Researchers confirm that waters migrating from the surface can take many tens of thousands of years to reach the water table

A team of researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California has confirmed that in drier regions, waters migrating from the surface can take many tens of thousands of years to reach the water table. Since such waters began their underground migration at the time of the last ice age, they hold a scientific and historical record of global climate

While the spread of imported fire ants has received much public attention, another invader has been quietly sucking the juices from plants in our lawns and fields: a legless mealybug. In a recent study published in the September issue of the peer-reviewed journal Ecology, scientists have discovered that these bugs may be a possible key to the success of the infamous invasive fire ants.

“Widespread association of the invasive ant Solenopsis invicta with an invasive mealybug,” a study by Ken

Entomologists in Belfast may finally have found a way of limiting the spread of the New Zealand flatworm, which invaded the British Isles in the 1960s. Speaking at the Royal Entomological Society’s national meeting Entomology 2002, which will take place at Cardiff University on 12–13 September 2002, Dr Archie Murchie of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (Northern Ireland) will announce that certain British beetles could help repel the invader by preying on it. Finding a natural pred

Entomologists have discovered that there are far more insects flying around above our heads than previously thought. Speaking at the Royal Entomological Society’s national meeting Entomology 2002, which will take place at Cardiff University on 12–13 September 2002, Dr Jason Chapman will say that in a typical summer month, around 3.5 billion insects fly over a square kilometre. This equates to one tonne of insects flying over Hyde Park in London, or Trelai Park in Cardiff, every four weeks in summer.

A researcher in environmental engineering at Staffordshire University has developed a technique to convert unwanted cooking oil into a ‘biodiesel’ which is a much cleaner alternative to fossil diesel.

Dr Tarik Al-Shemmeri, a Reader in Environmental Engineering at Staffordshire University, uses discarded vegetable oil as the basis of his sustainable fuel which, when burnt, DOES NOT
give off sulphur dioxide, unlike conventional diesel.

Sulphur dioxide contributes to what has bee

A research project to restore native grasslands to a reserve in California has yielded some promising results. The native grasslands may only need to be reseeded with native seeds without having to first eradicate the invading plants from Europe, according to a presentation at the recent annual Ecological Society of America meeting by researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Minnesota.

The research team included Eric Seabloom, of the National Center

Instead of landfills clogged with computer and car parts, packaging and a myriad of other plastic parts, a Cornell University fiber scientist has a better idea. In coming years, he says, many of these discarded items will be composted.

The key to this “green” solution, says researcher Anil Netravali, is fully biodegradable composites made from soybean protein and other biodegradable plastics and plant-based fibers, developed at Cornell and elsewhere.

“These new fully biodegradable

NASA scientists will venture into an isolated part of the Bolivian Amazon to try and uncover the origin of a 5 mile (8 kilometer) diameter crater there known as the Iturralde Crater. Traveling to this inhospitable forest setting, the Iturralde Crater Expedition 2002 will seek to determine if the unusual circular crater was created by a meteor or comet.

Organized by Dr. Peter Wasilewski of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., the Iturralde Crater Expedition 2002 will be l

Climate clues from the Earth’s poles – swarming whale food, winners and losers in Antarctic waters, and solar insights at the BA 2002 Annual Meeting

The latest thinking on the chances of extinction for Antarctic animals in seas and lakes, whale food hiding beneath sea ice, and new insights on the Sun’s spin are among the hot topics slated for discussion at today’s Frontiers of Polar Science panel, organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), through i

Sediments in the Arabian Sea will be examined by an international scientific expedition led by a researcher from the University of Edinburgh to increase understanding of the natural processes of the ocean floor and establish its significance for global cycles and climate change. Robotic research platforms will be deployed on the sea floor to study deep-sea organisms and their impacts on sedimentary processes, without removing the creatures from their natural environment. Monsoons—winds that blow in o

What will some 4,000 of the smartest dressed elephant seals, tuna fish, albatrosses, leatherback sea turtles, great white sharks, and other pelagic megafauna in the Pacific all be wearing in the coming seasons? How about the latest in microprocessor-based electronic tags, some no bigger than oversized cufflinks? It’s all in a continuing effort to understand the habits of marine animals in that part of the world: what exactly lives where and why, what their migration routes and diving behaviors m

It shouldn’t be there, but it is. Deep in the central Amazonian rainforest lies a rich, black soil known locally as terra preta do Indio (Indian dark earth) that farmers have worked for years with minimal fertilization. A Brazilian-American archeological team believed terra preta, which may cover 10 percent of Amazonia, was the product of intense habitation by Amerindian populations who flourished in the area for two millennia, but they recently unearthed evidence that societies lived and farmed

In the late 1990s, as scientists were reaching consensus that the Arctic had gone through 30 years of significant climate change, they began reading the first published papers about the Arctic Oscillation, a phenomenon reported to have hemisphere-wide effects.

In short order the arctic-science and the global-change communities were galvanized, says Richard Moritz, polar oceanographer with the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory and lead author of a review of recent Arctic climate change in

Recent changes in Antarctic seabird populations may be linked to environmental change according to scientists reporting in the journal Science this week. Researchers from the Cambridge-based British Antarctic Survey (BAS) reviewed the best available data from a range of long-term studies to test the view that warming of the Earth`s climate is affecting Antarctic marine life. Whilst they found that sea-ice has a profound influence on population levels of snow petrels, Adélie and emperor penguins, the

MIT researchers have shown that a common pollutant strongly impacts the behavior of arsenic and possibly other toxic metals in some lakes, adding to scientists’ understanding of how such elements move through the water.

“The work shows that nitrate pollution, which arises from sources such as automobile exhaust, wastewater disposal and fertilizers, is more important in lake dynamics than had been thought,” said Harry Hemond, the Leonhard Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

A NASA researcher finds that the amount of sea ice that moves between Greenland and Spitsbergen, a group of islands north of Norway, is dependent upon a “wave” of atmospheric pressure at sea level. By being able to estimate how much sea ice is exported through this region, called Fram Strait, scientists may develop further insights into how the ice impacts global climate.

This export of sea ice helps control the thermohaline circulation, a deep water ocean conveyor belt that moves warm, sal