Gizmorama - April 2, 2014

Good Morning,

Why are salamanders in the Eastern U.S. shrinking? Disappearing habitat? Global warming? Influx of predators? Evolution?

Learn about this interesting story and more from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- Why are salamanders in the Eastern U.S. shrinking? --*
By: BROOKS HAYS - UPI

Bigger is often better, at least when it comes to being an animal. That's why new evidence regarding salamanders in the Eastern United States is so alarming. "Bigger animals in general tend to get more mates, they have more offspring, they tend to win in any sort of battles -- whether it's courtship or territorial behaviors," Dr. Karen Lips, associate professor of biology at the University of Maryland, recently told BBC News. Lips and a team of researchers found that salamander specimens caught in the Appalachian Mountains are on average 8 percent smaller than those caught from the same habitat in the 1980s. Lips began capturing salamander species in 2007, picking up on the research efforts of Professor Richard Highton, now retired, who collected salamander species up and down the East Coast from 1957 to 2007. Highton's collection of thousands of salamanders has remained preserved for scientific study at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum Service Center in Suitland, Maryland. Lips began comparing her newer specimens to Highton's exhaustive collection in an effort to find out why population numbers throughout the East Coast were declining. In doing so, Lips showed that salamanders were getting smaller and smaller over the years, and that no obvious disease or habitat loss was to blame. "Body size is a really, really important factor for most animals," explained Lips. "When you shrink that affects what can eat you, what you can eat, how successful you're going to be at reproducing. Bigger is generally better." Lips collaborated with other scientists to get a better understanding on why exactly salamanders were shrinking. The most likely culprit: global warming. As temperatures heat up, so do the animals' metabolisms. Lips and her colleagues determined that modern salamanders are using 7 to 8 percent more energy to survive on a day-to-day basis. Lips recently published her findings in the journal Global Change Biology. In her study, she cited previous research that showed the body sizes of a variety of cold-blooded animals shrink in response to higher temperatures. She hopes to conduct more research to get a better understanding of salamanders' ability to adapt to the changing climate.


*-- MIT engineers create manufacturing materials half-inanimate, half-alive --*
By: BROOKS HAYS - UPI

Engineers at MIT have created "living materials," combining the advantages of living cells with the functionality of nonliving materials. Living cells are able to respond to their environment, synthesize new organic compounds, and are easily scalable. While inanimate materials can offer practical benefits, like light emission or electricity. By taking the best of both worlds -- the biotic and the inanimate -- scientists hope they'll be able to design more complex and versatile devices and technology, such as solar cells, self-healing materials, or diagnostic sensors. "Our idea is to put the living and the nonliving worlds together to make hybrid materials that have living cells in them and are functional," said Timothy Lu, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and biological engineering at MIT. "It's an interesting way of thinking about materials synthesis, which is very different from what people do now, which is usually a top-down approach." Lu's research into living materials is detailed in the latest issue of Nature Materials. Lu and his fellow researchers were able to bioengineer E. coli -- outfitted with gold and tiny crystals -- to naturally create rows of gold nanowires, a network that conducts electricity. "It shows that indeed you can make cells that talk to each other and they can change the composition of the material over time," Lu said. "Ultimately, we hope to emulate how natural systems, like bone, form. No one tells bone what to do, but it generates a material in response to environmental signals."

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