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Archive for the ‘habitats’ category: Page 88

May 28, 2019

Ancient fungi may have laid the groundwork for complex life

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, habitats

But previous examination of the fungal “molecular clock,” using DNA-based methods, suggested that fungi may have evolved much earlier, between 760 million and 1.06 billion years ago. Extracted from Arctic Canadian shales, the newly discovered billion-year-old fossilized fungal spores and hyphae (long thin tubes) plug the gap in the fossil record and suggest that fungi may have occupied land well before plants.

The fungal fossils were found in rocks that were probably once part a shallow-water estuary. Such environments are typically great for fungi thanks to nutrient-rich waters and the build up of washed-up organic matter to feed on. The high salinity, high mineral and low oxygen content of these ancient coastal habitats also provided great conditions to perfectly preserve the tough chitin molecules embedded within fungal cell walls that otherwise would have decomposed.

While it’s not certain whether the newly-discovered ancient fungi actually lived within the estuary or were washed into the sediments from the land, they show many of the distinctive features you’d expect in modern terrestrial fungi. The germinating spores are clearly defined, as are the branching, thread-like tubes that help fungi explore their environment, named hyphae. Even the cell walls are distinctively fungal, being made up of two clear layers. In fact, if you didn’t know they were so old, you’d be hard-pressed to distinguish them from modern fungi.

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May 27, 2019

The Astounding Engineering Behind the Giant Magellan Telescope

Posted by in categories: education, engineering, habitats, space

It’s easy to miss the mirror forge at the University of Arizona. While sizable, the Richard F. Caris Mirror Laboratory sits in the shadow of the university’s much larger 56,000-seat football stadium. Even its most distinctive feature—an octagonal concrete prominence emblazoned with the school’s logo—looks like an architectural feature for the arena next door. But it’s that tower that houses some of the facility’s most critical equipment.

Inside the lab, a narrow, fluorescent-green staircase spirals up five floors to the tower’s entrance. I’m a few steps from the top when lab manager Stuart Weinberger asks, for the third time, whether I have removed everything from my pockets.

“Glasses, keys, pens. Anything that could fall and damage the mirror,” he says. Weinberger has agreed to escort me to the top of the tower and onto a catwalk some 80 feet above a mirror 27.5 feet in diameter. A mirror that has already taken nearly six years—and $20 million—to make. “Most people in the lab aren’t even allowed up here,” he says. That explains Weinberger’s nervousness about the contents of my pockets (which are really, truly empty), and why he has tethered my camera to my wrist with a short line of paracord.

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May 27, 2019

Researchers develop wood that can cool a home

Posted by in categories: habitats, materials

Wood has a series of tiny structures inside that are used to carry water and nutrients to all parts of a living tree. Scientists have now figured out how to harness those same small structures to keep a home cool. Researchers at the University of Maryland and the University of Colorado Boulder say that the material could save 20% in AC bills.

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May 26, 2019

Cooling wood: Engineers create strong, sustainable solution for passive cooling

Posted by in categories: energy, habitats, nanotechnology, sustainability

What if the wood your house was made of could save your electricity bill? In the race to save energy, using a passive cooling method that requires no electricity and is built right into your house could save even chilly areas of the US some cash. Now, researchers at the University of Maryland and the University of Colorado have harnessed nature’s nanotechnology to help solve the problem of finding a passive way for buildings to dump heat that is sustainable and strong.

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May 24, 2019

‘Like trying to build the USA in the middle of the Atlantic’: Elon Musk just dunked on Jeff Bezos’ vision to build floating space colonies

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, habitats, space

I agree with Bezos on this one.


Elon Musk dismissed Jeff Bezos’ plan of housing a trillion people in orbiting ‘O’Neill colonies,’ which resemble gargantuan spinning cylinders.

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May 21, 2019

One Dragonfly Can Eat Hundreds of Mosquitos a Day. Keep These Plants in Your Yard to Attract Dragonflies

Posted by in categories: food, habitats

It’s possible to help reduce mosquito populations around your house without using nasty chemicals. Did you know that dragonflies are the biggest predators of mosquitos and can eat hundreds of them a day? This makes them a great addition to your garden and the safest natural pest control. They keep mosquito population in check.

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May 21, 2019

Scientists: Pluto May be Hiding Alien Life in Buried Oceans

Posted by in categories: alien life, habitats

The discovery could mean that other inhospitable habitats may potentially harbor life.


This could mean there are more oceans in the universe than previously thought, making the existence of extraterrestrial life more plausible.

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May 20, 2019

Amazon Tribe Wins Lawsuit Against Big Oil, Saving Millions Of Acres Of Rainforest

Posted by in categories: government, habitats, law

The Amazon Rainforest is well known across the world for being the largest and most dense area of woodland in the world. Spanning across nine countries, the Amazon is home to millions of different animal and plant species, as well as harboring some for the world’s last remaining indigenous groups. The Waorani people of Pastaza are an indigenous tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon and have lived in the Rainforest for many generations. However, there Home came under threat from a large oil company — they didn’t take it lightly.

Ecuador Rainforest Amazon River

After a long legal battle with a number of organizations, the Waorani people successfully protected half a million acres of their ancestral territory in the Amazon rainforest from being mined for oil drilling by huge oil corporations. The auctioning off of Waorani lands to the oil companies was suspended indefinitely by a three-judge panel of the Pastaza Provincial Court. The panel simply trashed the consultation process the Ecuadorian government had undertaken with the tribe in 2012, which rendered the attempt at land purchase null and void.

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May 20, 2019

Biology and Physics on Station Today Promote Moon Mission Success in 2024

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, habitats, space

The Expedition 59 crew is exploring space’s long-term impacts on biology and physics today helping astronauts go to the Moon in 2024. #Moon2024


The six residents aboard the International Space Station kicked off the workweek today exploring microgravity’s long-term impacts on biology and physics. The Expedition 59 crew is also ramping up for a fourth spacewalk at the orbital lab this year.

NASA is planning to send men and women to the Moon in 2024 and life science on the station will help flight surgeons keep lunar astronauts healthy. The space physics research will also provide critical insights to engineers designing future spacecraft and habitats for exploration missions.

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May 20, 2019

Achieving Bezos’ bold vision of space settlement requires bold policy direction

Posted by in categories: economics, habitats, policy, space

Those who watched the full 51-minute version of Jeff Bezos’ May 9 Blue Moon announcement were treated to a tutorial on the work of Dr. Gerard K. O’Neill. In the 1970s Dr. O’Neill popularized the idea of space colonies that rotate in orbit allowing tens of thousands of inhabitants to live comfortable lives in Earth-like habitats. Bezos even commissioned updated renderings to excite the audience’s imagination.

Bezos articulated, as he has on many occasions that human civilization should and must expand out into the space to live and work in permanent space settlements. Doing so will allow the best planet in the Solar System, the Earth, to become a protected treasure in the vast harshness of space.

He understands that by creating the infrastructure to accelerate economic development in space his vision of space settlement will more rapidly come to fruition. But Bezos is sober about his space colony ambitions. He calls it a multigenerational endeavor. And so it may be.

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