's "habitable zone" — the region surrounding a star that's neither too hot or too cold for liquid water to exist on a planetary surface. Finding any planet within a star's habitable zone — regardless of the star's size or luminosity — will always be exciting as, if there is liquid water there, life could be possible. And discovering a (potentially) habitable world on our galactic doorstep is an incredible stroke of luck.

Though we know that Proxima b is there, we can only guess at its composition and have no clue whether or not it possesses any water. But new evidence suggesting Proxima Centauri is indeed a distant sibling of the Alpha Centauri could help us find out.

Proxima Centauri was only discovered a century ago and, since then, astronomers have been trying to understand its motion in the sky, a task that becomes very complicated when considering how dim it is. Red dwarfs are many times smaller and produce only a fraction of the light of our sun. But using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) instrument at the ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile, astronomers have, for the first time, gained precision measurements of the dim star's radial velocity, a key metric if we are to understand if it is in any way related to Alpha Centauri.

The HARPS instrument is extremely sensitive to the wobble of stars as small exoplanets orbit around them, gravitationally tugging at them. Indeed, it was the HARPS instrument that discovered the tiny wobble of Proxima Centauri, revealing the presence of Proxima b. But this time, HARPS was able to deduce the velocity at which the tiny star is moving away from us and compared it with the radial velocity of Alpha Centauri. Both radial velocities closely match, which means that, in all likelihood, Proxima Centauri has a wide orbit around Alpha Centauri. They are therefore, probably, gravitationally bound.

Though this is a significant find — indeed, the question of whether or not all three stars are in orbit around one another has been vexing astronomers since Proxima Centauri was first spotted — it could reveal an interesting tidbit about the nature of Proxima b itself.

If Proxima Centauri and Alpha Centauri are gravitationally bound, this gives us a clue that the group formed from the same star-forming nebula billions of years ago. They are all therefore the same age. Over time, the trio's orbits evolved and Proxima Centauri for some reason was thrown away from the Alpha Centauri binary. In research to be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, the researchers speculate that before Proxima Centauri was ejected and sent on the lonely orbit it's in today, a planet formed far from the star and then migrated to a lower orbit. As it occupied such a distant (and cold) orbit, it would have likely been an icy world and that ice could have been water. And now Proxima b is orbiting in a very habitable location for liquid water to exist on its surface, then perhaps — just perhaps — it possesses water to this day.

Read more at Discovery News

5,000-Year-Old Nativity Scene Found in Egypt

Italian researchers have discovered what might be the oldest nativity scene ever found — 5,000-year-old rock art that depicts a star in the east, a newborn between parents and two animals.

The scene, painted in reddish-brown ochre, was found on the ceiling of a small cavity in the Egyptian Sahara desert, during an expedition to sites between the Nile valley and the Gilf Kebir Plateau.

"It's a very evocative scene which indeed resembles the Christmas nativity. But it predates it by some 3,000 years," geologist Marco Morelli, director of the Museum of Planetary Sciences in Prato, near Florence, Italy, told Seeker.

Morelli found the cave drawing in 2005, but only now his team has decided to reveal the amazing find.

"The discovery has several implications as it raises new questions on the iconography of one of the more powerful Christian symbols," Morelli said.

The scene features a man, a woman missing the head because of a painting detachment, and a baby.

"It could have been interpreted as a normal depiction of a family, with the baby between the parents, but other details make this drawing unique," Morelli said.

He noted the newborn is drawn slightly above, as if raising to the sky. Such position, with the baby not yet between the parents, would have meant a birth or a pregnancy.

"As death was associated to Earth in contemporary rock art from the same area, it is likely that birth was linked to the sky," Morelli said.

The scene becomes more symbolically complex if the other figures, two animals and a small circular feature, are taken into consideration.

Read more at Discovery News

Mass insect migrations in UK skies

The painted lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui) is a major component of the large day-flying insect migrants studied by radar in the new study.

