A troubling trend of tourists attempt to take the perfect selfie with wildlife is causing injuries to the animals and the tourists as well, says an article on csmonitor.com, and officials are advising people to discontinue the quest.

Particularly when it comes to baby seals.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is warning people that the process of taking that supposedly cool vacation photo with a seal pup could lead to a disaster for either the pup or the photographer.  In the case of some larger and more aggressive animals, the encounter may even lead to death.

Just last year, a woman and her daughter were attempting to take selfies in front of a group of bison that were only standing about six yards from the couple.  One of the bison charged and ran down the mother, and she became the fifth person to be injured in an attack by a bison in 2015.

More recently, beachgoers in Argentina pulled a baby Franciscana dolphin from the surf and passed the animal around among the gathering crowd before leaving the dolphin to die in the sand.  The social media sharing of the photos and videos led to a cry of outrage from conservation and animal rights groups around the world.

About a week later, a shark was dragged from the ocean near Palm Beach, FL, and pinned on the beach while selfie photos were taken.  Fortunately, in this case, another man released the shark back into the ocean and it appeared neither the shark nor the man received any injuries.

New seal mothers often leave their newly-born pups on the beach while hunting and feeding, and NOAA officials are worried the pups will be harmed by potential photo takers.

“Getting too close to a wild animal puts you – and the animal – at risk,” NOAA warns. “It is normal for a mother seal to leave her young pup alone on the beach for up to 24 hours while she feeds.”

Seal pups are often too trusting and may even wander near humans.  The risk is that the mother will return and see the humans as a threat to her or her youngster and may abandon the pup to fend for itself.  Additionally, seals have quite a powerful bite and could cause significant damage.

NOAA recommends you stay at least 150 feet from any seals to avoid confrontations and risk the the animals and yourself.

Michelle Kunimoto, a student at the University of British Columbia (UBC), decided to listen a little closer to some of the signals being collected by NASA’s Kepler mission, and surprised her instructors by locating four potential new planets, even one that is in the zone around its star that could leave it warm enough to have liquid flowing water.

The physics and astronomy graduate focused her attention on signals that the original mission felt were too weak to investigate further, according to cbc.ca.  She compared the process to listening to one person in a crowded room of talkers, adding just because you can’t hear them well, doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

After she discovered the planets, well, actually planetary candidates, as they are known until they are verified by independent research, she collaborated with Jason Rowe, who was member of the original Kepler mission and writer of much of the search code.

Kunimoto said, “When he was able to say, yes, these look like planets, that was just an amazing moment.”

The original Kepler mission looked at possible planets by watching for short interruptions in the light received from a star, indicating the possibility of a planet passing between the star and the telescope.  Using the duration and period of these interruptions, scientists were able to calculate the size of the planetary candidate and its distance from the star which it was orbiting.

One of the planets discovered by Kunimoto looks particularly interesting to the researchers, because it lies in the habitable zone of its star, a distance at which it could be warm enough to have liquid water and life possibilities.  The team says the planet candidate, dubbed KOI-408.05, is probably a gas giant, but the intriguing part is that planets of this one’s size sometimes have moon systems and those moons would also be in the habitable zone.

Kunimoto adds these moons could be large enough to sustain an atmosphere and could possibly have liquid oceans.  At a distance of 3,200 light years from Earth, more research will need to be done to verify these new candidates as planets, but the discovery has scientists looking more closely.

Kunimoto and her supervisor, Jaymie Matthews, a professor of astronomy at UBC, have submitted their findings to the Astronomical Journal, and Kunimoto plans to return to UBC in September to search for more planet candidates that could possibly support life.

Noses come in all different sizes and shapes, and new research has determined the genetic reasons behind the amazing variety, according to discovery.com.

Researchers analyzed almost 6,000 individuals from the nations of Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Chile and Mexico, who had been a part of the CANDELA study, a study that looked at the diversity of the Latin American population.  This population has a mix of Caucasian, African and Native American ancestries and from that mix comes a wide range of prominent facial features.

The team not only looked at the study subjects, but completed 3D reconstructions of 3,000 of them in an effort to get exact measurements of the their facial features.  Of course, the next step was to identify genes that were known to impact bone and cartilage growth, but also seemed to be a predictor of the shape of the nose.

The findings revealed that two genes, labeled GLI3 and PAX1, appeared to have a significant effect of the width of the nostrils, while a third gene, DCH2, factored in whether or not the nose has a pointed or rounded shape.  Finally, a gene called RUNX2 was found to be associated with the breadth of the bridge of  the nose.

Interestingly, three of the genes apparently have undergone changes during the relatively recent past of modern humans when compared with the genetics of older humans, including Neanderthals and Denisovans.   The researchers say this seems to suggest that more recent humans have been subjected to natural selection more so that earlier humans.

It also appears that the nose has evolved into different shapes for environmental reasons as well, said the authors of the study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications.

“For example, the comparatively narrower nose of Europeans has been proposed to represent an adaptation to a cold, dry climate,” offered Andrés Ruiz-Linares, a biologist at University College London, and who is the lead author on the study.  “Identifying genes affecting nose shape provides us with new tools to examine this question, as well as the evolution of the face in other species.”

The researchers added the new findings were important to the understanding of the evolutionary path to modern humans, and helped us closer understand how genetics may influence our appearances.