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Scientists say there was a widespread extinction of bees 66 million years ago, at the same time as the event that killed off the dinosaurs. The demise of the dinosaurs was almost certainly the result of an asteroid or comet hitting Earth. But the extinction event was selective, affecting some groups more than others. Writing in Plos One journal, the team used fossils and DNA analysis to show that one bee group suffered a serious decline at the time of this collision. 
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A small drop in one species' population can drive others to actually die out.
Phillip Trotter's insight:
Functional extinction is an important concept in ecological modeling and i suspect an increasingly important one in other systems modeling domains. Good overview article from arstechnica on why this is important.
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With projections of 9.5 billion people by 2050, humankind faces the challenge of feeding modern diets to additional mouths while using the same amounts of water, fertilizer and arable land as today. Cornell researchers have taken a leap toward meeting those needs by discovering a gene that could lead to new varieties of staple crops with 50 percent higher yields.
The gene, called Scarecrow, is the first discovered to control a special leaf structure, known as Kranz anatomy, which leads to more efficient photosynthesis. Plants photosynthesize using one of two methods: C3, a less efficient, ancient method found in most plants, including wheat and rice; and C4, a more efficient adaptation employed by grasses, maize, sorghum and sugarcane that is better suited to drought, intense sunlight, heat and low nitrogen... If C4 photosynthesis is successfully transferred to C3 plants through genetic engineering, farmers could grow wheat and rice in hotter, dryer environments with less fertilizer, while possibly increasing yields by half...
Underlying study: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/pcp/pcs147 ; Via Alexander J. Stein
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Dolphins call each other by name using unique signature whistles, a study suggests.
Phillip Trotter's insight:
A team from the University of St Andrews in Scotland found that when dolphins hear their own call played back to them, they respond in a similar way to humans responding to their name.The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1304459110 Click the image, title or link to learn more.
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Researchers say their findings suggest heart disease may be more a natural part of ageing rather than being directly tied to modern vices.
Phillip Trotter's insight:
While modern lifestyles and diet certainly excerbate problems of heart disease - these findings indicate that we still need a fuller system level understsnding of heart disease and the cellular dynamic processes involved.
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UK scientists demonstrate how DNA could be used to archive digital data, encoding Shakespeare's sonnets and other information in the "life molecule".
Phillip Trotter's insight:
Using DNA as an archive mechanism is a deeply interesing idea. all digital data storage so far has a limited lifespan related to the technologies used to create, write and read the storage medium. Anyone who has migrated files from tape drives, floppy drives, hardiscs to cd-roms and dvd's know this intimately. The research by the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) at Hinxton near Cambridge uses DNA as an archiving mechansim encoding data into specific nucleobases. The approach uses current generation DBA synthesis machines to generate the encoded DNA and potential data storage lifespan time is several thousand years. Click image or title to learn more.
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Any study explaining why a species went extinct 65 million years ago will at first glance seem disconnected from current events. However bees are critical to agriculture and ensuring biodiversity. Understanding extinction events that impacted different species of Bees in the past help us better understand what could happen in the future as Bee's are currently being severely impacted by diesel pollution, modern farming practises (especially insecticides), changing ecosystems and new pests.