A decade of monitoring aerial insect migration reveals that trillions of individuals travel above us each year. Migration contributes greatly to seasonal exchanges of biomass and nutrients across the Earth's surface; however, even though insect migration surpasses all other aerial migratory phenomena in terms of sheer abundance, it remains largely unquantified.

For the first time, scientists have measured the movements of high-flying insects in the skies over southern England -- and found that about 3.5 trillion migrate over the region every year.

This movement of 3,200 tons of biomass, captured by University of Exeter and Rothamsted Research using specialised radar techniques, is more than seven times the mass of the 30 million songbirds which depart the UK for Africa each autumn.

(It is also the equivalent of about 20,000 flying reindeer.)

Dr Jason Chapman, of the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall, said: "Insect bodies are rich in nutrients and the importance of these movements is underappreciated.

"If the densities observed over southern UK are extrapolated to the airspace above all continental landmasses, high-altitude insect migration represents the most important annual animal movement in ecosystems on land, comparable to the most significant oceanic migrations."

Although the origin and destination of each insect was not recorded, evidence from previous research suggests many will have been travelling to and from the UK over the English Channel and North Sea.

The scientists recorded movement above radar sites in southern England and found large seasonal differences, with mass migrations of insects generally going northwards in spring and southwards in autumn.

Until now, radar studies have measured migrations of relatively few nocturnal species of agricultural pests, and no study previously examined the vast numbers of daytime migrants.

The study found seasonal variations from year to year, but overall the net northward spring movements of larger insects were almost exactly cancelled out by net southward movements in autumn over the 10-year research period.

Dr Gao Hu, a visiting scholar with Dr Chapman from Nanjing Agricultural University, China, led the analyses of the radar data.

He said: "Many of the insects we studied provide important ecological services which are essential for maintaining healthy ecosystems, such as pollination, predation of crop pests and providing food for insectivorous birds and bats."

Co-author Dr Ka S (Jason) Lim, of the Radar Entomology Unit of the AgroEcology Department at Rothamsted Research, said migratory insects can serve as indicators of global environmental condition.

"Animal migration, especially in insects, is a very complex behaviour which takes millions of year to evolve and is very sensitive to climatic condition," he said.

Read more at Science Daily

Global climate target could net additional six million tons of fish annually

If countries abide by the Paris Agreement global warming target of 1.5 degrees Celsius, potential fish catches could increase by six million metric tons per year, according to a new study published in Science.

If countries abide by the Paris Agreement global warming target of 1.5 degrees Celsius, potential fish catches could increase by six million metric tons per year, according to a new study published in Science.

The researchers also found that some oceans are more sensitive to changes in temperature and will have substantially larger gains from achieving the Paris Agreement.

"The benefits for vulnerable tropical areas is a strong reason why 1.5 C is an important target to meet," said lead author William Cheung, director of science at the Nippon Foundation-Nereus Program and associate professor at UBC's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries.

"Countries in these sensitive regions are highly dependent on fisheries for food and livelihood, but all countries will be impacted as the seafood supply chain is now highly globalized. Everyone would benefit from meeting the Paris Agreement."

The authors compared the Paris Agreement 1.5 C warming scenario to the currently pledged 3.5 C by using computer models to simulate changes in global fisheries and quantify losses or gains. They found that for every degree Celsius decrease in global warming, potential fish catches could increase by more than three metric million tons per year. Previous UBC research shows that today's global fish catch is roughly 109 million metric tons.

"Changes in ocean conditions that affect fish stocks, such as temperature and oxygen concentration, are strongly related to atmospheric warming and carbon emissions," said author Thomas Frölicher, principal investigator at the Nippon Foundation-Nereus Program and senior scientist at ETH Zürich. "For every metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere, the maximum catch potential decreases by a significant amount."

Climate change is expected to force fish to migrate towards cooler waters. The amount and species of fish caught in different parts of the world will impact local fishers and make fisheries management more difficult.

The findings suggest that the Indo-Pacific area would see a 40 per cent increase in fisheries catches at 1.5 C warming versus 3.5 C. Meanwhile the Arctic region would have a greater influx of fish under the 3.5 C scenario but would also lose more sea ice and face pressure to expand fisheries.

