Study: Stranded dolphins often deaf
WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say dolphins found weakened or dead near shore often have one thing in common -- they are nearly deaf.
University of South Florida scientists say in a marine world where hearing is as vital as sight dolphins unable to use sound to locate food or find family members often wind up weak and disoriented, The Washington Post reported Monday.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says 1,200 to 1,600 whales and dolphins are found stranded off the U.S. coast each year.
Without the ability to hear sounds, researchers say, dolphins can be helpless.
Some scientists think the problem is most likely a combination of old age, birth defects and disease but others point to man-made marine "noise."
Powerboats and huge oceangoing ships fill the water with engine noise. Oil and gas exploration efforts create noise from seismic tests of the seabed. Navy exercises reverberate with the sounds of explosions and sonar.
"These animals that are very finely tuned acoustic machines are now having … to deal with noises, with sounds that their ancestors never knew," says Randall Wells, a senior conservation scientist at the Chicago Zoological Society.
Canadian tailings pond causes toxic fears
CALGARY, Alberta, Nov. 15 (UPI) -- A tailings pond at a Canadian oil sands facility may be leaking toxic sludge into its surroundings, environmental activists say.
The pond, located in a remote area of Alberta, contains toxic waste from the Horizon oil sands project operated by Calgary's Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported Monday.
The tailings pond has been in operation for about a year. It has berms on three sides but is open on the western side where Canadian Natural Resources says topography and clay beneath the surface are sufficient to contain tailings in that section of the pond.
Such a setup is allowed under a plan approved six years ago by Alberta's Energy Resources Conservation Board.
But environmentalists and members of local First Nation bands aren't convinced.
"I feel like I want to cry," Fort McKay First Nation band Councilor Mike Orr said. "I grew up on the land. That's the way I was brought up -- to live off the land."
He and others say they worry about toxins entering the food chain.
Water expert and ecologist David Shindler from the University of Alberta agrees.
"This is such a big area," Schindler said. "Some of those chemicals have to be seeping into groundwater and Environment Canada should step in."
A spokesman for Environment Canada said the department would assess the tailings pond to ensure it complies with federal laws.
New form of lighting kills germs
GLASGOW, Scotland, Nov. 15 (UPI) -- Scottish researchers say they've developed a lighting system for hospitals that can effectively kill so-called "superbug" infections, including MRSA.
The technology, developed by researchers at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, decontaminates the air and exposed surfaces by bathing them in a narrow spectrum of visible-light wavelengths, known as HINS-light, ScienceDaily.com reported Monday.
In clinical trials at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, the system provided greater reductions of bacteria than were be achieved by cleaning and disinfection alone, researchers said.
"The technology kills pathogens but is harmless to patients and staff, which means for the first time, hospitals can continuously disinfect wards and isolation rooms," microbiologist John Anderson, one of the developers, said.
"The system works by using a narrow spectrum of visible-light wavelengths to excite molecules contained within bacteria," he said.
"This in turn produces highly reactive chemical species that are lethal to bacteria such as meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, and Clostridium difficile, known as C.diff."
HINS-light by itself has a violet hue, but the research team says a combination of LED technologies produces a warm white lighting system that can be used alongside normal hospital lighting.
Youngest, closest black hole suspected
CAMBIRDGE, Mass., Nov. 15 (UPI) -- U.S. astronomers say they've have found evidence of the youngest black hole in our cosmic neighborhood, providing a chance to watch one develop from infancy.
The 30-year-old object is a remnant of a supernova in a galaxy approximately 50 million light years from Earth, and could help scientists understand how stars explode, which ones leave behind black holes or neutron stars, and the number of black holes in our galaxy and elsewhere, a NASA release said Monday.
Data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and a number of other satellites revealed a bright source of X-rays that has remained steady during observation from 1995 to 2007 suggesting a black hole being fed either by material falling into it from the supernova or from a binary companion.
Scientists think the black hole, first discovered by an amateur astronomer in 1979, formed when a star about 20 times more massive than the sun collapsed.
"If our interpretation is correct, this is the nearest example where the birth of a black hole has been observed," Daniel Patnaude of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., says.
Although evidence strongly points to this object being a black hole, another intriguing possibility is that a young, rapidly spinning neutron star with a powerful wind of high energy particles could be responsible for the X-ray emission.
This would make the object the youngest and brightest example of such a "pulsar wind nebula" and the youngest known neutron star, scientists say.
