Fire is an important agent of transformation in the Amazon landscape. Every year, low intensity fires burn thousands of square miles of Amazon forest. To study the effects of these fires on the forest, and the forests’ ability to recover from repeated burning, Woods Hole Research Center scientists will burn two and a half square kilometers of forest in the transition forest of northern Mato Grosso state, at Fazenda Tanguro in Querencia, from late August into early September.
A futuristic design by Faber Maunsell and Hugh Broughton Architects has won the competition for the new British Antarctic Survey (BAS) Halley Research Station. In a very close-run contest, three finalists presented their ideas to a Jury Panel, technical advisory panel and BAS scientists.
Director of BAS, Professor Chris Rapley, CBE said, ‘This was an incredibly tough choice for the Jury Panel to make. We were presented with three outstanding schemes – each one of them creating
An extremely rare “royal” turtle narrowly escaped a trip to a Chinese soup-pot, thanks to a tiny microchip implanted in its skin, according to experts from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), who rediscovered the species four years ago in Cambodia.
Wildlife inspectors discovered the 33-pound (15 kg) turtle in a crate of confiscated wildlife in Vietnam, where smugglers planned to send the shipment on to China. The inspectors used a special reading device to de
Changing environmental conditions in the Canadian Rockies are stifling the mating choices of butterflies in the region, say University of Alberta researchers.
Smaller and less abundant alpine meadows–largely the result of human activities–are diminishing the alpine butterfly gene pool, creating a pattern that could lead to the butterflies being less able to survive, said Dr. Jens Roland, a biological scientist at the University of Alberta and an author of a paper on the subject
Scientists face difficult challenges in predicting and understanding how much our climate is changing. When it comes to gases that trap heat in our atmosphere, called greenhouse gases (GHGs), scientists typically look at how much of the gases exist in the atmosphere.
However, Drew Shindell, a climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, NY, believes we need to look at the GHGs when they are emitted at Earth’s surface, instead of looking at the GHGs themse
The presence of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), a component used to add oxygen to gasoline to meet Clean Air Act standards, has been detected as a contaminant in ground water supplies underlying urban areas, particularly in the northeastern United States. The study is published in the July-August issue of Ground Water.
Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey examined the occurrence of MTBE and gasoline hydrocarbons in ground water throughout the United States and found that
What will climate change do to biodiversity, forestry and agriculture? What will its impact be on patterns of disease, water resources and air quality? Leading climate change experts from the UK and China meet in Beijing to look at the latest predictions to emerge from computer modelling studies.
“Climate change is a global problem that cannot be tackled by any one country acting alone. British and Chinese scientists need to draw from each other’s research to understand
Immersive cave will allow audience to watch robots search for victims
As the July 7 bombings in London have so devastatingly illustrated, disaster relief is an arduous task, one that is carried out mainly by humans (and trained dogs), communicating face-to-face or by phones and walkie-talkies. Robots may provide limited support for search and rescue activities and are typically remotely operated by a separate team of humans, but such robots can be difficult to control.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University marine scientists who began monitoring surface water quality in the Neuse River in 2000 say their expanded effort has become a model for continuous ferry-based water assays throughout the nation.
Help and support from the N.C. Department of Transportation’s Division of Ferries and Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) deserves much of the credit, the researchers say.
Drs. Hans Paerl and Josep
Mercury and DDT are 60X higher as a result of bird droppings, say researchers
Seabirds are the surprising culprits in delivering pollutants – through their guano – to seemingly pristine northern ecosystems, a new Canadian study shows.
The most common form of wildlife in the Arctic, seabirds are responsible for transporting most of the human-made contaminants to some coastal ecosystems, the researchers found. “The effect is to elevate concentrations of pollutants such a
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has expressed deep concern about a congressional demand for detailed documentation on the scientific work and professional history of three researchers whose studies suggest temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere are warmer than they have been for a thousand years.
In a July 13 letter to U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, AAAS CEO Alan I. Leshner said the committee’s requests to
UCR research shows boosting plant vitamin C levels can minimize ozone’s damaging effects
The harmful effects of smog on people and animals – the stinging eyes and decreased lung capacity – are the stuff of well-researched fact. Now, the body of knowledge about air pollution’s effects on plants has grown with University of California, Riverside Biochemistry Professor Daniel Gallie’s discovery of the importance of vitamin C in helping plants defend themselves against the ravages of
MCE-5 of France has launched the MCE-5 VCR engine block – a mechanical solution that allows the mass production of VCR (Variable Compression Ratio) engines to the required environmental standards. The MCE-5 VCR engine block is designed to replace traditional fixed-compression engine blocks. The MCE-5 technology is an all-in-one VCR engine block that combines power transmission and compression-ratio control.
VCR is a major technical innovation that makes it possible to tackle the
Watching lumber dry may be as boring as watching paint dry, but soon, the amount of time needed to dry a piece of wood might decrease dramatically, according to Penn State forest resources expert.
Charles Ray, assistant professor of forest resources, devised a process potentially to decrease the amount of time it takes to dry wood products, by combining traditional drying techniques with more modern ones. This process lowers the amount of time needed to dry lumber.
“A com
Do you enjoy eating oysters on a hot sunny afternoon? Make the most of it – it may not last forever. Research has shown that global warming increases the sensitivity of oysters to metal pollution, causing a deadly threat to populations in polluted areas.
Dr. Gisela Lannig from the University of North Carolina, USA, will present her work on cadmium poisoning in eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) on Monday 11th July at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Main Meeting in Barcel
For asthmatics and for anyone with respiratory problems, air pollution can significantly impair simple everyday activities. NASA is trying to tie together satellites and stations on the ground to develop a “sensor web” to track this pollution and improve air quality forecasts.
Understanding how tropospheric or near-surface-level ozone is produced, distributed and transported from city to city, region to region and continent to continent is an important step toward improving the
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