PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Black bears return to Missouri indicates healthy forests

Outdoor recreationists should take precautions to avoid problems with bears in southern Missouri

2013-07-19
(Press-News.org) For nearly a century, the only bears known to reside in Missouri were on the state flag or in captivity. Unregulated hunting and habitat loss had wiped out most black bears in Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma by the 1920s. Now, thanks to a reintroduction program in Arkansas during the 50s and 60s, hundreds of bears amble through the forests of southern Missouri, according to a joint study by University of Missouri, Mississippi State University, and Missouri Department of Conservation biologists, who warn that although the bear population is still small, outdoor recreationists and homeowners should take precautions in the Ozark forest to avoid attracting bears.

"Black bears normally do not attack humans, but they will ransack picnic baskets, tear through garbage bags or even enter buildings looking for food," said Lori Eggert, associate professor of biological sciences in MU's College of Arts and Science. "Although some Missourians may be concerned, the return of black bears to Missouri is actually a good sign. It means parts of the state's forests are returning to a healthy biological balance after nearly two centuries of intensive logging and exploitation."

Eggert and her colleagues used the genetic fingerprints of bears in Missouri to trace their origin back to Arkansas, where thousands of bears now roam. The majority of these animals appear to be descendents of bears originally reintroduced to the region from populations in Minnesota and Manitoba, Canada. Surprisingly, some of the Missouri bears analyzed by Eggert's team had genetic signatures that suggested they were not descended from the northern bears. Further testing may prove that a tiny population of bears managed to survive unnoticed in the Ozark wilderness after the rest of the region's population had died out.

"The larger the gene pool of bears in the region, the healthier the population will be as it recovers," said Eggert. "If they do indeed exist, these remnant populations of black bears may serve as valuable reservoirs of genetic diversity."

If the Missouri population recovers sufficiently, officials someday may allow human hunters to stalk the Show-Me-State's black bears, noted Eggert. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission allows limited bear hunting in October and November.

###

The Journal of Mammalogy published the study, "Origins and Genetic Structure of Black Bears in the Interior Highlands of North America." Lead author Kaitlyn Faires initiated the study while she was an undergraduate at MU. The Missouri Department of Conservation's website provides information on how to avoid conflicts with bears in Missouri.


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Stanford expert says Internet's backbone can readily be made more sustainable

2013-07-19
Most big data centers, the global backbone of the Internet, could slash their greenhouse gas emissions by 88 percent by switching to efficient, off-the-shelf equipment and improving energy management, according to new research. The carbon emissions generated by a search on Google or a post on Facebook are related mostly to three things: the computing efficiency of IT (information technology) data center equipment, like servers, storage and network switches; the amount of electricity a data center's building uses for things other than computing, primarily cooling; and ...

Rice researchers part of new LHC discovery

2013-07-19
HOUSTON – (July 19, 2013) – A discovery facilitated by Rice University's contribution to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will impact scientists' search for dark matter in the universe. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, announced in Switzerland this morning that researchers on two separate LHC experiments have succeeded in measuring "one of the rarest measurable processes in physics," the decay of B-subscript-s mesons into two muons. The evidence, which scientists have been seeking for 25 years, matches predictions made using the Standard Model of ...

California's Mountain Fire

2013-07-19
NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of California's Mountain Fire on July 18 as the satellite passed overhead in space. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard Aqua captured an image of the smoke and heat from California's Mountain Fire on July 18 at 21:00 UTC (5 p.m. EDT/2 p.m. PDT). MODIS has the ability to detect hot spots or fires and they appear red in the image. At the time of the image, the light brown smoke plume was blowing west-northwest. The Mountain Fire started on July 15 at 1:43 p.m. near the junction ...

Regenstrief, IU study: Caregivers open to stopping cancer screening as dementia progresses

2013-07-19
INDIANAPOLIS -- Research from the Regenstrief Institute and the Indiana University Center for Aging Research has found that many family caregivers of older adults with dementia are willing to consider stopping cancer screening of the elderly individual; they are also relieved when the older adult's physician brings it up. "This openness of dementia caregivers to considering cancer screening cessation for older adults provides potential to reduce both patient burden and health care costs as well as family caregiver distress, while improving the overall quality of care ...

Purple sunlight eaters

2013-07-19
ARGONNE, Ill. – A protein found in the membranes of ancient microorganisms that live in desert salt flats could offer a new way of using sunlight to generate environmentally friendly hydrogen fuel, according to a new study by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory. Argonne nanoscientist Elena Rozhkova and her colleagues combined a pigment called bacteriorhodopsin with semiconducting nanoparticles to create a system that uses light to spark a catalytic process that creates hydrogen fuel. Scientists have been aware of the potential ...

