Researchers find one population actually two; suggest strategies for future elephant conservation

Researchers in India and from The Earth Institute at Columbia University have discovered that one of the few remaining populations of Asian elephants in India is actually two genetically distinct groups. The results of the study, which appear in the current issue of the journal Animal Conservation, could have far-reaching implications in conservation plans for the endangered elepha

An international team worked on the verge of the Sahara to gather data on the ground and in the air, to be compared with imagery of the same region acquired by ESA satellites. The results will be used in support of an ambitious project to apply satellite remote sensing to improve monitoring and management of vast water aquifers concealed beneath the desert.

High-resolution radar as well as hyperspectral optical imagery was acquired during flights across two test areas in southern Tunis

“Hydropeaking“ in rivers and streams is becoming a problem for water ecology, particularly for fish. Rapid change in the release of water from alpine hydroelectric power stations leads to artificial discharge variations on a daily and weekly basis. Of Switzerland’s larger rivers, one in four is influenced by such water surges. Together with the wide-spread river training and channelisation, such intermittent flow is one of the main causes for the biological deficits that can be observed, for exampl

The Geological Society of London (Note 1) is convening a one-day meeting on January 9 2006 (Notes 2,3) to be chaired by its former President, Lord Oxburgh KBE FRS, to review the long-term management of radioactive wastes from a geoscientific perspective. The media are welcome to attend the meeting. There will be no news conference.

In 1999, the Geological Society of London and the British Geological Survey held a meeting that concluded deep disposal was the best technical and scientific opt

This week’s launch of MSG-2 will ensure that satellite images continue to be available to European weather forecasters well into the next decade. It also marks a new chapter in a long-term space experiment measuring the available energy that drives the weather as a whole, and helping to establish how much the Earth is heating up.

MSG-2’s main instrument is the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infra-red Imager (SEVIRI) which returns detailed 12-wavelength images of the Ear

An international working group coordinated by scientists at the Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) Institute of Zoology (IoZ) have made the remarkable recommendation to reclassify the Mongolian Przewalski’s horses, previously categorised as ‘extinct’ in the wild, to ‘endangered’ on the IUCN red list of threatened species; a move which highlights the success of recent captive breeding and reintroduction programmes.

The working group of over 60 mammal specialists was managed by IoZ scie

How can you manage and design rivers such that no floods occur, whilst still ensuring navigation for shipping and a continuation of the agricultural, ecological and recreational functions? Dutch researcher Saskia van Vuren discovered that uncertainties in the behaviour of the riverbed play an important role in predicting the effects of design measures, such as lowering floodplains.

In view of future large-scale projects, such as river improvement measures in the project &#146

The effects of overfishing may have driven marbled murrelets, an endangered seabird found along the Pacific coast, to increasingly rely upon less nutritious food sources, according to a new study by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley.

The results, to be published online by early March 2006 in the journal Conservation Biology, suggest that feeding further down the food web may have played a role in low levels of reproduction observed in contemporary murrelet population

Motorcycles collectively emit 16 times more hydrocarbons, three times more carbon monoxide and a “disproportionately high” amount of other air pollutants compared to passenger cars, according to a Swiss study to be published in the Jan. 1 issue of the American Chemical Society’s journal Environmental Science & Technology. The study, by Ana-Marija Vasic and Martin Weilenmann of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research, found both two- and four-cycle motorcycle engines e

Sandia researcher Mark Ivey spends a week in Africa on site survey for climate monitoring equipment

After a six-month stint taking cloud and aerosol measurements at Point Reyes National Seashore on the California coast, a mobile suite of climate monitoring equipment was moved to Niamey, Niger, in October for a year’s deployment there.

Going along to help survey the site and prepare for the deployment of the climate monitoring equipment was Sandia National Laborat

The deep-sea scientific drilling vessel CHIKYU, owned by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) and provided to the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program–jointly funded by Japan and the United States–has recently undergone successful testing operations, according to JAMSTEC-CDEX Director-General Asahiko Taira. Successful performance results are now available for the Blow Out Preventer (BOP) handling System Integration Test (SIT). Dr. Taira also reported successful pist

A group of national weather centres across Europe are harnessing the power of GÉANT2, Europe’s next generation high-speed research and education network, to create a global weather forecasting system that allow meteorologists to make more accurate and timely predictions quicker.

“Climate change is a major global issue and few people will argue about its effects or that it is linked to extreme weather events,” says Dai Davies, General Manager of DANTE, which manages the GÉANT2 networ

Satellite technology allows glimpse into remote jungle habitat

The same satellite system used by the U.S. military to track vehicle convoys in Iraq is helping World Wildlife Fund shed light on the little-known world of pygmy elephants in Borneo.

This week marks the six-month anniversary of the first pygmy elephant’s being captured and outfitted with a collar that can send GPS locations to WWF daily via satellite. Now, for the first time, the public can track the mov

A University of California, Berkeley, study of methane-producing bacteria frozen at the bottom of Greenland’s two-mile thick ice sheet could help guide scientists searching for similar bacterial life on Mars.

Methane is a greenhouse gas present in the atmospheres of both Earth and Mars. If a class of ancient microbes called Archaea are the source of Mars’ methane, as some scientists have proposed, then unmanned probes to the Martian surface should look for them at depths wher

More than 50% of buyers put location as the number one influencing factor in their choice of a new home. Things like low crime rate, good local amenities, road network and schools all influencing their decision of location. And we all know ‘good location’ homes sell at a price premium.

After location it traditionally used to be factors such as friendly neighbours, large gardens and fitted kitchens that weighed heavily in the buyer’s mind for choosing a home. But what is surpris

Weather extremes brought on by climate change could make such anomalies more common

Buoyed by the effects of an intense drought, otherwise harmless snails likely killed off thousands of acres of salt marsh in the Southeast in recent years.

Periwinkle snails, known to science as Littoraria irrorata, normally coexist happily with salt marsh. But the drought, which lasted from 1999 to 2001, weakened and killed marsh grasses such as cordgrass, or Spartina alterniflora, so ex