They are testing wild birds and thousands of domestic fowl; analysing the viruses they find; and trying to trace people who have been exposed to infected patients.
pigeons and ducks in live bird markets in Shanghai and Hangzhou making markets the leading suspected source.
Authorities have culled since tens of thousands of birds and closed down markets in Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou.
The genetic sequences of the H7n9 viruses found in the birds are highly similar to those isolated from human patients,
because birds from one or a few sources would be transported to multiple markets, says Malik Peiris, a flu virologist at the University of Hong kong.
WHO/ECDC/Xinhua state mediabut the various bird species found to be infected may not be the original source,
and wholesalers the birds came from, Peiris says, and test birds up through the supply chain.
Researchers know that H7 flu viruses mainly infect wild birds such as ducks, geese, waders and gulls,
and that they occasionally jump into poultry flocks. Kwok-Yung Yuen, an infectious-disease expert at the University of Hong kong, notes the proximity of the reported human cases to the Yangtze river delta
home to many wild birds, and to Chongming Island near Shanghai, a renowned site for watching migratory birds."
"It s likely wild ducks and geese that are carrying it, he suggests. But this H7n9 virus has not yet been detected in wild birds in the area."
"There is very little specific information on the source of this particular virus strain, its ecology or reservoir,
and it is premature to be hypothesizing on the vectors, says Taej Mundkur, who is flyways programme manager for conservation group Wetlands International in The netherlands.
He also co-convenes the Asia-Pacific Working group on Migratory Waterbirds and Avian influenza with the Food and agriculture organization of the united nations (FAO.
Unlike its cousin H5n1 which has killed millions of birds and several hundred people in Asia and elsewhere since 2003 H7n9 does not cause serious bird disease,
greatly complicating efforts to control it, says Vincent Martin, interim head of the FAO s Emergency Prevention System for Transboundary Animal and Plant Pests and Diseases (EMPRES) in Rome.
It would be next to impossible to detect H7n9 through routine surveillance for sick poultry among China s 6 Â billion domestic birds."
) A key component the haemagglutinin (H) protein on the surface of the virus already contains mutations known to shift its binding preference from bird cells to those of mammals.
it would imply that each person had picked separately up infections from birds. Only four sequences from four human cases are so far available,
Should the virus become established in birds or other animals regular human infections might then occur providing opportunities for the virus to adapt better to humans,
In the three human cases, the genes coding for the internal proteins seem to come from H9n2 viruses a class that is endemic in birds,
seems to be similar to avian H11n9 viruses that were found in South korea in 2011;
In other words, the new virus seems to stem from a reassortment of three virus strains that infect only birds.
which was a mix of viruses that infect birds, pigs and humans. Most of the genetic analyses are still being carried out confidentially within THE WHO's global flu-research networks.
A striking feature of the novel virus is that its H protein is structurally similar to that of viruses that don t cause severe sickness in birds,
Flu viruses that don t sicken birds can, however, cause severe disease in humans simply because we lack any immunity to them.
scientists say that it seems clear from the sequence that the novel virus has acquired key mutations that permit the H protein to latch onto receptors on mammalian cells in the airways instead of onto avian receptors.
The fact that the virus does not seem to cause serious disease in birds has potential epidemiological and public-health implications,
But it might be almost impossible to control a virus in birds that generates few visible symptoms
China has reported not any recent H7 flu infections in birds, perhaps because such infections would not show up as serious disease,
is to track down which birds or animals the affected humans caught the virus from. H7 viruses are common in wild birds but much less so in poultry.
It therefore seems unlikely that three human cases in such a short space of time could result from contact with wild birds
says Peiris. Domestic fowl are the most likely alternative source of the virus . But given that H7n9 has mutations that enable it to infect mammals,
cocks an ear and taps on a data-logger strapped into the passenger seat. Since last week, Cooley, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, has been on the road mapping populations of periodical cicadas (Magicicada.
Koenig suggests that the answer may involve interactions with birds. He and Andrew Liebhold of the US Forest Service in Morgantown, West virginia, analysed 45 years of data from the North american Breeding Bird Survey (W. D. Koenig and A m. Liebhold Am.
