Enormous benefit for humans and without harming the environment can be extracted from domestic waste, old car wheel casings, industrial wastes and even silt, that remain after cleaning sewage outflows. It transpires that all this can successfully be turned into light and heat when incinerated, under methodology, developed by scientists from Chernogolovka in the Moscow Region, staff from the Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics RAS. The scientists were aided by the International Science and Tec
Investigators retrieve textbook-quality coral fossil sampling to document history of paleoclimatic change
An international team of scientists, supported by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, reunited at the University of Bremen to analyze a trove of coral fossil samples retrieved from Tahitian waters during October and November 2005. Two weeks ago, led by chief scientists from France and Japan, the science party started their year-long analysis of 632 meters of fossil materi
Solar rather than nuclear energy should be the UK government’s priority in planning future energy production, according to scientists writing today in the journal Nature Materials.
Challenging advocates of the nuclear option, researchers from Imperial College London argue in their Commentary article that photovoltaics, the direct conversion of sunlight to electricity, could match and exceed the nuclear industry’s current output before any new reactor could begin opera
Scientists from the universities of Leeds, Sheffield, East Anglia, Durham and Sussex are embarking on new science research projects worth over £1 million in the Peak District to understand what rural policy changes mean for the future of rural livelihoods and the countryside.
Much of Britain’s drinking water comes from uplands. They are important for tourism, farming and hunting, and are home to threatened plant and animal species. But the face of our uplands is changing. Fa
Ocean FOCUS began issuing forecasts on 16 February 2006 – just in time to warn oil production operators of a new warm eddy that has formed in the oil and gas-producing region of the Gulf of Mexico.
These eddies, similar to underwater hurricanes, spin off the Loop Current – an intrusion of warm surface water that flows northward from the Caribbean Sea through the Yucatan Strait – from the Gulf Stream and can cause extensive and costly damage to underwater equipment due to the extensive deep
Tools allow better management of the human–predator–livestock relationship
Effective management of predation on livestock is essential to the conservation of large carnivores, because conflicts with human interests can be fatal to individual predators and may lead to the decline of populations of wolves, lions, leopards, cheetahs, coyotes, and spotted hyenas. New tools allow better management of the edges where carnivores, people, and livestock intersect, according to an article
Filling mines with the residues of coal combustion is a viable way to dispose of these materials, provided they are placed so as to avoid adverse health and environmental effects, says a new congressionally mandated report from the National Academies’ National Research Council. The residues left after coal is burned to generate power – often referred to as coal ash – consist of noncombustible coal matter and material trapped by pollution control devices. Enforceable federal standards are need
Aston University’s Bio-Energy Research Group is part of a European team that will help expand renewable energy, including electrification, to rural communities in Latin America.
The team will set up two training platforms that can deliver knowledge and skills in bioenergy technology to enable rural communities in Peru, Ecuador and Brazil to generate renewable energy from existing resources more efficiently.
Led by CIRAD in Montpellier, France, European partners will co-operat
A Purdue University researcher and his team have used improved satellite imaging and powerful computer modeling to more accurately forecast the likelihood and intensity of storms and tornados.
The key to the new weather prediction model is its more precise simulation of the amount of moisture surface vegetation is releasing into the upper atmosphere to affect the weather conditions, said Dev Niyogi (pronounced Dave Knee-yoo-gee), an assistant professor of agronomy and earth and at
Hydroelectric schemes usually generate a barrage of criticism from conservationists. But the flooding of a Venezuelan valley 20 years ago has provided ecologists with the ideal outdoor laboratory to answer one of ecology’s oldest and thorniest questions: why is the world green?
Reporting their results in the March issue of the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Ecology, a team lead by Professor John Terborgh of Duke University says that the role of predators is the
During migration, polar bears reach mainland by ice. The exit to the coast is extremely important for them, as bears find food there – remains of walrused perished at coastal breeding-grounds, remainder of aboriginal population’s sea fishery, ringed seal (Pusa hispida). Pregnant females come out to the locations of hiding into maternity dens. Lagging of ice sheet arrival in the south makes a lot of bears reach mainland by swimming.
In 2005, reports appeared that polar bears were more frequ
While biologists sort out what levels of noise go unnoticed, are annoying or cause harm to marine mammals, physical oceanographer Jeff Nystuen is giving scientists and managers a way to sift through and identify the sounds present in various marine ecosystems.
Nystuen, from the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory, presented his latest findings this week at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu.
Knowing what sound is already there is needed when tr
Tagging program records ‘longest movement’ — Double previous distance
While a bonefish catch is always gratifying for the avid angler, one caught in the Bahamian flats off southwestern Andros Island in December proved even more satisfying for the researchers who study bonefish migration at Bonefish and Tarpon Unlimited (BTU) and the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. The fish was a record catch, representing the longest movement by a bonefi
In response to challenging targets to reduce household waste, Guildford Borough Council commissioned The Environmental Psychology Research Group at the University of Surrey to undertake research on waste recycling.
This research aimed to identify influential information that affects public participation in Guildford Borough Council’s Kerbside Collection Scheme; to provide locally meaningful information to understand the recycling habits of Guildford Borough residents; and to create
“Efficient flue gas purification equipment at large waste incineration plants can reduce flue gas emissions, and cut the amounts of fine particles and heavy metals containing harmful compounds, to the levels required by the Waste Incineration Directive,” explains senior research scientist Carl Wilen of the Technical Research Centre of Finland. Fine particle emissions from waste incineration and their purification have been studied as part of the Tekes FINE Particles technology programme.
First passive recordings from ocean gliders provide insight into whale behavior for some endangered species
Like robots of the deep, autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVs, are growing in number and use in the oceans to perform scientific missions ranging from monitoring climate change to mapping the deep sea floor and surveying ancient shipwrecks. Another use for these versatile platforms has now been found: monitoring the lives of whales.
Marine mammals are major
Feedback
