Researchers have isolated a novel bacterium that flourishes as it destroys harmful chlorinated compounds in polluted environments, leaving behind environmentally benign end products. The finding opens the door for designing more efficient and successful bioremediation strategies for thousands of contaminated sites that remain threats, despite years of expensive cleanup work.

“This organism might be useful for cleaning contaminated subsurface environments and restoring drinking-water reservo

Explorers in the 1800s discovered through fossils that deciduous forests once covered the poles, but researchers still do not know why leaf-dropping trees were preferred over evergreens.

“The dominant idea since the 1940s was that because of the polar light regime of continuous darkness and warmth, leafless branches had an advantage over evergreen canopies in the polar forests,” says Dana Royer, research associate in geosciences, Penn State.

This carbon loss hypothesis states that

Scientists at the University of Reading are leading a consortium (universities of Reading, Cardiff and Southampton, and the Natural History Museum) that is developing a “virtual laboratory” to help researchers around the world make sense of the mass of diverse, incomplete and often incompatible databases available on different species, according to an article published in the July edition of BBSRC business.

One species covered by the scientists is the yellow-flowered Spanish Broom which is

Researchers are studying rice genes as a model to understand germination

Weeds flourish in agricultural, urban, and natural settings because they have certain characteristics, such as seed dormancy, that provide for their persistence. Dormant weed seeds in the soil avoid exposure to control practices that target emerging weed seedlings.

Scientists from the USDA-Agricultural Research Service and North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, are focusing their research on underst

Maps of burning Spanish forests taken from space have been relayed to local fire fighters in near real-time. A successful demonstration campaign using Earth Observation data has taken place in Galicia – delivery time from raw orbital data to final value-added product in the hands of the user came to 92 minutes.

Around 45 000 forest fires start across Europe every year, with half a million hectares of woodland lost in the Mediterranean region alone. The European Commission estimates the cost

What determines the number of species in a given area? The amount of energy available to organisms (an area’s primary productivity) has been shown to be a key determinant of plant and animal biodiversity. However, it is not known if primary productivity can affect bacterial biodiversity. In an article to appear in the July 2003 issue of Ecology Letters, researchers led by a team at Stanford University report for the first time that primary productivity can, in fact, influence the diversity of ba

When ten Eastern European countries join the EU next year, internal trade will increase and the structures of the agricultural and food sectors will change in both old and new Member States. This was the message of JOHAN SWINNEN, Professor of Agricultural Policy of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, addressing delegates at the opening of the Nordic Association of Agricultural Scientists (NJF) congress in Turku, Finland, last Tuesday. Swinnen is one of the world’s leading experts on the Ag

Stop smoking and leave your car at home. Encouraging people in cities to make simple lifestyle changes, such as using alternative forms of transport to the car, can significantly reduce their exposure to harmful air pollutants. The findings of the first in a series of Europe-wide air quality studies was announced today in Brussels by European Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin and Didier Gosuin, Environment Minister of the Brussels-Capital Region. The first phase of the “Population Exposure to Ai

Through many decades, stories about earthquakes raising or lowering water levels in wells, lakes and streams have become the stuff of folklore.

Just last November, the magnitude 7.9 Denali earthquake in Alaska was credited with sloshing water in Seattle’s Lake Union and Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans, and was blamed the next day when muddy tap water turned up in Pennsylvania, where some water tables dropped as much as 6 inches.

But the relationship between seismic activity and

EU satellite research project tackles urban air quality from space

A three-year project led by the Commission with ten partners from Greece, Germany, Hungary and Italy has developed an innovative system for monitoring and managing urban air quality and the related health risks. Results of the “ICAROS NET” technique were presented today in Budapest. ICAROS uses satellite-borne sensors to monitor the concentration of harmful particles in the air, caused by heavy industry, traffic and ho

The flatulent side-effects of eating beans could soon be reduced by naturally fermenting the beans, according to results to be published in the July issue of the SCI’s Journal of the Science of Food & Agriculture, now available online.

Flatulence is known to be caused when bacteria in the gut break down alpha galactosides and soluble dietary fibre, producing gases as a by-product. Untreated beans contain high levels of these compounds.

Many people are put off eating beans because th

The discovery that an ocean ridge under the Arctic ice cap is unexpectedly volcanically active and contains multiple hydrothermal vents may cause scientists to modify a decades-long understanding of how ocean ridges work to produce the Earth’s crust.

The new results, which come from a study of the Gakkel Ridge, one of the slowest spreading ridges on Earth, have broad implications for the understanding of the globe-encircling mid-ocean ridge system where melting of the underlying mantle

Today in Washington the European Commission, represented by Loyola de Palacio, Vice President in charge of Energy and Transport, signed an international charter on CO2 capture and storage (CO2/carbon sequestration).

This will create the “Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum” with Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Italy, India, Japan, Mexico, Norway, the People’s Republic of China, Russia, the United Kingdom and the US. The Forum aims to stimulate research into carbon sequestratio

The first direct evidence of fullerenes in material originating from outer space could reinforce the meteorite impact theory of mass extinction on Earth and the existence of fullerenes in interstellar dust. The existence, or not, of the closed-cage carbon molecules known as fullerenes in outer space has been an area of controversy. A team from Reading University in the UK is publishing its findings in Proceedings A, a Royal Society scientific journal.

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The me

When internal waves up to 300 feet first form they cause a mighty churning of ocean waters – something invisible to and unfelt by anyone at the surface.

Now in a novel use of mooring data, some of it three decades old, a University of Washington researcher has calculated just how much punch these waves appear to carry as they travel, or propagate, thousands of miles from where they originate.

It’s energy that appears to be crucial to the conveyor-belt-like circulation wherein m

The arrival of summer brings increased chances of thunderstorms and dangerous lightning. NASA marks National Lightning Safety Awareness Week, June 22-29, by highlighting the unique contributions agency lightning research makes to climate studies, severe storm detection and prediction.

Lightning is dangerous, so improving our understanding of it and its role in weather and climate is important. NASA researchers at the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville, Ala., created