Laboratory testing of agricultural produce in the wake of the food scares of the 1990s has made the food on European dinner tables safer than ever before. But, say a team of researchers, an even better job could be done by taking the laboratory to the farm, slaughter house or processing plant.

The GoodFood project aims to do just that by using micro and nanotechnology to develop portable devices to detect toxins, pathogens and chemicals in foodstuffs on the spot. Food samples w

A University of Sussex-led team of scientists is ahead in the race to solve one of the biggest mysteries of our physical world: why the Universe contains the matter that we’re made of.

In a paper submitted to Physical Review Letters, the team has just announced the results of a ten-year project to make one of the most sensitive measurements ever of sub-atomic particles. Theories attempting to explain the creation of matter in the aftermath of the Big Bang now have to be tun

On Dec. 16, 1811, residents of New Madrid, Mo., were wrested from sleep by violent shaking and a deafening roar. A short time later, church bells hundreds of miles away in Boston began to ring. It was the first of three massive earthquakes that rocked the central United States between December 1811 and February 1812, even changing the course of the Mississippi River in their aftermath.

“A big earthquake in the same region as the 1811-1812 earthquakes would have devastating consequences

Researcher outlines coral’s future in an increasingly acidic ocean

The ocean is getting more and more acidic, and that’s bad news for coral reefs. That’s the word from University of Miami Rosenstiel School’s Dr. Christopher Langdon who will speak on “Possible Consequences of Increasing Atmospheric CO2 on Coral Reef Ecosystems,” Monday, Feb. 20 at 3 p.m. HST (8 p.m. EST) in Honolulu at the American Geophysical Union’s 2006 Ocean Sciences Meeting.

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The landscape is changing in East Africa, and quickly. A migrating and growing population, emerging economies and an increase in agricultural production are leaving their mark on the region’s environment.

Jennifer Olson, a visiting assistant professor of geography at Michigan State University, is co-coordinator of LUCID: Land Use Change, Impacts and Dynamics, an international effort to examine and discover links to how East Africa’s economic and social progress is infl

One of the greatest challenges facing marine ecologists today is finding innovative ways to reverse the rapid decline of coral reef ecosystems around the world. Ten percent of the planet’s reefs already have been degraded beyond recovery, according to one survey, and another 60 percent could die by 2050, primarily because of human activities, such as pollution, overfishing and climate change.

The situation is particularly acute in the island nations of the Caribbean, which

Increased carbon dioxide emissions are rapidly making the world’s oceans more acidic and, if unabated, could cause a mass extinction of marine life similar to one that occurred 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs disappeared. Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology will present this research at the AGU/ASLO Ocean Sciences meeting in Honolulu, HI on Monday, Feb 20.

Caldeira’s computer models have predicted that the oceans will become far more

University Park, Pa. Ð Deeply buried ocean sediments may house populations of tiny organisms that have extremely low maintenance energy needs and population turnover rates of anywhere from 200 to 2,000 years, according to an international team of researchers.

“The microbial ecosystem in deeply buried marine sediments may comprise a tenth of Earth’s living biomass, but little is known about the organisms, their physiologies, and their influence on surface environments,” says

Researchers evaluate the effects of warm waters on little fish

Warm Caribbean waters may provide a toasty growing area for larval fish, but that’s not enough to ensure a flourishing fish population. That’s the conclusion of research published in this month’s edition of Marine Ecology Progress Series by Dr. Su Sponaugle and colleagues from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School. The scientists studied the petite, yet eye-catching blue-headed wrasse in the uppe

Apple scab and fire blight are two of the most important diseases affecting apple trees. The Venezuelan biologist, Alejandro Martínez Bilbao, has undertaken research into more than 200 types of apple tree, indigenous to Spain, in order to select those varieties resistant to these pathogens. One of the main conclusions of the PhD thesis of this biologist is that, in Navarre, there are 12 apple tree varieties capable of resisting these highly damaging pests. This is the first time in Spain that such

A group of Dartmouth researchers has evidence that disturbing the land where farms once thrived can mobilize both arsenic and lead that were applied as pesticides in the early 1900s. Once disturbed, these metals can then contaminate nearby surface waters.

“We continue to learn more about how past agricultural practices are affecting our current environment,” says Carl Renshaw, Associate Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth. “Unlike some of the pesticides used today, metals l

Organic diets lower children’s dietary exposure to two common pesticides used in U.S. agricultural production, according to a study by Emory University researcher Chensheng “Alex” Lu, PhD. The substitution of organic food items for children’s normal diets substantially decreased the pesticide concentration to non-detectable levels.
Dr. Lu, an assistant professor in the department of environmental and occupational health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, will re

Earth System Experts to Speak at IGBP Session on “Vital Organs in the Earth System: What is the Prognosis?” at AAAS Annual Meeting

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting, St. Louis 16-20 February 2006, America’s Center convention site.

SESSION TITLE: Vital Organs in the Earth System: What is the Prognosis?
SESSION DATE: 2/19/2006, 8:30 AM to 11:30 AM
LOCATION: Renaissance Grand Hotel (opposite main conference ve

Study Suggests Climate Models Underestimate Future Warming

Scientists have found evidence that tropical Atlantic Ocean temperatures may have once reached 107°F (42°C)—about 25°F (14°C) higher than ocean temperatures today and warmer than a hot tub. The surprisingly high ocean temperatures, the warmest estimates to date for any place on Earth, occurred millions of year ago when carbon dioxide levels in Earth’s atmosphere were also high, but researchers say they may be an indication th

When Voyager 1 finally crossed the “termination shock” at the edge of interstellar space in December 2004, space physicists anticipated the long-sought discovery of the source of anomalous cosmic rays. These cosmic rays, among the most energetic particle radiation in the solar system, are thought to be produced at the termination shock — the boundary at the edge of the solar system where the million-mile-per-hour solar wind abruptly slows. A mystery unfolded instead when Voyager data showed 20 y

The search for El Dorado in the Amazonian rainforest might not have yielded pots of gold, but it has led to unearthing a different type of gold mine: some of the globe’s richest soil that can transform poor soil into highly fertile ground.

That’s not all. Scientists have a method to reproduce this soil — known as terra preta, or Amazonian dark earths — and say it can pull substantial amounts of carbon out of the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s