The authors hope these results will provide further incentives for countries and the private sector to substantially increase their commitments and actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Read more at Science Daily

New ultrasound technique is first to image inside live cells

These are stem cells becoming fat cells. Using the ultrasound technique, we can start exploring why fat cells put on fat and whether we can make the cells 'diet'.

Researchers at The University of Nottingham have developed a break-through technique that uses sound rather than light to see inside live cells, with potential application in stem-cell transplants and cancer diagnosis.

The new nanoscale ultrasound technique uses shorter-than-optical wavelengths of sound and could even rival the optical super-resolution techniques which won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

This new kind of sub-optical phonon (sound) imaging provides invaluable information about the structure, mechanical properties and behaviour of individual living cells at a scale not achieved before.

Researchers from the Optics and Photonics group in the Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham, are behind the discovery, which is published in the paper 'High resolution 3D imaging of living cells with sub-optical wavelength phonons' in the journal, Scientific Reports.

"People are most familiar with ultrasound as a way of looking inside the body -- in the simplest terms we've engineered it to the point where it can look inside an individual cell. Nottingham is currently the only place in the world with this capability," said Professor Matt Clark, who contributed to the study.

In conventional optical microscopy, which uses light (photons), the size of the smallest object you can see (or the resolution) is limited by the wavelength.

For biological specimens, the wavelength cannot go smaller than that of blue light because the energy carried on photons of light in the ultraviolet (and shorter wavelengths) is so high it can destroy the bonds that hold biological molecules together damaging the cells.

Optical super-resolution imaging also has distinct limitations in biological studies. This is because the fluorescent dyes it uses are often toxic and it requires huge amounts of light and time to observe and reconstruct an image which is damaging to cells.

Unlike light, sound does not have a high-energy payload. This has enabled the Nottingham researchers to use smaller wavelengths and see smaller things and get to higher resolutions without damaging the cell biology.

Read more at Science Daily

133 new species described by the California Academy of Sciences in 2016

An eye-popping, pink-and-yellow species of groppo is the deepest new fish discovery ever made by human hands. Grammatonotus brianne was discovered in the Philippines at a depth of 487 feet beneath the ocean's surface. The new groppo is one of 133 new species described by the California Academy of Sciences in 2016.

In 2016, researchers at the California Academy of Sciences added 133 new plant and animal species to our family tree, enriching our understanding of Earth's complex web of life and strengthening our ability to make informed conservation decisions. The new species include one bee fly, 43 ants, 36 beetles, one sand wasp, four spiders, six plants, 23 fishes, one eel, one shark, seven nudibranchs, five fossil urchins (and one fossil sand dollar), one coral, one skate, one African lizard, and an alarming new bird virus. More than a dozen Academy scientists -- along with several dozen international collaborators -- described the discoveries.

Proving that our planet contains unexplored places with never-before-recorded plants and animals (with their own set of evolving viruses), the scientists made their finds over five continents and three oceans, ventured into vast deserts, plunged beneath the sea, and scoured thick rainforests and towering mountain ranges. Their results help advance the Academy's mission to explore, explain, and sustain life on Earth.

"Biodiversity scientists estimate that we have discovered less than 10% of the species on our planet," says Dr. Shannon Bennett, Academy Chief of Science. "Academy scientists tirelessly explore the lesser-known regions of Earth -- not only to discover new species, but also to uncover the importance of these species to the health of our natural systems. Each of these species, known and as-yet-unknown, is a wonder unto itself but may also hold the key to ground-breaking innovations in science, technology, or society. Species live together in rich networks that thrive on complexity whether we can see it or not. Even the tiniest organism," she adds, "can be beautiful and important."

Below are a few highlights among the 133 species described by the Academy in 2016.

Flashy "twilight zone" groppo -- deepest fish discovered by human hands

One pink-and-yellow fish has earned its spot in deep reef history. Grammatonotus brianne -- an eye-popping species of groppo -- is the deepest new fish discovery ever made by human hands. The discovery was captured on film at 487 feet beneath the ocean's surface.

