Our overheating national parks
America’s national parks could soon be unrecognizable because of climate change. That’s the conclusion of a new study that found average annual temperatures in the country’s 417 national parks increased twice as fast from 1895 to 2010 as they did in the rest of the U.S., and that precipitation levels in those protected wildernesses sharply dropped. If carbon emissions that cause climate change aren’t curbed, the study says, temperatures could rise 16 degrees in certain areas by 2100. That would kill most of the spiky yucca palms that give California’s Joshua Tree National Park its name, melt Glacier National Park’s most iconic features, and cause raging wildfires that could turn Yellowstone’s conifer forests into grassland. Parks are particularly vulnerable because of where they are located: More than half the country’s national park area is in Alaska—which has been severely affected by climate change—and many other parks are in the arid Southwest. “The key is to take action now,” lead author Patrick Gonzalez, from the University of California, Berkeley, tells OutsideOnline.com. “The later we head down that road, the less chance we have of saving the parks.”
mosquitoes in the lab, raising hopes that the experiment could be replicated on a wider scale to help eradicate malaria. Gene editing involves the alteration of a specific gene to create changes in the organism’s offspring. In this case, researchers from Imperial College London tweaked the doublesex gene, which determines whether a mosquito develops into a male or female. They then introduced these genetically modified insects into a caged population of Anopheles gambiae, the type of mosquito that spreads malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. The mutation blocked female reproduction but allowed males to keep spreading the alteration; the population collapsed within seven to 11 generations. More experiments are needed to find out if the method will work on larger populations, or with other types of mosquitoes; eliminating an entire species would also be fraught with bioethical and environmental concerns. But they’re nonetheless excited. “This is a game changer,” study leader Andrea Crisanti tells NPR.org. “This is a completely new era in genetics.”
chambers: one empty, one containing a Star Wars figurine, and one with another (caged) octopus. Without the MDMA, the cephalophod focused its attention on the action figure. But after taking low doses, the octopus spent much more time with its fellow invertebrate, even hugging its cage. Other octopuses displayed similar behavior: Some even became playful, doing what researchers described as “water ballet.” Dolen believes octopuses could be useful for studying the effects of MDMA, and for learning how the human brain evolved to respond with social behaviors. “Even though octopuses look like they come from outer space,” she says, “they’re actually not that different from us.”