The plant Bizkaiko Txin-Txor Berziklategia (BTB), located in La Orkonera, Ortuella (Bizkaia, Basque Country) is the first plant of the Basque Autonomous Region dedicated to the assessment of waste derived from construction and demolition. Its set up, after an investment of 2,6 million euros, is going to prolong the average life of dumping sites.

The construction company Pavisa and the public corporation Garbiker, dependent on the Regional Council of Bizkaia, have designed the plant BTB for

University of Georgia scientist leads team

A team of researchers, led by a University of Georgia scientist, has developed the first transgenic system for removing arsenic from the soil by using genetically modified plants. The new system could have a major impact on arsenic pollution, which is a dramatic and growing threat to the environment and to human and animal health worldwide.
The scientists were able to insert two genes from the common bacterium Escherichia coli that allow

By examining volcanic rocks retrieved from deep in the ocean, scientists have found they can estimate the carbon dioxide stored beneath much of the earth’s surface – a development that could enhance understanding of how volcanoes affect climate. The research by University of Florida scientists and others will be reported this week in the journal Nature.

Scientists examined chunks of basalt, a type of volcanic rock formed when lava cools, from 12,000 feet below the Pacific along a massiv

As anyone with a smattering of geological knowledge knows, Earth’s crust is made up of plates that creep over the planet’s surface at a rate of several inches per year. But why do they move the way they do? Even experts have had trouble teasing out the exact mechanisms.

A model developed by University of Michigan researchers and published in the Oct. 4 issue of Science provides a relatively simple explanation.

“It’s been known that slabs (portions of plates that ext

Scientists from NASA and the Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have confirmed the ozone hole over the Antarctic this September is not only much smaller than it was in 2000 and 2001, but has split into two separate “holes.”

The researchers stressed the smaller hole is due to this year’s peculiar stratospheric weather patterns and that a single year’s unusual pattern does not make a long-term trend. Moreover, they said, the data are not conclusive t

Harmful algal blooms, or HABs, can harm fish, birds and even people who are exposed to the toxic algae. HABs come in many forms, including a red tide that regularly affects Florida waters, a brown tide organism, and Pfiestera piscicida, an algae associated with fish kills. Scientists are unsure of exactly what causes the blooms, but a Woods Hole Sea Grant research team may have come up with a way to treat the increasingly common occurrences. Don Anderson and Mario Sengco are testing the use of clay t

While many scientists and policy makers have focused only on how heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide are altering our global climate, a new NASA-funded study points to the importance of also including human-caused land-use changes as a major factor contributing to climate change.

Land surface changes, like urban sprawl, deforestation and reforestation, and agricultural and irrigation practices strongly affect regional surface temperatures, precipitation and larger-scale atmospheric cir

Scientists have raised concerns following the discovery of a single gene that gives vinegar flies resistance to a wide range of pesticides, including the banned DDT.

Scientists are worried as this single mutation unexpectedly provides the fly (Drosophila melanogaster) with resistance to a range of commonly available, but chemically unrelated, pesticides. Significant also, is this species is rarely targeted with pesticides and many of the chemicals it is resistant to, it has never been expo

Study suggests macroscopic bilaterian animals did not appear until 555 million years ago

The traces left behind by ancient animals may hold the key to determining when macroscopic bilaterians — animals that are symmetric about a central axis, with a body divided into equivalent right and left halves, and with an anterior-posterior polarity (e.g., this includes worms, ants, and ranging up to humans) — first appeared. A team led by Dr. Mary Droser, professor of geology at the Univers

If you think that summers are getting hotter, you could be right — depending on where you live. Summers are heating up if you live in or near any major U.S. city. But in rural areas, temperatures have remained relatively constant.

“What surprised me was the difference in the extreme temperature trends between rural and urban areas,” says Arthur T. DeGaetano, Cornell associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences, who reviewed temperature trends from climate-reporting stations across

Downstream from mining sites, a suffocating gel forms in the water of creeks and rivers. A new study by an international team of researchers details the processes that make that gel and should advance our understanding of the damaging environmental effects of mine drainage and acid rain.

“This new nanoscale level of understanding of trace metal pollution of streams opens new doors for addressing the problem of contaminated waters in affected areas,” says Sonia Esperanca, program director in

Microbial communities can adapt to and colonize all kinds of habitat, owing to their metabolic versatility. They occur in abyssal oceanic situations, in polar ice caps, also in thermal springs, lakes, rivers, deserts and on carbonate (karst) platform systems.

Under favourable conditions, the microbial communities can proliferate and contribute to the construction of monumental edifices, termed microbialites 2 . They can do this in marine environments or in terrestrial setti

A new method of measuring rainfall accurately could help to improve flood control. Following a study in the Bolton area, the method, devised by the University of Essex and using dual-frequency microwave links, will now be tested in Italy and Germany.

The recent devastating floods in central Europe have demonstrated the need for accurate rainfall forecasting. To do so, it is essential to be able to measure the amount of rain falling along a particular path, particularly in situations where tr

An international team of scientists have today reported the discovery of a protein, called DIR1, that is a key step in the pathways that enable plants to protect themselves against disease. DIR1 is involved in the transmission of a warning signal from plant cells infected by disease. The signal alerts cells, in areas remote from the infected site, that the plant is under attack and switches on defence mechanisms that prevent the disease establishing further infection sites. The report, from scientis

A University of Toronto botanist has identified a protein that ultimately could provide chemical-free ways to protect crops from disease.

“Finding this protein, called DIR1, could help make it possible to genetically engineer crops that resist disease-causing organisms,” says Robin Cameron, a professor of botany at U of T and the senior investigator of the study, which appears in the Sept. 26 issue of Nature. “In the long run, having a better understanding of the whole process of disease re

One of the known facts about landfalling hurricanes is their rapid decay, yet some of them retain tropical storm winds and gusts well inland. While studies have shown that the reduction in surface evaporation is a reason for hurricane decay during landfall, little is known about the effect of land surface water on the intensity of hurricanes.

In a recent issue of the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, URI Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO) physical oceanographer Isaac Ginis, Weixing Shen, f