Academy scientists are currently diving to twilight zone reefs around the world. In these narrow bands of deep reefs, animals live in partial darkness, well beyond recreational diving limits yet above the deep trenches patrolled by submarines and ROVs. Reaching extreme depths requires Academy divers and their collaborators to push the boundaries of both technology and the human body, using closed-circuit "rebreathers" that extend the amount of time they can spend underwater.

The new groppo is one of several new species discoveries made during an Academy expedition (along with research partners from Hawaii's Bishop Museum) to the Philippines in 2014 -- part of an ongoing, multi-year exploration of the Coral Triangle's biological treasures from the shallows to deep mesophotic "twilight zone" reefs 200 to 500 feet beneath the ocean surface.

Deep-diving Academy ichthyologist Dr. Luiz Rocha and Bishop Museum research associate Brian Greene spotted the neon groppo (later named G. brianne for Greene's wife) during a murky, cold dive in the Philippine Verde Island Passage, a region known as the "center of the center" of Earth's marine biodiversity.

"This groppo is the most beautiful fish I've ever seen," says Rocha, a co-leader of the Academy's monumental push to explore, explain, and sustain coral reefs around the world. "But beyond its looks, it's a reminder that we know very little about the mysterious half-lit reefs we call the twilight zone. We need to understand the life inside these largely-unexplored deeper reefs because they may help us understand how the oceans respond to great change."

G. brianne joins 24 new species of fishes -- from camouflaging gobies to lanternsharks of the Indian Ocean -- described by Academy scientists in 2016 alone.

43 new ants (and a crowd of blood-sucking "Draculas")

Dr. Brian Fisher, Academy curator of entomology and real-life "Ant Man," recently added a whopping 43 new species to the tree of life. Fisher is a fierce advocate for the importance of small animals that support all terrestrial communities, and has devoted his life to the study of ants and biodiversity. Since 1996, he has conducted fieldwork in Madagascar -- where only 10% of natural habitat remains -- to explore regional biodiversity and generate data to drive conservation priorities in the country.

"Our work in Madagascar focuses on determining which ants live where as we develop new field guides as tools for diagnosing and understanding conservation problems," Fisher says. "It's not just about generating data -- we are trying to create a culture of interest in the natural world, from the smallest ant to the tallest tree."

Several of this year's finds belong to a group called Stigmatomma -- "Dracula ants" that build tiny, few-chambered colonies (generally no larger than a dime) beneath the soil. In a bizarre but fascinating means of distributing nutrients throughout the colony, ants from this group are known to wound their colonies' babies before drinking their blood -- a substance called "hemolymph" in insects. An elongated jaw with two large pincers also allows the ants to grasp prey mostly comprised of centipedes, but also beetle larvae.

"Because these ants are so rarely collected, finding them is like uncovering buried treasure," says Flavia Esteves, a postdoctoral researcher at the Academy who has joined Fisher in the field since 2010. Most Stigmatomma species spend the entirety of their lives beneath the soil or inside rotten logs. Esteves cuts through Madagascar's clay-like soil with a machete, and then uses a pocket knife -- and finally, forceps -- to carefully expose the ants.

"In an island like Madagascar where human activities are destroying sensitive habitats, understanding specialized species such as Stigmatomma is even more important. We fear that the unique environmental niche they occupy will go unfilled once these ants are gone," says Esteves. "We still have so much to learn from these specialized soil dwellers," adds Fisher.

Fisher recently returned from a nine-month expedition to Mozambique, accompanied by Esteves, as part of a Fulbright Scholar Grant to study ants and climate. His work in Madagascar (including founding the country's first and only biodiversity research center) and Mozambique continue to provide conservation partners with a wealth of new biodiversity data and monitoring aids to inform future land-use planning.

