Like a neon sign designed to attract customers, flowers emit electrical signals which help draw bees on the hunt for nectar.

While factors such as bright colors, patterns and tempting fragrances play a role in helping bees with their nectar-gathering duties, a study in Science Express reveals electrical signals from the blooms also help bees find and distinguish their targeted flowers.

Researchers from Bristol University’s School of Biological Sciences found that patterns of electrical signals emitted by flowers communicate information to the little pollinators.

Plants commonly emit weak and negatively-charged electric fields.  As they fly through the air, bees pick up positive electrical charges. Usually when a negative electrical signal meets a positive one, sparks can fly, but in the case of the bee and the bloom, nothing is exchanged except helpful information.

“The co-evolution between flowers and bees has a long and beneficial history,” said Daniel Robert, the study’s lead author. “So perhaps it’s not entirely surprising that we are still discovering today how remarkably sophisticated their communication is.”

Another study on bees, from the University of Cambridge, suggests the contrast between flowers and their background is more important to bees than the colored vein patterns on pale flowers.

While flowers with patterns of varied color are more attractive to bees and provide them with guidance as to where to find nectar, researchers found little evidence to suggest bees specifically prefer the striped flowers.

The study revealed that solid red flowers reflect very little light and aren’t as interesting for the bees.

When compared with red blooms, researchers found flowers with an ivory background seemed to have the greatest effect on the bees. They think that’s because the ivory color contrasted better with the background than the red flowers.

The study also points out that bees were able to tell the difference between solid ivory and veined flowers, but had no preference between the two.  But, the researchers did find that both the solid ivory and veined flowers were much more popular with bees than the solid red flowers.

“Venation patterns (the distribution or arrangement of a system of veins on a flower) might be prevalent in nature because they can be useful nectar guides, particularly when they also increase flower visibility. But it appears that the color contrast of a flower with its background has a greater influence on bee preference,” the research team concluded in a released statement.

Earth is about to have a close encounter with an asteroid, the nearest an object of its size has ever come to our planet.

The fly-by is expected to occur at around 1924 UTC on Feb. 15, according to scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The US space agency says there’s no chance the asteroid will collide with Earth.

“This is a record-setting close approach,” says Don Yeomans of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program at JPL. “Since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s, we’ve never seen an object this big get so close to Earth.”

Scientists expect the asteroid to pass us at a distance of about 27,700 km from the surface of the Earth. That’s close enough for it to pass inside the ring of a number of geosynchronous weather and communications satellites currently orbiting the Earth at about 36,000 km from Earth’s surface above the equator.

However, the asteroid should fly well above most of the satellites and spacecraft circling the planet, including the International Space Station (ISS).

To get an idea of just how close the 2012 DA14 asteroid will get to us, consider that it will come nearer to us than the moon, about 1/13th of the distance to the Moon, which is 384,400 km from Earth.

It’s expected to whiz by our planet quite fast, at a speed of about 7.8 kilometers per second in a south-to-north direction. This will be the closest an asteroid has come to Earth in at least 30 years and will give researchers a unique opportunity  to study it.

The 2012 DA14 is quite small, weighing about 130,000 metric tons and measuring about 45 meters across, less than the width of a soccer field. Astronomers believe it is made of stone, rather than metal or ice.

The asteroid was discovered by astronomers at the OAM Observatory in La Sagra, Spain less than a year ago, on Feb. 23, 2012, which is why “2012″ is part of its name.

NASA video feature of asteroid fly-by

A few other asteroids have flown even closer to Earth, but they were much smaller than the one expected to zoom by this month.  Scientists say objects of this size fly this close to the Earth about once every 40 years; an actual collision with Earth happens about every 1,200 years.

The 2012 DA14 asteroid is so tiny, it’s expected to look like a small point of light, even to those using the biggest optical telescopes. Difficult to see with the naked eye, it will be easily visible with a good set of binoculars or a small telescope.

Astronomers say the best place to see the asteroid will be in Indonesia, but people in Eastern Europe, Asia and Australia should also be able to get a glimpse.

The public can watch the event through live feeds from telescopes in La Sagra and Tenerife, Spain.

NASA astronomers at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex (GDSCC) in California’s Mojave Desert will use radar imaging to determine the orbit of the asteroid, allowing them to better predict future encounters. The imaging data will also be used to create a 3D map showing the asteroid from all sides and should reveal more about the asteroid’s physical characteristics, such as its size and spin.

