At least 353 new species have been discovered in the Eastern Himalayas between 1998 and 2008, according to a new report by WWF. This translates to an average of 35 new species finds every year through the last decade — an astounding figure! What’s more, there are two new intriguing mammals among these new species — a flying frog and the world’s smallest deer. The bright green frog uses its long red webbed feet to glide in the air, and the miniature muntjac or leaf deer is just over two feet tall. And there’s a colour changing flower too which goes from blue to purple when temperatures soar!

Photo caption: The deer, the flying frog & the colour changing flower. Courtesy: WWF

Small wonder that such a treasure trove exists since the largely inaccessible landscape of the Eastern Himalayas remains unexplored. The difficult terrain makes it a Herculean task to plan and execute biological surveys.

Expeditions to the region have unraveled 244 plants, 16 amphibians, 16 reptiles, 14 fish, 2 birds and 2 mammals, and at least 61 new invertebrates. The finds are spread over the Himalayas in Bhutan, north-eastern India, northern Myanmar, Nepal and southern Tibet.

The region harbours a staggering array of species, says the ‘New Species report’: 10,000 plants, 300 mammals, 977 bird species, 176 reptiles, 105 amphibians and 269 freshwater fish. The Eastern Himalayas are also home to many of the remaining Bengal tigers and are the last bastion of the greater one-horned rhino.

The findings, WWF contends, come with a warning that this important hotspot of biological diversity is most at risk from climate change, what with rapid glacial water retreats. The organisation has urged governments attending the climate change talks in Copenhagen this December to commit industrialised countries to a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. It also suggests that the governments of Bhutan, India and Nepal, develop a shared three-country vision and a “unified conservation and sustainable development plan that ensures the connectivity of landscapes within the Eastern Himalayas, allowing for the free movement of wildlife across

political borders and combating illegal trade at a regional level.”

Bali, Indonesia-

The road to building a Bali roadmap was looking increasingly rocky today, as the vastly differing expectations of what will emerge from the two weeks meeting of the 13th conference of parties (COP) to the UNFCCC became increasingly apparent.

One of the biggest bones of contention, of course, is whether the roadmap will include an agreement on the need for binding emissions targets from 2012, which signals the end of the second period of commitment of the Kyoto Protocol.

At the opening plenary talk on Monday, Yvo de Boer, UNFCCC Executive Secretary said that “A marriage contract is not something to discuss on a first date”, eluding to the fact that the willingness of nations to co-operate must first be established here before they get down to the nitty gritty of asking parties to act on their promises.

But many feel this is a COP-out. Today, Matthias Duwe of Climate Action Network, a worldwide association of some 400 NGOs, retorted to De Boer’s comment, saying “These parties have been dating for over 15 years now, so we’re not exactly on a first date here”.

Duwe is one of many who believe that a process without an end date and without specific substance will be insufficient for the enormity of the task at hand.

But others feel that pushing for targets now will rock the boat…and possibly capsize it.

Meena Raman of Friends of the Earth International basically agrees with De Boer. She believes that there needs to be more evidence of good will from industrialised nations before we can reach that point. “To put the targets on the table right now would be going in the wrong direction”, said Raman.

There’s also the argument that you need to have the right tools for the job, lest we (again!) agree to targets we fail to meet.

De Boer compared setting targets first to being asked to swim across the Atlantic without knowing whether you’d have a team, be allowed breaks, use rescue equipment etc. Basically, you’d hardly sign up for the task without knowing the details beforehand.

This approach, however, would be a flip on the order in which the Kyoto Protocol was agreed, which set targets first and then looked at how to achieve them. And that’s bound to ruffle feathers.

Among all the political wrangling and finger pointing, there has been some light hearted relief takes on the Bali talks, such as the giant thermometer erected by Greenpeace outside the conference venue and the Fossil of the Day Awards announced each evening by the Climate Action Network. The prize is in recognition of the efforts of countries that block progress at the conference.

Yet again, Saudi Arabia won first prize today for complaining that the protocol has an unfair focus on CO2 (and then called for prioritisation of CCS, which is concentrated on CO2). And secondly, for saying that article A “should not attach an economic element to the noble cause of fighting climate change”—when for years, they have been trying to undermine the fight against climate change specifically by campaigning by alleging adverse economic effects!

Olive Heffernan

Here’s a summary of some way-cool things that have passed my way lately, especially following SciFoo.

(more…)

Here’s a summary of some way-cool things that have passed my way lately, especially following SciFoo.

(more…)

If you’re a regular reader of Chemical & Engineering News or the BBC News website, you’ve probably already heard about an exciting paper in yesterday’s issue of Nature by Ro et al.

The authors were able to re-engineer S. cerevisiae to produce fairly large amounts of artemisinic acid, a precursor to the anti-malarial drug artemisinin (up to 100 mg per liter of culture). The authors used a novel cytochrome P450 monooxygenase from A. annua to perform a three-step oxidation of amorpha-4,11-diene to artemisinic acid, which can be chemically converted to artemisinin. Malaria kills more than one million people each year, and artemisinin is a highly effective, but costly, treatment. If this process could be scaled up and optimized, the authors “”https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7086/suppinfo/nature04640.html">project that artemisinin or its derivatives could be produced at costs significantly below current prices, thereby lowering the cost of an artemisinin combination therapy by a significant amount."

This work was funded by a $42.6 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which was was awarded to the California Institute of Quantitative Biomedical Research at University of California, Berkeley, Amyris Biotechnologies, and the Institute for OneWorld Health (a non-profit pharmaceutical company). It’s an interesting collaboration:

If you want to learn more about the work, Jay Keasling was interviewed on this week’s podcast and there’s a news story in the April 13th issue of Nature by Narelle Towie.

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Service et al.

Magnitude and distribution of linkage disequilibrium in population isolates and implications for genome-wide association studies

Stoetzel et al.

BBS10 encodes a vertebrate-specific chaperonin-like protein and is a major BBS locus

Calvo et al.

Systematic identification of human mitochondrial disease genes through integrative genomics

Spinazzola et al.

MPV17 encodes an inner mitochondrial membrane protein and is mutated in infantile hepatic mitochondrial DNA depletion

Comments welcome.