A gray-haired "grandfather" bee fly

All around us, insects flit, hover, and buzz about, but one family -- the bee flies (Bombyliidae sp.) -- may cause passersby to look twice. The nearly 5,000 species that make up this fly group imitate a wide range of relatives, from delicate honey bees to menacing wasps and spiders. "Don't be deceived by stripes or fuzzy adornments," says fly-expert Dr. Michelle Trautwein, Academy curator of entomology: insects from this group are all flies. A new species from Madagascar was recently discovered as part of a collaborative project between the Academy and the Schlinger Foundation to document the country's diversity of insects and their close relatives.

Named Thevenetimyia spinosavus (which translates to "thorny grandfather"), this gray-haired bee fly was discovered by Natalia Maass, who worked with Trautwein for two summers as an undergraduate intern. While examining specimens under the microscope, Maass noticed one quite unlike the rest.

"He was longer and more slender than other bee flies, with big spikes on his thorax and longer, gray bristly hairs," says Trautwein, describing why Natalia granted it its grandparent moniker. What's more, this stubbled bee fly was completely isolated from any other species within the same relative group. Similar species of bee fly are found in Northern Africa and North America -- both a long way from Madagascar -- meaning this "thorny grandfather" is part of a group with an incredibly wide distribution.

No matter where they're found, adult bee flies spend their time pollinating nearby plants. But as larvae, they prey viciously upon the larvae of other species. Adult bee flies will deposit their larvae in an aerial raid: dropping them from above to land in strategic locations where they can hatch, invade a nearby nest, and consume larvae of other insect colonies before growing up to be gentler, flower-visiting -- rather than larvae-poaching -- adults.

"An important piece of this project was being able to support a young woman in science so devoted to learning the language of species anatomy and descriptions," says Trautwein. "Watching Natalia grow and become a graduate student gives me great confidence in the young scientists who will continue to contribute to natural history collections -- our best snapshots of biodiversity in the face of great change."

New bird virus linked to beak-bending disorder

This year, scientists uncovered a fascinating new clue in the global mystery surrounding wild birds with grossly deformed beaks. Dr. Jack Dumbacher, Academy curator of ornithology and mammalogy -- alongside a team of researchers from UCSF and USGS -- identified a new virus that has been linked to Avian Keratin Disorder (AKD), a disease responsible for debilitating beak overgrowth and whose cause has remained elusive despite more than a decade of research.

This new virus -- identified from Alaska and the Pacific Northwest -- is being investigated as a potential cause of AKD and represents a critical step in understanding the emergence of this disease in wild bird populations around the world.

"Take one look at a bird suffering from Avian Keratin Disorder, and you'll understand the importance of stopping its spread," says Dumbacher. "Birds must be able to feed themselves and preen their plumage by carefully spreading waterproofing oils on their feathers. When deformed beaks restrict them from these life-giving activities, birds become cold, hungry, and often die. We're trying to understand the causes, origins, and distribution of this disorder."

After sifting through hundreds of thousands of DNA fragments (and comparing them to known virus groups among birds), scientists identified a new virus suspect belonging to the picornavirus family -- a large and diverse group that includes well-known human offenders like polio, hepatitis A, and the common cold. The team named their discovery Poecivirus after the genus of black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) from which the sequences originated, and in which AKD was first documented.

Though more research is necessary to establish Poecivirus definitively as the main cause of AKD, it remains the strongest lead yet. As part of the new virus description, the team generated a detailed map of Poecivirus' genetic material -- a tool that will enable scientists all over the world to aid in its identification among birds exhibiting clinical signs of AKD.

A fleet of beetles from Africa and China

After more than a dozen combined expeditions to the damp rainforests of Madagascar and cloud-kissed mountains of southwestern China, Dr. Dave Kavanaugh -- Academy emeritus curator of entomology -- is sharing 36 exciting new discoveries. Ground beetles are a wildly diverse group of winged and wingless predators that feast on other insects, and some are known to survive in extreme environments around the world.

Twenty-six of Kavanaugh's recent species discoveries hail from Madagascar's Ranomafana National Park -- an area of lush tropical rainforest stretching nearly 160 square miles across the southwestern portion of the island. During one 5-week expedition, Kavanaugh's daughter Kathryn (for whom he later named a beetle Chlaenius kathrynae) assisted him in the field by searching for species of ground beetles in the leaf litter.

