Do Migratory Birds 'See' The Magnetic Field?

From Science Daily:(Click on link to read more)

Science Daily — A visual pathway links brain structures active during magnetic compass orientation in migratory birds.

Every year millions of migratory birds fly towards their wintering quarters and come back in next year´s spring to breed. Behavioral experiments have shown that the Earth´s magnetic field is the main orientation cue on their journeys...

In the current study the research group from Oldenburg, Germany and their collaborators traced the neurons from the eye and from Cluster N. The results “link” the recent findings by demonstrating a functional neuronal connection between the retinal neurons and Cluster N via the visual thalamus...

These findings strongly support the hypothesis that migratory birds use their visual system to perceive the reference compass direction of the geomagnetic field and that migratory birds are thus likely to "see" the geomagnetic field.

Planting Lots Of Forests Not As Good A Rainforest

Trees in rain forests are better at cooling the earth than trees in other types of forests. This from Science Daily:

Planting and protecting trees--which trap and absorb carbon dioxide as they grow--can help to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But a new study suggests that, as a way to fight global warming, the effectiveness of this strategy depends heavily on where these trees are planted. In particular, tropical forests are very efficient at keeping the Earth at a happy, healthy temperature.

The researchers, including Ken Caldeira of Carnegie's Department of Global Ecology and Govindasamy Bala at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, found that because tropical forests store large amounts of carbon and produce reflective clouds, they are especially good at cooling the planet. In contrast, forests in snowy areas can warm the Earth, because their dark canopy absorbs sunlight that would otherwise be reflected back to space by a bright white covering of snow.

The work simulates the effects of large-scale deforestation, and accounts for the positive and negative climate effects of tree cover at different latitudes. The result, which appears in this week's early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, makes a strong case for protecting and restoring tropical forests.

"Tropical forests are like Earth's air conditioner," Caldeira said. "When it comes to rehabilitating forests to fight global warming, carbon dioxide might be only half of the story; we also have to account for whether they help to reflect sunlight by producing clouds, or help to absorb it by shading snowy tundra."

W Boson, and Higgs Just Around the Corner?

Well, I threatened to blog about this, and now I am. Before I do I want to say people should consider taking a look at Science Daily every once and a while since they stay on top of really cool recent physics being published.

With that said, according to the report by Science Daily:

Scientists of the CDF collaboration at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have announced the world's most precise measurement by a single experiment of the mass of the W boson, the carrier of the weak nuclear force and a key parameter of the Standard Model of particles and forces. The new W-mass value leads to an estimate for the mass of the yet-undiscovered Higgs boson that is lighter than previously predicted, in principle making observation of this elusive particle more likely by experiments at the Tevatron particle collider at Fermilab. Scientists working at the Collider Detector at Fermilab measured the mass of the W boson to be 80,413 +/- 48 MeV/c2, determining the particle's mass with a precision of 0.06 percent.

What is so interesting to me is this suggests the Higgs Boson may be light enough to be detected by FermiLab! This also means the needed energy level is likely to be in the crosshairs of CERN. Just any day now and we will be overturning cars in the streets over some monumental news.