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The number of visitors to California's Yosemite National Park has swelled to four million a year. Now scientists think the impact of so many human beings is rippling among the web of organisms in the park, from cougars to mule deer all the way down to the park's signature wildflower, the evening primrose.

Although many of the Yosemite's cougars were shot by park officials in the 1920's, some of these predators remain. Yet they seem to avoid Yosemite Valley, the picturesque main entrance to the park that is home to numerous roads and buildings. The deer recognize this safe haven, says Oregon State University forestry scientist William Ripple. "We think the deer are moving closer to where the humans are." The many mule deer browse heavily on young California black oak and primrose in Yosemite Valley, and the plants are often unable to reach reproductive age. Ripple and his colleagues noticed that oak trees away from the visitor center were taller and more abundant.

By pushing predatory cougars out of the valley, humans have indirectly increased mule deer and reduced oak and primrose populations. This is an example of a trophic cascade—one that appears to be reducing biodiversity in one of the nation's most spectacular landscapes.

NASA's latest space telescope-the Wide Field Infrared Explorer, or WISE-recently took its first images of the sky around Earth in infrared light. In its initial six-month mission, WISE will spot thousands of previously unseen space objects, including asteroids and comets, brown dwarfs, and distant ultraluminous galaxies.

Dr. Anya Salih, a scientist at the University of Western Sydney, studies coral fluorescence and how glow-in-the-dark proteins may help corals recover from bleaching. Some of these proteins are used as tools in biomedical research and may suggest directions for greener energy production.

Dr. Salih photographed coral for artist Lynette Wallworth's installation CORAL: REKINDLING VENUS, which brings to light the beauty and the plight of coral communities. The installation is on view in a special mini-dome in the American Museum of Natural History's Milstein Hall of Ocean Life until June 24, 2012.

For more details, go to:
www.amnh.org/calendar/event/Lynette-Wallworth%27s-Coral:-Rekindling-Venus

To see more of Dr. Salih's work on CORAL: REKINDLING VENUS, visit the project's website:
coralrekindlingvenus.com

The Northern California coast is home to giant redwoods —the tallest trees in the world. The towering evergreens depend on the region's foggy climate, especially during the hot summer months. When rainfall is insufficient to hydrate the trees from the roots, the trees quench themselves by drawing moisture into their leaves from the fog.

Researchers at the University of California--Berkeley recently analyzed the frequency of coastal fog over the past hundred years. They discovered many fluctuations in fog and an overall decline. Scientists are unsure of what has caused these changes. The team's ongoing research will study how the redwoods will likely respond to variations in the climate they rely on.

Scientists have long recognized that the way humans use land—say, for agriculture or development—affects the quality of the water that drains and flows from it. New research on a Michigan watershed maps how these effects persist over time. Since rain may travel through the ground for 100 years or more to reach a river or lake, land use decisions from long ago influence the chemical constituents that the water may carry.

This research, which was conducted by scientists at Purdue and Michigan State University, demonstrates how land use today affects the water quality of rivers and streams far into the future.

China has 20 percent of the world's population but just 7 percent of its arable land. Chinese farmers have, for decades, relied upon artificial fertilizer to boost their crops. These artificial fertilizers, while increasing overall crop yields, can also upset the chemical balance in the soil and cause it to become more acidic. Recently, researchers compared samples of Chinese soil from the 1980's and the 2000's and found that agricultural lands across the country have become considerably more acidic. This chemical imbalance may reduce the farming potential of this land in the future.

In the rock layers of a vast open-pit coal mine in Colombia, paleontologists have uncovered a fossil of the largest snake known to have existed. The massive 60,000,000-year-old vertebrae suggest that the creature was about as long as a bus and three feet thick. The discovery team, composed of researchers from Canada, Panama, and the United States, named the snake Titanoboa cerrejonensis ("titanic boa from Cerrejón") after its size, its close relatives, and the name of the mine. Researchers think Titanoboa would likely have been too large to climb trees like modern boa constrictors. Instead, it probably sought its crocodile prey while swimming through the myriad rivers that cut through its forested coastal habitat.