"The first few days of one Madagascar expedition were dry as a bone, making the rainforest insects very hard to find," says Kavanaugh. "And then the rains came. It poured day and night for the next month. We worked through the storms with jungle rot on our feet from the constant damp." The rain led to the successful collection of many new beetle species, including flat-backed, fungi- and log-dwelling Eurydera oracle, named in honor of generous expedition support provided by Oracle.

Several additional new species (including three new genera) are described from the Gaoligong Mountains of China's Yunnan Province, a region where extreme physical geography has caused a jaw-dropping array of species to evolve over millennia. Since 1998, Kavanaugh and his colleagues have trekked mountains packed with endemic species -- those found nowhere else in the world. Scientists view the region as an isolated paleoenvironment, or an area that (due to its location) has remained relatively unchanged for millions of years. In less than two decades, the team has grown the list of the area's known ground beetles from 50 to 550 species.

Kavanaugh collaborates with local Chinese colleagues on the China Natural History Project to document the vast array of ground beetles and other animals and plants still being discovered in this isolated region. "Due to the restricted range and specialization of these insects, they are often some of the first to indicate significant changes to regional climate and biodiversity," says Kavanaugh, "which is why it's so important that we learn all about the life around us. You never know what clues even the smallest insects underfoot may hold to the rhythms of life on this planet."

Armored lizards of Angola

Amid outcroppings of granite in the arid, sloping lowlands of southern Angola, a newly discovered species of lizard wedges itself into particularly tight crevices, head-first. Only threatening spines are left exposed along its body and tail to deter approaching predators. Despite this clever maneuver, there was no escaping discovery by Dr. Edward Stanley, Academy herpetology research associate, who suspected this particular lizard might differ from known species in the area.

Stanley formally described this new species of armored lizard with the aid of CT scans, a type of imaging technology that combines a series of x-rays to reveal information about the lizard's uniquely armored body. Scans revealed that the tiny, bony spikes of Cordylus namakuiyus are actually embedded in the lizard's skin rather than attached to the skeleton itself.

"CT technology allowed us to visualize and measure the armoring structure in this new lizard species," says Stanley. "This is also the first time a 3D digital representation of a newly described species is freely available to download as part of a species description."

The species discovery -- the result of a joint expedition between the Academy and partner institutions in Angola -- represents a strong collaborative step towards exploring the region's extreme natural landscape. "Not much is known about Angolan species of armored lizards," says Stanley, "particularly in remote or inaccessible parts of the country, so we are excited to be exploring this biologically rich area."

Local coral discovery helps double California sanctuary

Just north of San Francisco off California's coastline, countless species thrive in the deep, chilly waters that make up the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary -- one of the most biologically productive regions on the planet. Here, scientists use remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, to explore life beneath the surface. On a 2012 expedition with NOAA, octocoral expert and Academy curator of invertebrate zoology Gary Williams set off aboard the R/V Fulmar to investigate vibrant offshore life down to 1,400 feet deep.

Among the sea stars, sea worms, snails, sponges, and crabs, Williams saw a single, whip-like stalk -- only 15 inches in length -- of a snow-white coral gently swaying in the ocean currents. Unlike the hard coral relatives that compose the famous tropical reefs closer to the ocean's surface, this soft-bodied coral species stands alone at depth and feeds on microscopic plankton floating through the water column.

Even before its formal description, the new species -- now named Swiftia farallonesica after its sanctuary home -- served as a brilliant symbol of the region's ecological importance, and helped strengthen the case for sanctuary expansion. In March 2015, NOAA ensured these sanctuaries would be protected for years to come by more than doubling their size and adding strict industry regulations on commercial fishing as well as a ban on all drilling, mining, and ship discharges. The expansion added 2,700 square miles of protected territory, reaching up to Point Arena in Mendocino County.

"Discovery is always an exciting thing," says Williams. "It's crucial to continue exploring the unknown so we can properly manage and protect these priceless marine ecosystems in our own backyard."

Read more at Science Daily

A fertilizer dearth foiled animal evolution for eons?