Nat. 181,145-149; 2013) and found that bird populations tend to fall during the years in
which periodical cicadas emerge. Birds feed on cicadas, so Koenig expected to find the opposite pattern. He proposes that the masses of cicadas trigger long-term changes in the forest that end up causing bird populations to crash after 13 or 17 Â years.
The mechanism remains a mystery, but Koenig notes that one factor could be the flood of dead cicadas,
whose bodies are 10%nitrogen. The die off sends a pulse of fertilizer into the forest that temporarily enhances plant growth
but could later lead to unfavourable conditions for birds.""It s a pretty weird hypothesis, he admits.
Mednyi Island foxes subsist by hunting sea birds and scavenging seal carcasses. Because pollutants such as mercury are known to accumulate in marine animals
Goulson's review also cites earlier studies suggesting that grain-eating birds such as partridges may be dying after eating as few as five seeds treated with neonicotinoids.
How the chicken lost its penisthe case of the missing bird penis is a longstanding mystery in evolutionary biology.
But the identification of a molecular mechanism that controls penis loss in birds goes some way to solving this conundrum.
Roughly 97%of avian species sport little or nothing in the way of a phallus,
By contrast, ducks boast large and elaborately coiled penises that can measure about half the length of their bodies2.
They found that chickens initially form penises similar to those of ducks but that on about the ninth day of development, the nascent chicken penis called a genital tubercle stops growing
but the team discovered that many of the same genes that drive penis growth in ducks continued to be expressed strongly in chickens.
The results suggest that genital growth in birds is controlled by a common programme that has been customized by evolutionary tweaks in Bmp signalling
female chickens and other birds may have selected males with smaller penises in part to escape forced copulation.
Over time, that preference would have reshaped the genitalia of male birds
Brazil reports sharp drop in greenhouse emissionsbrazil s greenhouse-gas emissions fell nearly 39%between 2005 and 2010,
City life turns blackbirds into early birdsjust as city slickers have paced faster lives than country folk,
so too do compared urban birds with their forest-dwelling cousins. The reason, researchers report today,
and light have altered the city birds biological clocks1. The finding helps to explain prior reports that urban songbirds adopt more nocturnal lifestyles2-4 data that prompted Davide Dominoni, an ecologist at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell, Germany,
to investigate whether the birds activity patterns were merely behavioural responses to busy cities or were caused by an actual shift in the animals'body clocks.
For the study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Dominoni and his colleagues set up an experiment with European blackbirds (Turdus merula).
The scientists attached tiny 2. 2-gram radio-pulse transmitters to blackbirds living in Munich, Germany,
as well as to those living in a nearby forest. The transmitters monitored the birds activity for three weeks.
Dominoni found that whereas forest birds started their activity at dawn, city birds began 29 minutes earlier, on average,
and remained active for 6 minutes longer in the evening. Keen to determine these differences were due to physiological changes,
Dominoni collected blackbirds from both locations and placed them into light-and soundproof enclosures. For ten days these enclosures were illuminated with a constant
dim light so the birds had no idea what time of day it was, and their activity patterns were monitored.
The researchers found that the city birds in the enclosures had faster biological clocks than forest birds.
It took the city birds an average of 50 minutes less to go through a full 24-hour cycle of activity than it took forest birds.
And without the external stimuli of dawn and dusk, the urban birds behavioural rhythms weakened rapidly,
with their periods of activity and rest becoming more irregular than those of the forest birds.
Having such weakly set biological clocks could be a boon for the blackbirds.""It could make them better at coping with city environments that are not as predictable as the wilderness,
says Dominoni. But such clocks could also potentially have adverse health effects. Â"You have to wonder
if these city birds are not compensating by napping during the day or sleeping more deeply at night, is sleep deprivation reducing their cognitive abilities or shortening their life spans?
says Niels Rattenborg, an avian sleep biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen,
Others wonder whether birds biological clocks are altered permanently by city life.""I d be interested really in seeing an experiment where urban birds are transplanted to a rural environment,
and vice versa, says Daniel Mennill, an ornithologist at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada."
"Would the urban birds continue to wake up early? Would country birds change? We just don t know
Plastic wood is no green guaranteeishmael Tirado watches as his fellow construction workers rebuild the Steeplechase Pier, a central feature of New york s iconic Coney island boardwalk.
Millions of migratory birds overwinter here, and it is a precious spawning and feeding ground for more than 60 Â fish species including the critically endangered Chinese sturgeon (Acipenser sinensis).
