Concerns about greenhouse gases and global warming are getting scientists to think in unconventional ways about how to stem the carbon dioxide tide. Indiana University Bloomington geologist Chen Zhu is trying to determine if — and how — a new strategy known as “carbon sequestration” can work.
Zhu and other scientists believe it may be possible to grab carbon dioxide before it shoots out of power plant smokestacks, diverting it to geological carbon sinks that trap carbon dioxide foreve
With increasing global warming Rudolph and the rest of Santa Claus’ reindeer will disappear from large portions of their current range and be under severe environmental stress by the end of the century.
That finding comes from a new study that examined the archaeological record in southwestern France, where reindeer became locally extinct during two earlier episodes of warming roughly 10,000 and 130,000 years ago.
“There will be a direct impact of increases in su
Northeastern environmental scientist finding could improve global warming forecast models
A Northeastern University researcher today announced that he has found that the soil below oak trees exposed to elevated levels of carbon dioxide had significantly higher carbon levels than those exposed to ambient carbon levels. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that elevated carbon dioxide levels are increasing carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems and slowing the build-up
While millions of people across the world enjoyed the tale of a father fish in search of his lost son in the film Finding Nemo, a research project at the University of Leicester has delved into the reality of how fish find and recognise one another.
In a case of life imitating art, the scientists at Leicester have discovered that there are techniques that ’friendly fish’ use to find one another.
The study by Dr Paul Hart and Dr Ashley Ward, of the Department of Biology
Deep-woods bird species that manage to hang on in remaining patches of a deforested area of Brazil gain no real advantage in avoiding extinction, Duke University ecologists have found. The researchers studied the coastal region harboring the greatest number of threatened birds in the Americas.
“We found that species that also tolerate secondary habitats are not deforestation’s survivors,” said Grant Harris, the first author of a paper on the subject published in the Decem
Massive undertaking will involve hundreds of biologists, hunters and trackers combing wilderness of Russian Far East
A team of conservationists led by the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced the first range-wide count in nine years of Siberian (Amur) tigers, one of the world’s most threatened big cats. The survey will involve hundreds of biologists hunters and trackers combing a variety of landscapes to find out how many Siberian tigers still exist in
Researchers at the University of Warwick’s Warwick Manufacturing Group, in conjunction with PVAXX Research & Development Ltd, have devised a novel way to recycle discarded mobile telephones – bury them and watch them transform into the flower of your choice.
Mobile telephones are one of the most quickly discarded items of consumer electronics. Rapid changes in technology and taste means customers constantly upgrade their phones leaving behind more and more discarded phones. How
Urban planners must recognise that green spaces are not produced by professional designers alone, but by ordinary residents and all manner of plants and insects, animals and birds making themselves at home in our cities and towns, says new research sponsored by the ESRC.
What makes urban green spaces green is that they are ‘living’ – and it is this ‘more-than-human’ interactivity that is key to understanding what makes cities habitable, argues the study led by Professor Sarah Wha
The meadows of eelgrass found in lagoons along the Atlantic seacoast have a long history of providing a habitat for fish and invertebrates of many species. Despite this long history, it has proven difficult to document and quantify the relationships between eelgrass cover and the abundance of fish and crabs on a larger scale.
An article in the current issue of the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series describes experiments by URI Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO) biological o
A new study undertaken by researchers at UCLA, Uppsala University and National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution and published in the journal Molecular Ecology, suggests that plans to reintroduce American gray wolves to the Western US will not restore the population to the near same extent of genetic diversity it originally boasted.
As a result of the most extensive and systematic predator elimination program ever practiced by a government, the gray wolf was eradicated f
Burgeoning marine life database tops 5 million records, 38,000 species
Scientists add over 4 million new records, 13,000 species in 2004;
Exponential growth of “information seaway” tops Census highlights
Even in Europe and the best studied seas, the rapid ongoing discovery of new marine species shows no end in sight, according to the world’s first Census of Marine Life, a massive collaboration to catalog and map marine species worldwide involving hundreds of scientists in
A whooping crane that was shot earlier this month in Kansas is showing signs of recovery, although Dr. Glenn Olsen, the veterinarian treating the bird at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Md., says it’s too soon to know whether it will be able to return to the wild. The injured crane, part of the last remaining wild flock of an endangered species that migrates annually from northern Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, had been shot as it traveled through Kansas on its way south. Th
Two researchers at the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography in Savannah have offered an explanation for the recent decline in Georgia’s blue crab population that has devastated one of the state’s most important coastal fisheries.
In an article in the November/December issue of the American Scientist, Richard F. Lee and Marc E. Frischer, working on a grant from the Georgia Sea Grant Program at the University of Georgia, say their research shows that Georgia’s recent
GAIKER Technological Centre is taking part in a European project under the auspices of the VI Framework Programme involving the reuse and recycling of liquid crystal display screens (ReLCD) employed in the manufacture of devices such as laptops, electronic agendas, calculators, mobile telephones, electronic video-games, audio equipment, televisions and computer screens.
One of the main objectives of this project is to study methodology in order to check the operation of obsolete LCDs, as w
Shipworm has spread to the Baltic Sea. If it continues to spread, it threatens to destroy still well-preserved and irreplaceable shipwrecks and other marine archeological remains along the coast of Sweden, according to Carl Olof Cederlund, professor of marine archeology at Södertörn University College in Stockholm and the Swedish representative in the EU project that has now determined the spread of shipworm to the Baltic for the first time.
“Up till now the Baltic has been regar
Oilfields usually represent extreme environments, where physicochemical conditions appear at first sight to be generally unsuitable for living organisms to develop. However, these environments, usually poor in nitrates and oxygen, harbour a rich diverse community of microorganisms. The most widely represented and best-known types are sulfate-reducing, methanogenic and fermentative bacteria.
Nitrate-reducing bacteria, on the other hand, have received little research attention rega
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