 

Alan Alda, the internationally famous TV/movie actor, director and writer, is looking for answers to a question we’ve all pondered at some point in our lives – what is time?  So he recently issued a challenge to the world’s scientists to come up with a good explanation.

While the question alone might stump even the brightest of scientists, Alda’s challenge also has a catch.  The explanation must be made so that an 11-year-old can easily understand it.

Science World recently spoke with Alan Alda to learn more about his challenge.  He told us that when he was just 11 years old, he found himself becoming quite fascinated with the flame burning at the end of a candle.

Curious about what a flame was, Alda decided to ask his teacher – “what’s a flame?”  He was hoping for a clear and concise answer to his question, but the teacher instead came back at him with just a one word answer – oxidation.

Needless to say, young Alan was quite dissatisfied with his teacher’s answer and was frustrated that he still didn’t know what a flame was.

In spite of the teacher’s terse answer to his query, Alda continued to have a lifelong interest in science.

While he’s best known for playing the wisecracking surgeon Dr. Benjamin “Hawkeye” Pierce, M.D. on the classic TV show M*A*S*H, Alda also hosted the TV series “Scientific American Frontiers” that aired on the U.S. public television network PBS.

Throughout the course of hosting that TV show, Alda said that he had the chance to interview hundreds of scientists.  In doing so, he discovered that many of the scientists he spoke with had wonderful stories to tell, but some needed help in telling them.

Alda also concludes that the scientists themselves are recognizing that they need to become better communicators, and that there are three big groups of people that need to be communicated with better.

The first group is the general public. Alda says the public needs to have a clear understanding of science because they’re using it every day. And because they may not quite understand it, he says people aren’t asking the right questions and sometimes that creates barriers to better science.

The second group of people, according to Alda, includes legislators and policy makers.  “They routinely don’t understand what the scientists are asking funding for; they don’t understand it at a deep enough level anyway,” he said.

The third group that Alda said can really benefit from better science communication is that of fellow scientists — those who sometimes aren’t familiar with scientific disciplines other than their own. “So that’s holding back collaboration, I would think, holding back new inroads that can be made because an awful lot of things happening now, that are breaking ground, require the collaboration of a lot of people from a lot of different fields,” Alda said.

So to help scientists and health professionals develop the skills needed to become effective communicators, Alda helped create the Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University in New York, where he is also a visiting professor.

His passion for communicating science to others also came through while writing a guest editorial for the journal Science.

“I realized that I had a personal story to tell about communicating science and it was that story about my teacher not really explaining the flame very well.  And then I realized by the end of the article that I had a contest and I challenged scientists to come up with an explanation an 11-year-old could understand.”

That challenge wound up being the first in what Alda and his colleagues at the Stony Brook University have called “The Flame Challenge.”

From over 800 entries submitted, 31-year-old Ben Ames, an American studying for his Ph.D in Austria, won the first “Flame Challenge” last year with his animated video explanation of “What is a flame?”

A couple of weeks ago, Alda issued his second “Flame Challenge.”  The question this time came from actual 11 year-old students.  Like the first “Flame Challenge” question, this one also is very basic – but it’s also quite perplexing and one that might be difficult for scientists to explain to the young students. The question: “What is time?”

According to the “Flame Challenge” website, entries can either be written, or in video or graphic forms.

Scientists competing in the “Flame Challenge” have till 0459 UTC March 2, 2013, to get their entries in. The judging will be done by thousands of 11-year-olds.

Alda says that judging the contest has been a big hit with the young scientists of the future.  “They really love the chance to take a serious position in deciding what’s a good explanation and they are very serious about it,” he said.

While the “Flame Challenge” question alone could be difficult to answer, why does the explanation have to be understood by 11-year-olds in particular?

“It just happened that way, because I was 11 when I asked that question,” explained Alda.  “It turns out that, as we look at 11-year-olds who are judging it, it seems they have a kind of special ability, they’re in a special place in their lives where they still have the curiosity, a sort of unbridled curiosity of a kid, but they’re beginning to take on the critical thinking of an adult, so they’re in a good position to both asked the question and judge the answer,” he said.