At Dongtan,"this has had devastating consequences for many bird species, says Ma Zhijun, an ornithologist at Fudan University in Shanghai.
The shrinking of mudflats also threatens the hundreds of thousands of migratory shorebirds that rely on the reserve as a stopover site.
Crucially, they worry that a permanent barricade will cripple efforts to restore tidal habitats for birds.
For example, without the ebb and flow of tides, the sea bulrush (Scirpus mariqueter), a native intertidal grass bearing fruit and stalks that are key food sources for many birds
and will create more habitats for birds.""It s a better option if the alternative is to do nothing,
the authors of a study published today in Nature1 say that their finding reinforces the idea that H7 avian viruses are constantly mixing
Ducks, in particular, act as living mixing bowls for avian viruses. Domestic species encounter a large catalogue of wild-bird viruses,
which swap genes to form versions that can spread to chickens and to humans. Better surveillance of Chinese bird populations is needed to monitor the emergence of dangerous viruses such as H7n9,
says lead author Yi Guan, an influenza specialist at the University of Hong kong. In China, the virus has infected 135 people
Guan's team sampled wild birds and poultry markets around Shanghai in April, weeks after the H7n9 outbreak began there.
The researchers collected throat and intestinal swabs from 1, 341 birds, including chickens, ducks, geese, pigeons, partridges and quails, plus 1, 006 water and faecal samples from bird markets.
they found H7n9 and H7n7 to be hybrids of wild Eurasian waterfowl strains, such as H7n3 and H11n9.
The scientists think that those viruses swapped genes in domestic ducks before spreading to chickens, where they traded genes with a common chicken virus, H9n2.
Birds protect Costa rica's coffee cropthe yellow warbler may not pull a perfect latte, but it turns out it's a friend to coffee drinkers all the same.
Research in Costa rica shows that hungry warblers and other birds significantly reduce damage by a devastating coffee pest, the coffee berry borer beetle.
A study found that insectivorous birds cut infestations by the beetle Hypothenemus hampei by about half,
saving a medium-sized coffee farm up to US$9, 400 over a year s harvest roughly equal to Costa rica s average per capita-income income.
the more birds the farm had, and the lower its infestation rates were.""Based on this study, we know that native wildlife can provide you with a pretty significant benefit,
To learn whether birds can mitigate the problem, Karp and his colleagues covered coffee bushes on two Costa rican plantations with mesh fine enough to keep out birds.
They found that avian predators did indeed pick off a lot of beetles: in the rainy season peak time for beetle activity borer infestation almost doubled
when birds were excluded from foraging on coffee shrubs, rising from 4. 6%to 8. 5%.By analysing bird faeces for beetle DNA,
the team identified the yellow warbler (Setophaga petechia) and four other species as beetle eaters. Next, the researchers combined data about bird abundance, forest cover and beetle populations from six coffee plantations.
They found that beetle-eating birds were most common at sites with lots of stretches of forest nearby,
and that beetle infestations were slightly more severe at sites that were surrounded not by abundant forest.
Furthermore many of the avian exterminators were living in small scraps of unprotected woodland, rather than in big nature reserves.
The finding"is definitely good news for Costa rican farmers, says Matthew Johnson, a conservation ecologist at Humboldt State university in Arcata, California.
He and his colleagues have previously found that birds help to protect the famous Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee crop from the borer beetle2,
and he is happy to see that Jamaican birds are not alone in their taste for the pest.
But Johnson is sceptical about the impact of forest cover. The link between infestation and forest coverage"is obviously not rock-solid
birds reduce the beetles dirty Work on one farm, hungry birds warded off beetles from coffee beans worth around 4%of the total value of the annual crop.
That may not sound like much, says Karp, but"in farming, every little bit helps, especially because often you re barely scraping by
The area s great horned owls could also have more foraging opportunities. Reducing competition for sunlight should encourage the growth of large trees,
Nonnative pine trees provide habitat for threatened cockatoos in Western australia, for example. And in Scotland, old industrial waste heaps known as shale bings are now home to rare and protected plants and animals.
Patricia Kennedy of Oregon State university in Corvallis helped to develop management guidelines for northern goshawks.