These 1.9 billion-year-old marine sediments are from the East Arm of the Great Slave Lake, Canada. Thousands of samples for this study were collected from the few places on Earth that have such remaining slivers of ancient seafloor.

For three billion years or more, the evolution of the first animal life on Earth was ready to happen, practically waiting in the wings. But the breathable oxygen it required wasn't there, and a lack of simple nutrients may have been to blame.

Then came a fierce planetary metamorphosis. Roughly 800 million years ago, in the late Proterozoic Eon, phosphorus, a chemical element essential to all life, began to accumulate in shallow ocean zones near coastlines widely considered to be the birthplace of animals and other complex organisms, according to a new study by geoscientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Yale University.

Along with phosphorus accumulation came a global chemical chain reaction, which included other nutrients, that powered organisms to pump oxygen into the atmosphere and oceans. Shortly after that transition, waves of climate extremes swept the globe, freezing it over twice for tens of millions of years each time, a highly regarded theory holds. The elevated availability of nutrients and bolstered oxygen also likely fueled evolution's greatest lunge forward.

After billions of years, during which life consisted almost entirely of single-celled organisms, animals evolved. At first, they were extremely simple, resembling today's sponges or jellyfish, but Earth was on its way from being, for eons, a planet less than hospitable to complex life to becoming one bursting with it.

Earth's true genesis

In the last few hundred million years, biodiversity has blossomed, leading to dense jungles and grasslands echoing with animal calls, and waters writhing with every shape of fin and color of scale. And most every stage of development has left its mark on the fossil record.

The researchers are careful not to imply that phosphorus necessarily caused the chain reaction, but in sedimentary rock taken from coastal areas, the nutrient has marked the spot where that burst of life and climate change took off. "The timing is definitely conspicuous," said Chris Reinhard, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

Reinhard and Noah Planavsky, a geochemist from Yale University, who headed up the research together, have mined records of sedimentary rock that formed in ancient coastal zones, going down layer by layer to 3.5 billion years ago, to compute how the cycle of the essential fertilizer phosphorus evolved and how it appeared to play a big part in a veritable genesis.

They noticed a remarkable congruency as they moved upward through the layers of shale into the time period where animal life began, in the late Proterozoic Eon.

"The most basic change was from very limited phosphorus availability to much higher phosphorus availability in surface waters of the ocean," Reinhard said. "And the transition seemed to occur right around the time that there were very large changes in ocean-atmosphere oxygen levels and just before the emergence of animals."

Phosphorus at the beach

Reinhard and Planavsky, together with an international team, have proposed that a scavenging of nutrients in an anoxic (nearly O2-free) world stunted photosynthetic organisms that otherwise had been poised for at least two billion years to make stockpiles of oxygen. Then that balanced system was upset and oceanic phosphorus made its way to coastal waters.

The scientists published their findings in the journal Nature. Their research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the NASA Astrobiology Institute, the Sloan Foundation and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

The work provides a new view into what factors allowed life to reshape Earth's atmosphere. It helps lay a foundation that scientists can apply to make predictions about what would allow life to alter exoplanets' atmospheres, and may inspire deeper studies, here on Earth, of how oceanic-atmospheric chemistry drives climate instability and influences the rise and fall of life through the ages.

Cyanobacteria, the mother of O2

Complex living things, including animals, usually have an immense metabolism and require ample O2 to drive it. The evolution of animals is unthinkable without it.

The path to understanding how a nutrient dearth would starve out breathable oxygen production leads back to a very special kind of bacteria called cyanobacteria, the mother of oxygen on Earth.

"The only reason we have a well-oxygenated planet we can live on is because of oxygenic photosynthesis," Planavsky said. "O2 is the waste product of photosynthesizing cells, like cyanobacteria, combining CO2 and water to build sugars."

And photosynthesis is an evolutionary singularity, meaning it only evolved once in Earth's history -- in cyanobacteria.

