Saturday, October 27, 2012

Researchers Emphasize the Need to Monitor Rivers for Triclosan

As an antibacterial and antifungal agent, Triclosan is used in everything from toothpaste, to soaps, socks and trash bags. While the US Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the European Union all regulate triclosan, the chemical is not monitored and often gets absorbed into sewage sludge after wastewater treatment.Researchers from Germany and Slovakia are claiming that triclosan is harmful to the ecology of rivers and are calling for further monitoring of the chemical. After monitoring the Elbe river basin, concentrations of the chemical at various test sites were found to exceed the predicted no-effect concentration for algal communities. From the 500 river basin-specific pollutants investigated, triclosan ranked sixth as one of the most particularly harmful substances in Europe. According to an article published in the journal Environmental Science Pollution Research, scientists want to emphasize the importance for routine monitoring programs at the European scale.
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Stream of Stars Slowly Being Ingested by the Milky Way

Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, researchers have discovered a band, or stream, of stars believed to be the remnant of an ancient star cluster slowly being ingested by the Milky Way, Earth's home galaxy.
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Friday, October 26, 2012

Climate Change May Alter Amphibian Evolution

Most of the more than 6,000 species of frogs in the world lay their eggs in water. But many tropical frogs lay their eggs out of water. This behavior protects the eggs from aquatic predators, such as fish and tadpoles, but also increases their risk of drying out. Justin Touchon, post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, discovered that climate change in Panama may be altering frogs' course of evolution.
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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Singing Sand Dunes

What does Elvis Presley have in common with a sand dune? No, it's not that people sometimes spot both in the vicinity of Las Vegas. Instead, some sand dunes, like The King, can sing. And new research looking for clues to how streams of sand can sing may explain why some dunes croon in more than one pitch at the same time.
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Thursday, October 18, 2012

Giant Impact Scenario May Explain the Unusual Moons of Saturn

Among the oddities of the outer solar system are the middle-sized moons of Saturn, a half-dozen icy bodies dwarfed by Saturn's massive moon Titan. According to a new model for the origin of the Saturn system, these middle-sized moons were spawned during giant impacts in which several major satellites merged to form Titan.
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