http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Many terrestrial animals are frequently observed scavenging on other animals– whether it is a hyena stealing a lion kill in the Serengeti or a buzzard swooping down on a dead animal. However, documenting this sort of activity in the oceans is especially difficult, and often overlooked in marine food web studies. http://phys.org/news284825206.html Biology Wed, 10 Apr 2013 15:07:39 EST news284825206 (Phys.org) —A ground-breaking new study challenges popular assumptions about the feeding behaviour of the world's largest predatory fish, the white shark. http://phys.org/news282990252.html Biology Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:24:36 EST news282990252 A University of Florida researcher has described a new genus and species of extinct saber-toothed cat from Polk County, Fla., based on additional fossil acquisitions of the animal over the last 25 years. http://phys.org/news282487617.html Other Sciences Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:47:07 EST news282487617 As the nations of the world prepare to vote on measures to restrict international trade in endangered sharks in early March, a team of researchers has found that one of these species – the oceanic whitetip shark – regularly crosses international boundaries. Efforts by individual nations to protect this declining apex predator within their own maritime borders may therefore need to be nested within broader international conservation measures. http://phys.org/news280598950.html Biology Wed, 20 Feb 2013 17:00:06 EST news280598950 Indonesia has announced a new shark and manta ray sanctuary, the first to protect the species in the rich marine ecosystem of the Coral Triangle, known as the "Amazon of the ocean". http://phys.org/news280573368.html Biology Wed, 20 Feb 2013 09:30:01 EST news280573368 (Phys.org)—New research by Colorado State University finds that the removal of wolves from Yellowstone National Park caused complex changes in ecological processes that cannot be simply reversed by wolf reintroduction alone. The research findings are presented in a new paper, "Stream hydrology limits recovery of riparian ecosystems after wolf reintroduction," which is published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences and concludes that the effects of apex predator removal are unpredictable and are not symmetrical with the effects of predator reintroduction. http://phys.org/news279441407.html Biology Thu, 07 Feb 2013 06:50:04 EST news279441407 (Phys.org)—Off the coast of Antarctica, a 4-foot-long, bright yellow tube is drifting through the Southern Ocean and collecting scientific data on the frigid surrounding water. http://phys.org/news277633824.html Space & Earth Thu, 17 Jan 2013 08:32:02 EST news277633824 (Phys.org)—Palaeontologists who examined a new fossil found in southern California have thrown doubt on earlier claims that a "killer walrus" once existed. http://phys.org/news277626834.html Other Sciences Thu, 17 Jan 2013 06:34:07 EST news277626834 University of Delaware researchers are using an underwater robot to find and follow sand tiger sharks that they previously tagged with transmitters. The innovative project is part of a multi-year partnership with Delaware State University to better understand the behavior and migration patterns of the sharks in real time. http://phys.org/news269682233.html Biology Wed, 17 Oct 2012 08:44:15 EST news269682233 White sharks, the largest predatory sharks in the ocean, are thought of as apex predators that feed primarily on seals and sea lions. But a new study by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows surprising variability in the dietary preferences of individual sharks. http://phys.org/news268062914.html Biology Fri, 28 Sep 2012 17:00:01 EST news268062914 (Phys.org) -- An international team of astronomers has observed the heart of a distant quasar with unprecedented sharpness, two million times finer than human vision. The observations, made by connecting the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope to two others on different continents for the first time, is a crucial step towards the dramatic scientific goal of the “Event Horizon Telescope” project: imaging the supermassive black holes at the centre of our own galaxy and others. http://phys.org/news261814032.html Space & Earth Wed, 18 Jul 2012 07:07:33 EST news261814032 Two snow leopards were captured, fitted with satellite collars, and released for the first time in Afghanistan by a team of Wildlife Conservation Society conservationists and Afghan veterinarians conducting research during a recent expedition. http://phys.org/news261742688.html Biology Tue, 17 Jul 2012 11:30:01 EST news261742688 the surface grime that hides the beauty of an object. But this new image of Messier 78 and surroundings, which reveals the submillimetre-wavelength radiation from dust grains in space, shows that dust can be dazzling. Dust is important to astronomers as dense clouds of gas and dust are the birthplaces of new stars. http://phys.org/news255164446.html Space & Earth Wed, 02 May 2012 08:03:34 EST news255164446 (PhysOrg.com) -- The focus of Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Photon Injector Experiment, APEX, is an extraordinary electron gun specially designed for the front end of superconducting accelerators. When it’s complete, the APEX gun will be able to produce well-formed bunches of electrons in pulses a few trillionths or even mere quadrillionths of a second long, at rates of up to a million bunches per second. http://phys.org/news251107102.html Physics Fri, 16 Mar 2012 08:58:50 EST news251107102 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new image from the APEX (Atacama Pathfinder Experiment) telescope in Chile shows a sinuous filament of cosmic dust more than ten light-years long. In it, newborn stars are hidden, and dense clouds of gas are on the verge of collapsing to form yet more stars. It is one of the regions of star formation closest to us. The cosmic dust grains are so cold that observations at wavelengths of around one millimetre, such as these made with the LABOCA camera on APEX, are needed to detect their faint glow. http://phys.org/news248518169.html Space & Earth Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:49:38 EST news248518169 (PhysOrg.com) -- Using the APEX telescope, a team of astronomers has found the strongest link so far between the most powerful bursts of star formation in the early Universe, and the most massive galaxies found today. The galaxies, flowering with dramatic starbursts in the early Universe, saw the birth of new stars abruptly cut short, leaving them as massive — but passive — galaxies of aging stars in the present day. The astronomers also have a likely culprit for the sudden end to the starbursts: the emergence of supermassive black holes. http://phys.org/news246701144.html Space & Earth Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:05:58 EST news246701144 South Australian Museum and University of Adelaide scientists working on fossils from Kangaroo Island, South Australia, have found eyes belonging to a giant 500 million-year-old marine predator that sat at the top of the earth's first food chain. http://phys.org/news242484850.html Other Sciences Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:00:04 EST news242484850 The enormous decline of large, apex predators and "consumers" ranging from wolves to lions, sharks and sea otters may represent the most powerful impacts humans have ever had on Earth's ecosystems, a group of 24 researchers concluded today in a new report in the journal Science. http://phys.org/news229872585.html Biology Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:31:41 EST news229872585 (PhysOrg.com) -- Molecules of hydrogen peroxide have been found for the first time in interstellar space. The discovery gives clues about the chemical link between two molecules critical for life: water and oxygen. On Earth, hydrogen peroxide plays a key role in the chemistry of water and ozone in our planet’s atmosphere, and is familiar for its use as a disinfectant or to bleach hair blonde. Now it has been detected in space by astronomers using the ESO-operated APEX telescope in Chile. http://phys.org/news229144276.html Space & Earth Wed, 06 Jul 2011 06:00:02 EST news229144276 Shark populations over the last 50 years have decreased dramatically. From habitat degradation to overfishing and finning, human activities have affected their populations and made certain species all but disappear. http://phys.org/news228408557.html Biology Mon, 27 Jun 2011 15:49:28 EST news228408557 An unprecedented decade-long study of apex predators in the Pacific Ocean found a wider range of distribution among some species than previously thought, unknown relationships between other species, and the importance of biological "hotspots" to the survival of most of these sea creatures. http://phys.org/news227965685.html Biology Wed, 22 Jun 2011 13:00:01 EST news227965685 An international team of scientists, led by the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University, has used DNA to determine that groups of dusky sharks (Carcharhinus obscurus) and copper sharks (Carcharhinus brachyurus) living in different coastal regions across the globe are separate populations of each species. Both are large apex predators that are heavily exploited for the shark fin trade, which claims tens of millions of animals every year to produce the Asian delicacy, shark fin soup. Many of these species are declining as a result of this fishing pressure for their fins. http://phys.org/news223119232.html Biology Wed, 27 Apr 2011 10:34:13 EST news223119232 Structures thought of as the oldest known fossils of microbes might actually be microscopic mineral formations not associated with life, suggesting that astrobiologists have to be careful calling alien objects “life” when scientists have trouble telling what is or was alive on Earth. http://phys.org/news219670323.html Space & Earth Fri, 18 Mar 2011 12:32:28 EST news219670323 (PhysOrg.com) -- It appears that the supposed oldest examples of life on our planet -- 3.5 billion-year-old bacteria fossils found in Australian rock called Apex Chert -- are nothing more than tiny gaps in the rock that are packed with minerals. http://phys.org/news219499419.html Space & Earth Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:03:58 EST news219499419 (PhysOrg.com) -- A rock formation in Western Australia was the site of great excitement a couple of decades ago when it revealed evidence of the oldest fossils of bacteria ever found, but a new study casts doubt on those findings. http://phys.org/news217488187.html Space & Earth Mon, 21 Feb 2011 08:00:01 EST news217488187 The catastrophic decline around the world of "apex" predators such as wolves, cougars, lions or sharks has led to a huge increase in smaller "mesopredators" that are causing major economic and ecological disruptions, a new study concludes. http://phys.org/news173622881.html Biology Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:50:02 EST news173622881 Sandbar, dusky and tiger sharks are among dozens of shark species living in the coastal waters off the U.S. East Coast. Little is known about many of the species, but a survey begun nearly 25 years ago is helping scientists and fishery resource managers to monitor shark populations and their role in marine ecosystems. http://phys.org/news169393166.html Biology Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:50:04 EST news169393166 Researchers presented data at the 104th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA) showing that uterus sparing surgery is an effective and safe treatment for women who want to preserve the integrity of vaginal function after pelvic organ prolapse. Hysterectomy may not be the only option for women with pelvic organ prolapse. http://phys.org/news159973838.html Medicine & Health Sun, 26 Apr 2009 14:11:00 EST news159973838 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have a new insight into the active galaxy Centaurus A (NGC 5128), as the jets and lobes emanating from the central black hole have been imaged at submillimetre wavelengths for the first time. The new data, from the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope in Chile, which is operated by ESO, have been combined with visible and X-ray wavelengths to produce this striking new image. http://phys.org/news152344528.html Space & Earth Wed, 28 Jan 2009 05:56:03 EST news152344528