A newly-invented automatic waste transportation and sorting system operates economically and ecologically on virtually any kind of premises.
Pre-separated waste is transported in biodegradable bags through a sealed pipeline. Each type of material is delivered to an appropriate container for recycling, disposal or use as an energy source.
“The main innovation of the XMIT system is that different waste fractions can be transported in the same pipe, making separation eas
Peter Jackson’s JRR Tolkien-inspired film trilogy Lord of the Rings features enormous eagles swooping down to rescue Sam and Frodo from a desolate New Zealand landscape masquerading as Mordor. The image of giant eagles flying around New Zealand, while fanciful, is not so far-fetched as it might appear. New genetic data published in the freely-available online journal PLoS Biology this week from researchers at Oxford and Canterbury Universities shed new light on the evolution of the extinc
When Arizona State University’s Central Arizona-Phoenix Long Term Ecological Research Project (CAP LTER) was funded by the National Science Foundation in 1997, more than 50 scientists signed on to do the multidisciplinary research knowing that they were embarking on something unusual – the first ever long-term ecological study of “a human-dominated ecosystem,” aka, a city.
Seven years later, the first phase of the research has been completed and NSF has renewed the proje
Fossil records of the holes drilled in clam shells before and after a mass extinction two million years ago show patterns of predator-prey behavior indicating that although diversity recovered rapidly, the level of competition has not, according to an article in the journal Science.
The study emphasizes a new way of looking at the consequences of extinction and recovery, by closely observing how individual species interact with each other. “Our work shows that scientists have
Common house dust may be an important source of a potentially dangerous class of chemicals called polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), according to an exploratory study* by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Recent studies by others have found that PBDEs have been accumulating in human blood, fat tissue and breast milk.
PBDEs have been widely used in consumer products for years because they
There is a desert in the heart of the South Pacific. Surrounding Easter Island is the purest and bluest seawater on Earth, almost empty of the microscopic phytoplankton at the base of the marine food web. French vessel L’Atalante recently completed a research cruise through this region, its day-to-day route guided by ocean colour satellites.
Viewed from orbit, the colour of the global ocean is not constant but varies considerably. Specially built satellite sensors perceive su
Give a marine snail an easy life, and it will take its time drilling into a clam. Put it under competitive stress, and it will look for a faster route. Those changes, scarred into fossils, show that an unknown catastrophe nearly two million years ago changed the competitive balance in the Western Atlantic and the ecosystem has yet to fully recover, according to research published this week in the journal Science.
In the seagrass meadows of the Gulf of Mexico, Chicoreus and Phyllono
A team led by University of Maine scientists has reported finding a potential link between changes in solar activity and the Earth’s climate. In a paper due to be published in an upcoming volume of the Annals of Glaciology, Paul Mayewski, director of UMaine’s Climate Change Institute, and 11 colleagues from China, Australia and UMaine describe evidence from ice cores pointing to an association between the waxing and waning of zonal wind strength around Antarctica and a chemical signal
Irrigation with wastewater from the canning industry is not harmful to the quality of agricultural soil and may even, in some cases, improve it. This is the conclusion of Iñigo Abdón Virto Quecedo in his PhD thesis defended at the Public University of Navarre.
Permanent and rotational crops
The vegetable canning industries, by the very nature of its processes, produce a considerable volume of low-contaminant effluents.
A research project began in 1996 to determin
The European Union will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by slightly more than required under the Kyoto Protocol provided that Member States implement all the policies, measures and third-country projects they are planning and several cut emissions by more than they have to.
Latest projections compiled by the European Environment Agency show that the 15 pre-2004 EU Member States (the EU-15) should cut their total emissions to 7.7% below 1990 levels by 2010 on the basis of exis
Hurricanes bring temporary relief to Florida reefs smothered by invasive seaweed
In August, Harbor Branch scientists began a new survey of Florida coral reefs expecting to document the devastating spread of harmful seaweed that has been progressing now for several years, but hurricane havoc has instead led the team to a surprising find. With their first survey nearly completed, it appears all reefs in the path of hurricanes Frances and Jeanne have been largely scoured free of
Animals are in constant competition over procreative resources. The interests of the individual and the population are not necessarily one and the same; aggressive insects may fare well in the mating competition, but eventually the proliferation of aggressive genes will weaken the procreative efficiency of the species.
Species differ, however, in how co-operative or selfish they are. Hanna Kokko, Professor of Animal Ecology, at the University of Helsinki, says that, for example,
Using advanced remote-sensing techniques from a U-2 surveillance plane and field studies, scientists from the Carnegie Institution Department of Global Ecology have for the first time determined large-scale interactions between ecosystems and the climate during the process of desertification. The study, to be published in the January 2005 issue of Global Change Biology, is a milestone both for the new methods employed and for understanding what is happening as agricultural and grazing lands chang
A study conducted by an expert at the University of Sheffield and officials at NASA has found that while Greenland’s ice is certainly thinning, snowfall in some areas is increasing, with levels in south-east Greenland in the past year being three times higher than is usual. This opens debate as to how global warming will affect Greenland’s ice sheet and could mean that it remains stable, as thinning ice is offset by increased snowfall, which will replace the melted ice.
Edward Han
Europe’s coastlines are exposed to risk of pollution. I-MARQ’s prototype Geographical Information System (GIS) delivers detailed information on coastal water quality, helping decision makers shore up defences by taking appropriate action against contamination.
A recent Communication from the European Commission highlights some of the issues the IST-funded i-MARQ project aims to solve: “Our coastal zones are facing serious problems of habitat destruction, water contamination, coast
Small relative of rabbits vanished from over a third of US sites studied in WWF-funded research
WWF-funded research by Dr. Erik Beever of the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed that American pika populations in the Great Basin region are continuing to disappear as the Earth’s climate warms. “Population by population, we’re witnessing some of the first contemporary examples of global warming apparently contributing to the local extinction of an American mammal at sites across an entire
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