Butterflies are emerging over 10 days earlier in Spring than they did 65 years ago, and anthropogenic global warming is probably at fault, according to a study in Biology Letters.  

The study found that mean emergence date for adults of the Common Brown butterfly (Heteronympha merope) has shifted 1.6 days earlier per decade in Melbourne, Australia. Early emergence is causally linked with a simultaneous increase in air temperatures around Melbourne of approximately 0.14°C per decade, and this warming is known to be human-induced.

Dogs likely originated in the Middle East, according to a new genetic analysis published this week in Nature.

The study reports genetic data from more than 900 dogs from 85 breeds and more than 200 wild gray wolves (the ancestor of domestic dogs) worldwide, including populations from North America, Europe, the Middle East and East Asia. Researchers used molecular genetic techniques to analyze more than 48,000 genetic markers.

The data include samples from Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran — but they have not pinpointed a specific location in the Middle East where dogs originated.

A 3,000-year record from 52 of the world's oldest Sequoia trees shows that California's western Sierra Nevada was drought-ridden and often on fire from 800 to 1300, according to a new study published in Fire Ecology.

During those 500 years, known as the Medieval Warm Period, extensive fires burned through parts of the Giant Forest at intervals of about 3 to 10 years. Any individual tree was probably in a fire about every 10 to 15 years.

Knowing how giant sequoia trees responded to a 500-year warm spell in the past is important, the authors say, because climate change will probably subject the trees to such a warm, dry environment again.

Understanding Climate : #3 - Tilting At Seasons


The tilt of the earth's axis gives us our seasons.

But not in an obvious way.


Understanding climate science requires a cross-disciplinary approach.  This is the second part of the mainly astronomical section.  In part 2, I introduced the idea of, in a manner of speaking, building a model of our earth-moon-sun system.  Here I continue with a discussion of seasons and their primary astronomical causes. 

Information processing and entropy management - that's what organisms are about, right? Information and entropy are terms that get people excited, and yet it's extremely difficult to integrate formal ideas about information, free energy, entropy, etc. (much of this from modern statistical mechanics) into a meaningful biological framework. People (including myself) love to toss around terms like entropy and information, but in most cases I have encountered, efforts to apply these concepts to molecular/cellular biology are hopelessly vague and unhelpful. Once you get beyond the level of individual proteins in biology, it's difficult to apply some of the traditional concepts of physical chemistry.

The Fallacy Of The Average


A fallacy is a pattern of logical reasoning which appears on its surface to be a pattern of sound reasoning.  The fallacy of the average is based on the false notion that the effect of a thing averaged out on a large scale is equivalent to an effect of the same thing on a small scale.

A drop of rain falling anywhere in the Pacific is self-evidently insignificant as a matter of scale.

But what if that single drop of rain falls into the mains supply circuit of a radio?

Netherton syndrome is a rare autosomal recessive genodermatosis of unknown cause characterized by: erythroderma, trichorrhexis invaginata (TI) (bamboo hair), ichthyosis linearis circumflexa (ILC), atopic diathesis and failure to thrive.

The syndrome is named either as Netherton or as Comel and Netherton.

New satellite data reveal that the amount of ultraviolet (UV) radiation reaching Earth's surface increased markedly from the period 1979 to 1998 and then stabilized, according to a study recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.  

The primary culprit: decreasing levels of stratospheric ozone, a colorless gas that acts as Earth's natural sunscreen by shielding the surface from damaging UV radiation.

A new study in Environmental Science and Technology suggests that controlled burns release substantially less carbon dioxide emissions than wildfires of the same size and could be used to help the United States reduce its contribution to climate change.

Drawing on satellite observations and computer models of emissions, the researchers concluded that widespread prescribed burns can reduce fire emissions of carbon dioxide in the Western U.S. by an average of 18 to 25 percent, and by as much as 60 percent in certain forest systems.

Legislation restricting or banning smoking in public places reduces heart attacks, a study in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health suggests.

The study examined trends in acute heart attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand following the enactment of legislation which made smoking illegal in all workplaces including bars and restaurants.

Three years after a smoking ban in all workplaces was introduced hospital admissions for heart attacks among men and women aged 55-74 fell by 9 per cent. This figure rose to 13 per cent for 55-74 year olds who had never smoked.

Overall, the research showed heart attacks among people aged 30 and over fell by an average of 5 per cent in the three years following the ban.