New UNU Institute in Germany to Advise Governments on Mitigating “Human Security” Threats
The number of people worldwide vulnerable to a devastating flood is expected to mushroom to 2 billion by 2050 due to climate change, deforestation, rising sea levels and population growth in flood-prone lands, warn experts at the United Nations University.
One billion people – one sixth of the global population, the majority of them among the world’s poorest inhabitants – are estimated t
Under drought conditions, tropical forests can be as efficient at using water as desert ecosystems, researchers report When push comes to shove, all ecosystems have the same maximum rain-use efficiency, a measure of total plant growth per unit of precipitation. The finding indicates there’s an upper limit to ecosystems’ productivity, said Travis E. Huxman, a plant physiological ecologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He and a team of researchers calculated
This Friday, scientists from ICES will release a report giving more strong advice to the European Commission and governments to reduce fishing pressure. In particular, cod stocks in the Kattegat, eastern Baltic and Norwegian coastal cod are all depleted and being overfished and ICES will advise zero catch of cod in these areas for 2005. (The report does not include cod stocks in the North Sea, Irish Sea and West of Scotland which will be assessed in the autumn.)
ICES will also recommend redu
The University of Leicester has developed a new ‘air fingerprinting’ technique which can detect, in less than a minute, the ‘ingredients’ of air including that of an individual’s breath or perfume.
This technique revolutionises the speed and accuracy by which air composition can be tested and has potential applications in the environmental, industrial and medical worlds.
Scientists also believe the new development may have applications in the forensic field. For example, decomposing
Waste is a life and death issue in less-developed countries, where poor rubbish collection and sanitation affects life expectancy. Expertise from the University of Leeds’ civil engineering department is helping transform lives by transferring knowledge on low-cost public sanitation.
Every year 1.8 million people die from diarrhoea, 90% of them children under five, according to the World Health Organization. The WHO says improved sanitation could bring these cases down by 37.5%. Translate tha
Global collaboration between private sector, conservation groups and academia seek practical solutions to fight global warming while conserving biodiversity and alleviating poverty
The first ever set of standards certifying land use projects that reduce global warming while conserving the environment and alleviating poverty have been opened up for global peer review and comment by the Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA).
This “multiple benefit” approach which incorpor
Research published in Science demonstrates potential resilience of corals
Corals can develop new symbiotic relationships with algae from their environments after they’ve undergone bleaching, the process by which corals whiten as a result of environmental stress, University at Buffalo biologists report in the current issue of Science.
The research provides evidence that corals may have multiple mechanisms that facilitate recovery from bleaching induced by environmental s
The exposure of amphibians to damaging levels of ultraviolet-B radiation in sunlight is likely a significant part of global amphibian declines, researchers say, despite some recent suggestions to the contrary and a scientific controversy about what role UV-B actually plays in this crisis.
Scientists from the United States, Canada and Spain have outlined their understanding of UV-B’s biological effects on amphibians in an article in Ecology, a professional journal.
In it, they r
Creating synergy by coordinating Europe’s protected areas requires consistent and accurate information to guide decision makers and management authorities. Geographic Information Systems can meet this need but uniform data collection is difficult. Nature-GIS is helping to simplify its collection.
This IST programme-funded project is providing some of the answers to how data from so many different sources, and in so many different formats, can be made accessible to all the various interest
The Day After Tomorrow – the latest Hollywood blockbuster movie released yesterday – depicts an extreme rapid climate change event following the sudden shutdown of the North Atlantic overturning circulation due to global warming. The film by Roland Emmerich, maker of ‘Independence Day’, is a dramatic portrayal of possible consequences of climate change.
Could this really happen?
The UK is taking the lead in rapid climate change research to try to answer that question. A
The Moscow radiochemists have developed and applied in practice new methods for analysis of transuranium elements in the environment objects. With the help of the most up-to-date techniques, they have investigated in detail the americium and plutonium migration paths in water and soils of some regions in Siberia and Southern Ural which are in particular need for such type of monitoring – in the vicinity of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Mayak” Manufacturing Company and Federal State Unitary En
With the cooler weather and frosts arriving, European wasp activity may decrease but the life of a queen is just beginning.
Frosts, along with continuous cold weather, trigger the release of up to 100 fertilised queens from European wasp nests. These queens could each establish new nests in the spring. By alerting the appropriate authorities and pest controllers to the presence of a nest, members of the publics can assist in reducing the numbers of this introduced pest.
In addition
A new research project at the University of Kent is looking for genetic evidence of a historical population bottleneck in the Seychelles kestrel by analysing DNA extracted from museum specimens estimated to be 100-150 years old.
Dr Jim Groombridge, Lecturer in Biodiversity Conservation at the University’s Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, has been awarded £14,600 funding from The Royal Society to conduct population genetic research on oceanic island birds.
Museum colle
If Brazil gets a climate protocol, like the Kyoto Protocol for the rich countries, it will be possible to create an incentive for the country to reduce the deforestation of the Amazon region. The Kyoto Protocol targets a reduction of emissions of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases.
In a new study, Martin Persson, in collaboration with Christian Azar, at the Section for Physical Resource Theory, Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, has examined how to deal with emissions of carbon di
Researchers from Ohio Wesleyan University suggest that some birds may select nesting material with antimicrobial agents to protect their young from harmful bacteria. They present their findings at the 104th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.
“If the fresh herbs and plant materials that parent birds bring into the nest have a sufficient concentration of antimicrobial compounds, they could protect the nestlings from harmful bacteria,” says researcher Jann Ichida.
Dramatic climate change as a result of global warming could happen in a single lifetime – instead of being a slow process evolving over centuries, according to a University of Ulster academic.
Professor Marshall McCabe of the School of Environmental Sciences said that given the right set of circumstances, “a climate can flip in a lifetime”. And the result could be the return of Arctic conditions last seen in the British Isles thousands of years ago.
He said that the North Atlantic
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