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Environmental News Network -- Know Your Environment
New research shows that maternal exposure to a common and ubiquitous form of industrial pollution can harm the immune system of offspring and that this injury is passed along to subsequent generations, weakening the body’s defenses against infections such as the influenza virus.
Contrary to popular belief, cartilage in human joints can repair itself through a process similar to that used by creatures such as salamanders and zebrafish to regenerate limbs, researchers at Duke Health found.
How do binary stars form? To help find out, ESO's Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) recently captured one of the highest resolution images yet taken of a binary star system in formation.
A new study provides insight into the behavior of small sharks when encountering a common ocean phenomenon known as internal waves. These waves play powerful and still unknown roles in the exchange of heat, energy, water properties and nutrients throughout the ocean, and can change the vertical distribution of animals in the water column.
The study, to be published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography, found that sharks can respond actively to large internal waves, diving deeper and encountering colder temperatures, which has an energetic cost. The research is important to the conservation and management of Squalus acanthias, or dogfish, a once abundant but now globally declining species of shark.
“This is one of the first studies to describe how sharks or other large organisms respond to an internal wave,” said lead author Jesús Pineda, a benthic ecologist with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) on Cape Cod. “These sharks are a resource for New England fishermen, but worldwide it is a threatened species. There are many things we don’t understand about their physiology or their distribution. This study helps fill in a piece of the puzzle.”
Read more at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Image: Bands of smooth water alternated with bands of rough water can indicate the presence of an internal wave. CREDIT: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Natural disasters such as hurricanes often leave devastation in their wake.
Yale researchers have agreed to develop, deploy, and test a new portable MRI scanner, a device its developer hopes will cost a fraction of that of traditional MRIs and make the new imaging technology available in clinics in the U.S. and around the world.