She found that the raptors do need not strictly old-growth forests; land used for timber harvesting can work, too.
including some birds and insects1, 2, 3. The changing climate is raising major concerns about food security in many countries,
No one could say that Greg du Toit did not earn his images of the birds
Brent Stirton/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013in'Ivory trash'by Brent Stirton, a Kenyan ranger inspects elephants killed by poachers.
That s actually groundbreaking because although we know quite a lot about bird migration, we know almost nothing about insect migration.
For example, honeybees (Apis mellifera) and gray jays (Perisoreus canadensis) 2 have been seen to violate IIA, and so have hummingbirds (Selasphorus rufus) 3."On witnessing such behaviour in the past,
people have assumed simply that it is not optimal, says mathematical biologist Peter Trimmer of the University of Bristol, UK,
US ICEFOSSIL felony A fossil retailer from Eagle, Colorado, pleaded guilty on 2 january to conspiracy to smuggle dinosaur bones and other fossils into the United states from China and Mongolia.
is scheduled to launch 28 of its Doves on 8 Â January. Each toaster-sized device weighs about 5 Â kilograms
It was found in poultry in the live-bird markets of southern China s Guangxi province in late January,
They subsequently dropped off sharply after the prompt, temporary closure of live-bird markets, which were identified quickly as the places where most human infections occurred.
an avian virus that is sporadically infecting humans from a reservoir in poultry, and there is no evidence of any continued human-to-human spread.
H5n1, by contrast, is lethal to birds, making outbreaks easier to spot and control. And despite extensive sampling of farms, wholesale markets and other parts of the poultry supply chain, the only strong link to H7n9 found so far is live-bird markets.
The difficulty of surveillance and of sampling China s huge poultry industry it produces 6 billion birds annually means that this is unlikely to be the full picture
however. Such uncertainty is also hampering efforts to develop effective control measures that are less drastic than closing the markets,
Study revives bird origin for 1918 flu pandemicthe virus that caused the 1918 influenza pandemic probably sprang from North american domestic and wild birds, not from the mixing of human and swine viruses.
Worobey and his colleagues analysed more than 80,000 gene sequences from flu viruses isolated from humans, birds, horses,
pigs and bats using a model they developed to map evolutionary relationships between viruses from different host species. The branched tree that resulted showed that the genes of the deadly 1918 pandemic virus are of avian origin.
Birds have been implicated in the deadly strain s origins before. A 2005 genetic analysis of the 1918 pandemic virus pulled from a victim s preserved tissue concluded that it most closely matched viruses of avian origin2.
But a 2009 study3 found instead that the viral genes circulated in humans and swine for at least 2 to 15 years before the pandemic and combined to make the lethal virus. Gavin Smith, an evolutionary biologist at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical school at the National University of Singapore,
notes that it identified an avian relationship for two genes in the 1918 virus, but not for six genes,
but there is evidence that the influenza virus evolves at different rates in different hosts faster in birds than in horses, for example.
whereas the dogma has been for so long that its avian, says Pybus.""It s a fascinating study,
the life cycle of moose ticks and how wolves might be driven to form packs to ward off scavengers such as ravens, rather than for any hunting advantage.
and determine whether that new habitat is attracting birds. The experiment could benefit the almost 400 bird species that live in the delta,
says Osvel Hinojosa Huerta, an ecologist with Pronatura Noroeste, a conservation group with offices in San luis R Â o Colorado, Mexico.
Every year, about 400,000 migratory waterbirds also pass through the region, an important stop on their flyway along The americas.
If we act now we could stop yet another species going the way of the dodo.
Bà ¥rd Ylvisã Â¥ker and Vegard Ylvisã Â¥ker the folks behind Ylvis describe the vocalizations of various common animals from cats to dogs to ducks to cows
It's commonly mistaken for an owl hooting. That bark sequence is thought to be an identification system;
You'll notice that on this toy you won't see any of the most common North american wild animals--no raccoons no coyotes no deer no robins no hawks and no foxes.
The common yow-wow-wow-wow sounds more like an owl than a canid and the scream-howl sounds less like a fox than the soundtrack to a nightmare.
The male red-billed buffalo weaver is the only species of bird we know of that exhibits orgasm-like behavior according to Tim Birkhead a professor in Sheffield University's Department of Animal and Plant sciences.
Birkhead spent years trying to observe the birds getting down culminating in a study published in 2001.
