, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- EBOLA MAY BE KILLING CHIMPS AND GORILLAS
The recent Ebola virus outbreak in Gabon isn't limiting its devastation to human victims -- scientists at the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society are working to prevent the outbreak from decimating wild populations of gorillas, chimpanzees and other wildlife in Gabon and neighboring Congo. They have already found dead gorillas, chimpanzees, and duikers -- a forest antelope sometimes eaten by chimps. "Human deaths have been confirmed with laboratory evidence this week, but this current outbreak suggests that gorillas and chimps are indeed at great risk as well," said William Karesh of the WCS' Field Veterinary Program. Nearby Odzala National Park in Congo is home to tens of thousands of western lowland gorillas. To prevent further spread, officials at ECOFAC and the Congolese government have arranged to stop human traffic between the Ebola outbreak and the villages surrounding Odzala, while Gabonese officials have cordoned off the region to prevent traffic movements on the Gabon side. Karesh and others believe that the last outbreak in the region killed large numbers of chimps and gorillas four years ago.
AN ALGAE IS CLOSEST RELATIVE TO PLANT PIONEER
Some 470 million years ago, the first plants left the ocean to colonize the then-barren dry land, and now researchers at the University of Maryland have found the closest living relative to those plants: a common species of freshwater algae. In work described in this week's edition of the journal Science, the team compared the gene sequences of freshwater algae and found that the closest relatives are a group of algae called Charales, which survive today in fresh water around the world. "Science has long believed that land plants are derived from primeval algae that became adapted to live on land, but we weren't sure exactly how this happened, or which living algae were most closely related to land plants," said Maryland professor Charles F. Delwiche. "It's an important part of the Tree of Life that has been unresolved." The Charales and those long-ago pioneers shared a common ancestor, and the researchers have an idea of what it looked like. "We now can make specific inferences about what this organism looked like. It wasn't just some sort of amorphous pond scum. It was made up of branching threads and reproduced with eggs and sperm," said Delwiche.
SELECTION PRODUCES COAL-EATING BACTERIA
Coal is the most abundant -- and the most environmentally-damaging -- of the fossil fuels. But researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed strains of bacteria that can feed on the source of coal's harmful pollutants, and which could potentially be used to produce a more efficient and cleaner-burning coal. "These bacteria can convert ordinary coal to an environmentally attractive resource," said Brookhaven chemist Mow Lin. When burned, coal releases harmful sulfur and nitrogen oxides. Other researchers had attempted to use bacteria to remove the responsible impurities, but the high pressure, heat and acidity of coal processing killed the bacteria. Lin and his team turned to so-called extremophiles, which evolved to survive in geothermal locations in the South Pacific and North America. They then grew some of the microbes in conditions with a small amount of crude oil, and selected the strains of bacteria that grew the best and transferred them to a new culture medium with a higher amount of oil and lower levels of other nutrients. They repeated the process until they arrived at bacteria that thrived on high levels of crude oil. "Essentially, we are forcing the bacteria to adapt to the new food source," said Lin. By similarly altering other variables such as temperature and acidity, they developed strains of bacteria that can survive under a variety of extreme conditions.
MARS ODYSSEY MAKES FIRST SIGNIFICANT DISCOVERY
The Mars Odyssey spacecraft has detected large deposits of hydrogen -- possibly in the form of water -- near Mars' poles, according to a British Broadcasting Corp. report. The finding by the probe's neutron spectrometer marks the craft's first significant discovery. "It is big," said Bill Feldman of Los Alamos National Laboratory, in describing the signal picked up by the spacecraft. The initial indications of hydrogen deposit has NASA scientists excited because the readings are clearer and more definite than had been expected. "We were expecting that it would take many orbits to determine the presence of hydrogen," said Stephen Saunders, a MO scientist. "But we saw it the very first time." It is well-known that Mars has water frozen in its polar icecaps and dispersed as vapor in the planet's thin clouds, and there is strong evidence to suggest that water once flowed on the planet's surface. The MO is currently modifying its orbit to prepare for a mapping mission to begin in January, when it will scan the chemical composition of the surface. "We think it will be a very exciting winter and spring," James Garvin, a NASA scientist, told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
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(EDITOR: For more information on ebola, call 718-220-3682; about algae, call 301-405-4627; about bacteria, call 631-344-8350)