Toronto researchers part of international team that caught neutrinos in the act

2013-07-19
TORONTO -- Today TRIUMF, a Canadian laboratory for nuclear and particle physics that works in partnership with York University and University of Toronto, announced a new breakthrough in understanding neutrinos -- nature's most elusive particles. The international Tokai to Kamioka (T2K) collaboration designed an experiment to investigate how neutrinos change from one form to another as they travel. TRIUMF researcher Michael Wilking spoke at the prestigious European Physical Society meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, confirming definitive proof of a new type of neutrino oscillation ...

Childhood abuse raises drug users' suicide risk

2013-07-19
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — For health professionals, the message from a new study in the American Journal of Public Health is clear: Asking patients about a history of childhood abuse can directly help assess their risk of attempting suicide. The evidence, authors say, shows that childhood abuse can have life-and-death consequences for the rest of a person's life. The longitudinal study of more than 1,600 drug users in Vancouver, Canada, found that "severe-to-extreme" abuse – particularly emotional or sexual – contributed significantly to the risk of future ...

Most people with moderate kidney disease have medication-resistant hypertension

2013-07-19
Researchers found a strong, graded association between worse kidney function and the presence of hypertension that is resistant to medications. More than 50% of individuals with moderate CKD had resistant hypertension. Among people with CKD, blacks and those with a larger waist circumference, diabetes, and a history of heart attacks or strokes were more likely to have resistant hypertension. 60 million people globally have chronic kidney disease. Washington, DC (July 18, 2013) — More than 50% of individuals with moderate kidney disease have hypertension that is ...

Recommended calorie information on menus does not improve consumer choices, Carnegie Mellon study shows

2013-07-19
PITTSBURGH—Despite the lack of any concrete evidence that menu labels encourage consumers to make healthier food choices, they have become a popular tool for policymakers in the fight against obesity. Carnegie Mellon University researchers recently put menu labels to the test by investigating whether providing diners with recommended calorie intake information along with the menu items caloric content would improve their food choices. The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, showed that recommended calorie intake information did not help consumers ...

Breaking a sweat while exercising regularly may help reduce stroke risk

2013-07-19
Breaking a sweat while working out regularly may reduce your risk of stroke, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Stroke. In a study of more than 27,000 Americans, 45 years and older who were followed for an average of 5.7 years, researchers found: One-third of participants reported being inactive, exercising less than once a week. Inactive people were 20 percent more likely to experience a stroke or mini-stroke than those who exercised at moderate to vigorous intensity (enough to break a sweat) at least four times a week. Among men, ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Farmed totoaba could curb poaching

Avalanches: user-carried safety device increases survival time fivefold

It’s all in your head: Select neurons in the brainstem may hold the key to treating chronic pain

Time-restricted eating can boost athletes' health and performance

Burning issue: study finds fire a friend to some bees, a foe to others

Insights from 15 years of collaborative microbiome research with Indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Amazon

Designing polymers for use in next-generation bioelectronics

Losing Nemo: Almost all aquarium fish in the US are caught in the wild

Revisiting minimum case volume recommendations for complex surgery in contemporary practice

Medicaid innovation models improve care for moms, but design matters

Cannabis use among individuals with psychosis after state-level commercial cannabis legalization

Open-label placebos as adjunct for the preventive treatment of migraine

Moon's biggest impact crater made a radioactive splash

Smoking and biological sex shape healthy bladder tissue evolution, offering clues to cancer risk

Improved genetic tool reveals hidden mutations that can drive cancer

Hidden evolution in sperm raises disease risk for children as men age

Women portrayed as younger than men online, and AI amplifies the bias

Engineered bacterial therapy activates immune response in cancer preclinical studies

Energy flexibility is reshaping Finland’s electricity market

Individuals with sickle cell disease face long delays to pain care in emergency department

Association for Molecular Pathology develops standardized biomarker report template for providers

Making regular GPS ultra-precise

Webb Telescope unveils doomed star hidden in dust

UT Southwestern preventive cardiologist to receive the 2025 Chairman’s Award

Slime mold metabolites are a promising, eco-friendly repellent of root-knot nematodes

Pathological mechanism of mechanosensitive cells driving the growth of keloids

First large-scale Alzheimer disease study in brain tissue from African American donors implicates roles for many novel genes

In a nasal spray, gold “nanoparticles” deliver a targeted treatment to the brain. A potentially revolutionary approach to mental disorders and neurodegenerative diseases already has a patent

Current and recommended diets in the USA have embedded forced labor risk

AI breakthrough helps astronomers spot cosmic events with just a handful of examples

[Press-News.org] Black bears return to Missouri indicates healthy forests
Outdoor recreationists should take precautions to avoid problems with bears in southern Missouri