Sea star disease grows on West Coast
A mysterious disease that causes sea stars to disintegrate is exploding on the Oregon coast.
Oregon State University marine ecologist Kristen Milligan said Oregon was largely spared last year as the disease known as sea star wasting syndrome spread in California, Washington, British Columbia and Alaska.
But monitoring of tide pools along much of the coast shows the number of sea stars affected has jumped from just 1 percent in April to as high as 50 percent now.
“This is an unprecedented event,” said Bruce Menge, a professor of marine biology at OSU. “It’s very serious. Some of the sea stars most heavily affected are keystone predators that influence the whole diversity of life in the intertidal zone.”
In Oregon, the disease is primarily affecting ochre sea stars. But in all, it has affected 10 different species up and down the coast. The cause is still unknown.
Moon rocks support Earth collision theory
A new study strengthens the notion that our moon was created by a collision between Earth and a planet-size object some 4.5 billion years ago.
German scientists studied moon rocks gathered by astronauts nearly a half-century ago in the Apollo 11, 12 and 16 missions. They analyzed various kinds of oxygen atoms and found the moon rocks have a different makeup than Earth rocks do. That fits with the idea that the moon would contain material from the object that struck Earth.
The results also suggest that the moon may be a 50-50 mix of material from this object and from Earth. The study was published Thursday by the journal Science.
— ASSOCIATED PRESS
MERS: To humans from bats via camels
One of the earliest known victims of the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus — a retired Saudi military man who owned a herd of camels outside Jeddah — almost certainly was infected when he applied a topical medication to the runny nose of one of his sick animals, a new study says.
But the authors of the latest effort to pinpoint the origins of MERS said the farmer’s camel was probably an intermediate MERS host, and suggested that bats may have been the virus’s first sanctuary.
In a report published online by the New England Journal of Medicine, a team of Saudi biomedical researchers used a combination of field investigation and viral genetic sequencing to track down one of the MERS virus’ earliest leaps from animal to human. Their inquiries showed that the Saudi victim, who died 15 days after being admitted to a hospital, had tended to several camels that were suffering from an unusual nasal discharge.
Roadkill app could
help animals, people
The dirty business of counting doe DOAs has gone high-tech, courtesy of a Utah State University team that developed a smartphone application to chart collisions between motor vehicles and animals.
The system could help reduce collisions that cause an estimated 200 human deaths and $8.4 billion in property damage annually nationwide, not to mention 1 million animal deaths per day, according to Daniel D. Olson, a Utah State wildlife biologist and lead author of a study this week in the online publication PLOS One.
The smartphone and desktop application is linked to a database that can update constantly. The improved data may enable transportation planners to construct fences and wildlife crossings where they do the most good.
— LOS ANGELES TIMES