Beyond being a winning entry in the animal record books, the snake is also a measuring stick for ancient tropical climate. Because the maximum body sizes of some snakes, turtles, crocodiles and other cold-blooded creatures are regulated by the temperature of their surroundings, their size can be used as a temperature gauge. The researchers estimate that the region averaged at least 30-34°C (86 -93°F) 60 million years ago, giving a new data point from which to compare tropical temperature change over time.

Scientists from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine are probing neurons in the brain's reward center to learn why cocaine can be so addictive. A recent study reveals that the drug activates two different types of nerve cells. An imbalance in these cells may fuel cocaine addiction.

Astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley and the Institut de Mécanique Céleste et de Calculs des Éphémérides (IMCCE) in France, recently captured the best view yet of the dog-bone-shaped asteroid Kleopatra. Using the Keck II telescope and a technology known as adaptive optics, which reduces the distortion of light by Earth's atmosphere, the researchers were able to resolve Kleopatra's two small moons—a rare find among asteroids that can provide clues to planet formation.

The new VISTA telescope is taking a fresh survey of the Southern Hemisphere sky by examining infrared radiation. Some of the first images released from the powerful telescope focus on the Orion Nebula. From Earth, the nebula is visible to the naked eye, but cosmic dust blocks much of the view in visible wavelengths of light. VISTA's infrared view has revealed what glows beneath the dark, dusty regions in the famous nebula.

The striped bass, which can grow upwards of 45 kilograms (100 pounds), is a prize catch for sport fishers in the San Francisco Bay area—especially in recent decades, when big ones have been harder to find. Yet something other than fishing is causing the striped bass populations in the Bay to tumble dramatically. Years of study is revealing that many factors are to blame. They include pumping bay water for agriculture, invasive aquatic organisms, and pollution run-off from homes, industry, and farms.

A new study by University of California-Davis biologist David Ostrach and colleagues reveals the legacy of the chemical burdens on the bay's striped bass. The team compared the offspring of fish collected from the bay with those raised in a lab-based hatchery. The results show that everyday chemicals in the bay (such as those in pesticides and flame retardant materials) are accumulating in the fish over many generations. This is disrupting the development of the fish. "The striped bass is a sentinel for the health of this estuary," says Ostrach. The finding, he says, underscores the need to reduce harmful chemicals in use today and test more carefully the chemicals of tomorrow.

This visualization shows the growth of impervious surfaces between 1986 and 2000 as measured by researchers using satellite imagery. These images were produced as part of a study of the effects of urban sprawl on ecosystems in the mid-Atlantic region. Such information is essential for residents, government officials, managers, scientists, and other concerned citizens to understand and solve the problems introduced by urban sprawl.

In 1980 an act of Congress set aside nearly 20 million acres of Alaska's North Slope tundra to create the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Less than 100 miles from the refuge is Prudhoe Bay, North America's largest oil field. Spread across what was once part of the largest intact wilderness area in the United States, Prudhoe Bay and its neighboring oil fields account for approximately 25 percent of U.S. domestic oil production.

In section 1002 of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which created ANWR, Congress deferred a decision regarding future management of 1.5 million acres of North Slope coastal plain (called the 1002 area) in recognition of the area's potential as an oil and gas reserve as well as its significance as a unique wildlife habitat, home to polar bears, grizzly bears, musk oxen, caribou, and some hundred and thirty-five species of birds.

As global fears of a disrupted and dwindling oil supply mount, the debate over the fate of the 1002 area is raging. The option of opening ANWR to oil leasing has become a political hot potato, hardly a climate conducive to calmly weighing the information and options that lie ahead. Political rhetoric aside, the evidence provided by all sides seems contradictory not just in perspective, but in facts. From widely disparate estimates of recoverable oil to contrasting predictions of exploration's impact on the land, it remains hard to decipher just what's at stake when it comes to drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

A recent study led by University College London neuroscientist Cathy Price reveals how the human brain is uniquely adapted to manage multiple languages.

Language is processed in various regions of the left cerebral hemisphere. Previous studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data showed that bilingual people activate the same general brain areas no matter what language they use. But Price's new experimental method, which involved measuring brain activity after showing subjects word pairs with similar meaning, showed increased activity in a specific region—the left caudate—when speakers shifted from one language to the other.

The new fMRI data clarifies why bilinguals with damaged left caudates involuntarily switch languages when speaking. The study is an important step in understanding how humans can speak more than one language, a unique ability of our complex brain.