Weekly PLoS ONE News and Blog Round-Up
In this week’s PLoS ONE media digest: feathered dinosaurs, living next to highways is bad for your blood vessels, removing badgers does not remove cattle tuberculosis, and bats can drink and fly.
The Extent of the Preserved Feathers on the Four-Winged Dinosaur Microraptor gui under Ultraviolet Light by David Hone, Helmut Tischlinger, Xing Xu and Fucheng Zhang was published yesterday and is already garnering great press. David Hone, the lead author of the article, has written a blog post on Archosaur Musings blog about the findings. So did Andrew Farke, the academic editor who handled this manuscript, on The Open Source Paleontologist. You can read the interview with David Hone on Dinochick Blogs, and additional coverage on Smithsonian’s Dinosaur Tracking and Dracovenator.
Ambient Air Pollution and the Progression of Atherosclerosis in Adults by Künzli and colleagues is the first study to demonstrate an association with air polution and the development of atherosclerosis in humans. The study was broadly covered in the media, including in Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register, CBS
ABC, CNET News and Times of India.
Study by Jenkins, Woodroffe and Donnelly, The Duration of the Effects of Repeated Widespread Badger Culling on Cattle Tuberculosis Following the Cessation of Culling shows that eradication of badgers has only a temporary effect on the spread of tuberulosis in cows in the British Isles. The study was covered by BBC, The Guardian, TreeHugger, Science Insider, FarmersWeekly and Scotsman, among others.
The article Drinking and Flying: Does Alcohol Consumption Affect the Flight and Echolocation Performance of Phyllostomid Bats? by Orbach et al, which shows that ingestion of ethanol from fermenting fruit does not affect the flying capability and precision in bats, recieved some additional coverage this week, including at Microecos, Calgary Herald, Denim and Tweed and National Geographic.
Some other articles covered in the past week:
Is It Easy to Be Urban? Convergent Success in Urban Habitats among Lineages of a Widespread Native Ant was covered at Phased.
Metformin Induces a Dietary Restriction–Like State and the Oxidative Stress Response to Extend C. elegans Healthspan via AMPK, LKB1, and SKN-1 was written up on Ouroboros
When the Sun Prickles Your Nose: An EEG Study Identifying Neural Bases of Photic Sneezing was covered by Dormivigilia.