The buffalo weaver a native of Sub-saharan africa has a fake penis--it has no sperm duct
but when Birkhead and his colleagues manually stimulated a buffalo weaver's mock member the bird had seemed
As Birkhead described to me via email the bird shudders its wings and clenches its feet as it ejaculates--who knows
what it was like to chase around mating birds: I'd run after them sweating profusely with my binoculars steaming up.
The Eagle Valley Clean Energy plant will burn 250 tons of wood daily for the next 50 years Greenwire reports creating electricity for the residents of the small town of Gypsum.
The band Superhuman Happiness recorded a new song and music video with the Treequencer. Someday Shaffer and his colleagues hope to waterproof their invention add solar panels to power it
The researchers who gathered at Drake University in Des moines note that Iowa has vacillated between two weather extremes over the past few years.
while bird eggs can come in all sorts of colors and patterns chicken eggs are almost always white or brown.
-but the changed genes simply have been passed down from bird to bird-essentially creating a new breed.
One additional worry is that a weakening and eventual reversal in the field would disorient all those species that rely on geomagnetism for navigation including bees salmon turtles whales bacteria and pigeons.
and migrating birds fish and turtles are going to be confused very. Just when this will happen how long it will take and
what is going to happen to all those birds fish and other animals that migrate vast distances using their own internal magnetic compass?
On the evening of 24 september 1915 therefore some 400 chlorine gas emplacements were established among The british front line around Loos. The gas was released by turning a cock on each cylinder.
From that big frozen bird. The recommended oil temperature for a deep fryer is 350°well above the boiling point of water.
Within a few minutes the moisture in the bird dissapates so the oil isn't splashing excessively.
I always do a final check with a meat thermometer to in sure the bird is done.
If you really cook your bird at that temp I feel your methods might have run afoul.
Remember the turkey is just a dead bird nothing more. FAMILY and FRIEND ARE EVERYTHING! ENJOY!
and rubs and the same burner to cook the bird in the same amount of per-pound time.
Usually bugs birds or intrepid kittens do that job. Now we can add crocodiles to that list.
although not as well understood as for insects mammals birds and even in snakes. The recent study published in the Journal of Zoology shows that for crocodiles almost a quarter of the fruits consumed were of the âÂ#Âoefleshyã¢Â# kind.
The Eagle Mountain International Church in Newark Texas released a statement for its members on August 15 the day after the Tarrant County Public health Department informed the church that one of its missionaries who traveled to a country where measles is had still endemic brought the virus
Eagle Mountain International Church may offer some great spiritual guidance I wouldn't know but I wouldn't take my health advice from there.
and from there may spread to crops as fertilizer get carried around by birds and eventually make it to people.
Ribbon-tailed birds of paradise produce outlandish plumage to attract a mate. Darwin was bothered by such traits
what female like so they breed more with birds that have that tail. Thus women are controlling the evolution of the species based on their preferences.@
Birds for instance could use it as a place to nest. And after a few decades the plastic will decompose.
what-be a habitat for birds or...I mean for that kind of build time machine & human) wouldn't it just be far more effective to oh
(and the problem is usually over ingestation with most animals hence the owl pellet and the hairball).
Ã0. 8 mm/yr. By the way 1. 7 mm a year works out to 6. 7 inches of sea level rise every 100 years. http://ibis
âÂ#Âoea number of independent analyses have identified tropospheric changes that appear to be associated with the solar cycle (van Loon and Shea 2000;
In nature animals which use the field could be confused mightily-birds bees and some fish all use the field for navigation.
Birds may be able to cope because studies have shown they have backup systems that rely on stars
The shape looks like a Kingfisher. Flip Colmer a former Navy pilot who now flies for Delta also with Bentprop reaches for the book Floatplanes in Action
The Kingfisher O'brien explains was flown typically for observation and to rescue downed pilots. If they were in this deep it would have been on a risky endeavor.
Bentprop knew that two Kingfishers on reconnaissance missions had disappeared during the war and the western lagoon seemed the most likely location for them to have ended up.
Well it's not a Kingfisher he says. After descending to the plane O'brien noticed that the windscreen on the cockpit was located behind the wing.
In Kingfishers it was situated in front. He'd also detected a subtle distinction in the shape of the fuselage near the tail.
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