The Amount Of Water Injected In Conventional Oil And Gas Production Exceeds Fracking By 10X
science20.com – High-volume hydraulic fracturing, colloquially called fracking, injects water, sand and chemicals under high pressure into petroleum-bearing rock formations to recover previously inaccessible oil and natural gas.
Source: Jennifer C. McIntosh, Grant Ferguson. Conventional Oil – The Forgotten Part of the Water‐Energy Nexus. Groundwater, 2019.
Invasive Species Could Kill Nearly Half of U.S. Forests
discovermagazine.com – Around 40 percent of forests in the contiguous U.S. are at risk from invasive species, along with the millions of tons of carbon they soak up every year.
Source: Songlin Fei, Randall S. Morin, Christopher M. Oswalt, Andrew M. Liebhold. Biomass losses resulting from insect and disease invasions in US forests. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2019.
World’s Largest Parrot Lived 19 Million Years Ago in New Zealand
sci-news.com – An international group of paleontologists has found two incomplete bones from an ancient parrot with a mass of 7 kg, double that of the heaviest known parrot, the kakapo (Strigops habroptila).
Source: Trevor H. Worthy, Suzanne J. Hand, Michael Archer, R. Paul Scofield, Vanesa L. De Pietri. Evidence for a giant parrot from the Early Miocene of New Zealand. Biology Letters, 2019.
Staring at Seagulls Makes Them Less Likely to Snatch Your Food
sci-news.com – A team of researchers from the University of Exeter, UK, put a bag of chips on the ground and tested how long it took herring gulls (Larus argentatus) to approach when a human was watching them, compared to when the human looked away: on average, gulls took 21 seconds longer to approach the food with a human staring at them.
Source: Madeleine Goumas, Isabella Burns, Laura A. Kelley, Neeltje J. Boogert. Herring gulls respond to human gaze direction. Biology Letters, 2019.
Researchers Develop New Method for Sexing Sperm
the-scientist.com – Scientists found they could sort mouse sperm prior to IVF by treating semen with a drug that selectively slows down X-bearing cells.
Source: Takashi Umehara, Natsumi Tsujita, Masayuki Shimada, Yukiko M Yamashita. Activation of Toll-like receptor 7/8 encoded by the X chromosome alters sperm motility and provides a novel simple technology for sexing sperm. PLOS Biology, 2019.
New Form of Biofluorescence Discovered
sci-news.com – A team of U.S. researchers has discovered a previously undescribed group of small molecule metabolites responsible for the green biofluorescence in two species of sharks.
Source: Hyun Bong Park, et al. Bright Green Biofluorescence in Sharks Derives from Bromo-Kynurenine Metabolism. iScience, 2019.
Astronomers Spot Massive Star-Forming Galaxies in Early Universe
sci-news.com – Using data from multiple space- and ground-based telescopes, an international team of astronomers has discovered 39 massive star-forming galaxies at a distance over 11.5 billion light-years away.
Source: T. Wang, et al. A dominant population of optically invisible massive galaxies in the early Universe. Nature, 2019.
Scientists Detect Eight New Repeating Fast Radio Bursts
geek.com – Astronomers identified eight new repeating fast radio burst (FRB) sources using Canada’s CHIME telescope. The findings, led by Bridget Andersen of McGill University, could mean a breakthrough in the study of these cosmic …
Source: The CHIME/FRB Collaboration, et al. CHIME/FRB Detection of Eight New Repeating Fast Radio Burst Sources. arXiv, 2019.
Earth's Magnetic Field Reversal Took Three Times Longer Than Thought
sciam.com – A new study suggests the last field reversal 773,000 years ago took 22,000 years to occur, which could explain some of the inner workings of our planet’s core
Source: Brad S. Singer, Brian R. Jicha, Nobutatsu Mochizuki, Robert S. Coe. Synchronizing volcanic, sedimentary, and ice core records of Earth’s last magnetic polarity reversal. Science Advances, 2019.
Ballistic Maggots, Synthetic Winks and Why You're Not Goop: This Week's Best Science GIFs
sciam.com – Enjoy and loop on
Source: G. M. Farley, et al. Adhesive latching and legless leaping in small, worm-like insect larvae. The Journal of Experimental Biology, 2019.