Some other biological phenomena evolved repeatedly in dozens or hundreds of unrelated incidents across the ages, such as the transition from single-celled organisms to rudimentary multicellular organisms. But scientists are confident that oxygenic photosynthesis evolved only this one time in Earth's history, only in cyanobacteria, and all plants and other beings on Earth that photosynthesize coopted the development.

The iron anchor

Cyanobacteria are credited with filling Earth's atmosphere with O2, and they've been around for 2.5 billion years or more.

That begs the question: What took so long? Basic nutrients that fed the bacteria weren't readily available, the scientist hypothesize. The phosphorus, which Planavsky and Reinhard specifically tracked, was in the ocean for billions of years, too, but it was tied up in the wrong places.

For eons, the mineral iron, which once saturated oceans, likely bonded with phosphorus, and sank it down to dark ocean depths, far away from those shallows -- also called continental margins -- where cyanobacteria would have needed it to thrive and make oxygen. Even today, iron is used to treat waters polluted with fertilizer to remove phosphorus by sinking it as deep sediment.

The researchers also used a geochemical model to show how a global system with high iron concentration and low phosphorus availability combined with low nitrogen availability in ocean shallows could perpetuate itself in a low-oxygen world.

"It looks to have been such a stable planetary system," Reinhard said. "But it's obviously not the planet we live on now, so the question is, how did we transition from this low-oxygen state to where we are now?"

What ultimately caused that change is a question for future research.

Phosphorus starting pistol

But something did change about 800 million years ago, and cyanobacteria and other minute organisms in continental margin ecosystems got more phosphorus, the backbone of DNA and RNA, and a main actor in cell metabolism. The bacteria became more active, reproduced more quickly, ate lots more phosphorus and made loads more O2.

"Phosphorus is not only essential for life," Planavsky said. "What's implicit in all this is: It can control the amount of life on our planet."

When the newly multiplied bacteria died, they fell to the floor of those ocean shallows, stacking up layer by layer to decay and enrich the mud with phosphorus. The mud eventually compressed to stone.

"As the biomass increased in phosphorus content, the more of it landed in layers of sedimentary rock," Reinhard said. "To scientists, that shale is the pages of the sea floor's history book."

Scientists have thumbed through them for decades, compiling data. Planavsky and Reinhard analyzed some 15,000 rock records for their study.

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Sex evolved to help future generations fight infection, scientists show

The scientists examined 6,000 Daphnia, waterflea, as part of the study.

Why does sex exist when organisms that clone themselves use less time and energy, and do not need a mate to produce offspring? Researchers at the University of Stirling aiming to answer this age-old question have discovered that sex can help the next generation resist infection.

Populations that clone themselves are entirely female and do not need sex to reproduce. As sex requires males, and males do not produce offspring themselves, an entirely clonal population should always reproduce faster than a sexual one.

Yet while some animal and plant species can reproduce without sex, such as komodo dragons, starfish and bananas, sex is still the dominant mode of reproduction in the natural world.

Scientists know that sex allows genes to mix, allowing populations to quickly evolve and adapt to changing environments, including rapidly evolving parasites.

However, for sex to beat cloning as a reproduction strategy, there must be large-scale benefits that make a difference to the next generation. The theory has been difficulty to test as most organisms are either wholly sexual or clonal so cannot be compared easily.

A team of experts from the University of Stirling have taken an innovative approach to test the costs and benefits of sex. Using an organism that can reproduce both ways, the waterflea, researchers found sexually produced offspring were more than twice as resistant to infectious disease as their clonal sisters.

Dr Stuart Auld of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, said: "One of the oldest questions in evolutionary biology is, why does sex exist when it uses up so much time and energy?

"Sex explains the presence of the peacock's tail, the stag's antlers and the male bird of paradise's elaborate dance. But if a female of any of these species produced offspring on her own, without sex, her offspring should come to dominate, while the other females watch the redundant males fighting and dancing. So, why are we not surrounded by clonal organisms?

"By comparing clonal and sexual daughters from the same mothers, we found sexually produced offspring get less sick than offspring that were produced clonally. The ever-present need to evade disease can explain why sex persists in the natural world in spite of the costs."

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