Videos of the youngsters reviewing answers that were submitted for last year’s challenge revealed just how serious they were about their judging duties.  “They say things like, ‘this is too short, it doesn’t have enough information,’” Alda said.  “And one kid was great, he said that ‘we like them if they’re entertaining, but this is silly.’  He said that ‘We’re 11, not seven,’ and I loved that very grown up approach to this old question.”

Schools around the world can also take part in the “Flame Challenge” by getting their 11-year-old students involved with judging.

For details on how scientists can take on the challenge, and how 11-year-olds can become judges, just visit the “Flame Challenge” website.

Alan Alda joins us this weekend on the radio edition of Science World.  He talks about the “Flame Challenge” and why it’s important for scientists to be good communicators.   For broadcast times please check the right column.

You can listen below to hear the full Science World interview with Alan Alda.

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For many students, getting 60 percent on a test is practically a failing grade.  Yet a new study, which rates overall ocean health at 60 out of a 100, suggests that score is not as bad as some think.

The Ocean Health Index (OCI) assesses the health of the oceans using a wide spectrum of evaluating factors such as the ecological, social, economic and political conditions for every coastal country.

While the OCI shows there are problems maintaining ocean health, Ben Halpern, lead scientist of the project, says there are many things humans are doing right in order to achieve  a score of 60.

The individual scores of the 171 evaluated countries vary widely; from a low of 36 off the coast of Sierra Leone to a high of 86 for the waters surrounding the uninhabited Jarvis Island in the Pacific.  In general, the other highest-scoring locations are densely populated and highly developed, while developing nations tend to be more likely to score low.

Halpern says that’s because developed countries tend to have stable governments, more resources and a stronger economies, which gives them the ability to pay more attention to environmental stewardship.

Unlike previous similar studies which focus only on the negative impact of human activity, the OCI is the first global assessment to combine both natural and human dimensions of ocean sustainability, according to Halpern. The study considers people as part of the ocean, not  as separate negative influences on the ocean.

“This index is really trying to reframe the discussion around, not just how we are impacting the ocean, but how the ocean impacts us,” said Halpern.

He adds the OCI provides a way to look at how human activities decrease or increase the ability of the ocean to provide us the things that we want, such as food, economic and recreational opportunities.

Ben Halpern joins us this weekend on the radio edition of Science World.  Check out the right column for scheduled air-times or listen now to the interview below.

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More than 2,600 scientists are calling on governments worldwide to take steps to protect valuable coral reef ecosystems.

They’ve endorsed a statement  written by scientists brought together by the Center for Ocean Solutions at California’s Stanford University.

The statement was released this week to kick off the 12th International Coral Reef Symposium  being held in Cairns, Australia.

“Rising sea levels, more intense storms, changes in ocean chemistry due to air and water pollution – all these stress coral reefs,” said Steve Palumbi, an expert on corals with the Center for Ocean Solutions and the chief organizer in developing the consensus statement. “At least 25 percent of the world’s coral reefs have been degraded.  Because of the global origin of climate change, the only way to tackle this is through a worldwide effort.”

The  statement calls on governments to take action through global initiatives to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and to increase local protection of coral reefs throughout the world.

The scientists referred to the world’s coral reefs as important ecosystems which, despite being ecologically, economically and culturally valuable, are in decline everywhere due to human-based factors such as pollution, sedimentation, overfishing and climate change, all of which, they say, are expected to rise in severity.

The statement lists changes  scientists have already been observed over the last century:

• Approximately 25-30% of the world’s coral reefs are already severely degraded by local impacts from land and by over-harvesting.
• The surface of the world’s tropical oceans has warmed by 0.8°C, resulting in unprecedented coral bleaching and mortality events.
• The acidity of the ocean’s surface has increased due to increased atmospheric CO2.
• Sea-level has risen on average by 18cm.

Unless action is taken now,  future impacts on coral reefs could include:

• Most corals will face water temperatures above their current tolerance.
• Most reefs will experience higher acidification, impairing calcification of corals and reef growth.
• Rising sea levels will be accompanied by disruption of human communities, increased sedimentation impacts and increased levels of wave damage.
• Together, this combination of climate-related stressors represents an unprecedented challenge for the future of coral reefs and to the services they provide to people.

The International Coral Reef Symposium, which runs through July 13, is held once every four years. Organizers say  this year’s symposium will draw more than 2,000 scientists from 80 countries. They’re expected to present cutting-edge science and to share the latest advances in coral reef conservation.