In August and September of this year, three powerful icebreakers transited to the North Pole in search of a climate record stored in sediments below the Arctic Ocean floor. During the spectacular Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX), conducted by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), 340 meters of sediment core were retrieved from the bottom of the Arctic Ocean — a true “first.” With these sediments in hand, earth scientists for the first time can move away from pure speculation about the

The biggest mass extinction of all time happened 251 million years ago, at the Permian-Triassic boundary. Virtually all of life was wiped out, but the pattern of how life was killed off on land has been mysterious until now. A team from Bristol University and Saratov University, Russia, have now laid the evidence bare.

The Bristol and Russian researchers have documented the event in Russia after looking at 675 specimens of amphibians and reptiles from 289 areas spanning 13 success

Antarctic whales, seals and penguins could be threatened by food shortages in the Southern Ocean. Numbers of Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba), a shrimp-like crustacean at the heart of the food chain, are declining. The most likely explanation is a dramatic decline in sea-ice. The results are published this week in the journal Nature.

Sea-ice is a vital feeding ground for the huge number of krill in the Southern Ocean. The new research shows that krill numbers have dropped b

Yorkshire based Gourmet Woodland Mushrooms outlined how its products can be used successfully in the bioremediation and pharmaceutical sector at the White Rose University Consortium Bioscience Forum today (03 November).

Formed in 2002, Gourmet Woodland Mushrooms is the European leader in mycelium propogation technology and the only UK company replicating mushroom mycelium. Its products are developed on a continual cycle to ensure peak viability and it supplies mushroom spawn to m

The behavior of air bubbles in ordinary breakfast syrup demonstrates how scientists might be able to make vanishingly thin tubes and fibers for biomedical and other applications.

Previous experiments conducted in Sidney Nagel’s laboratory at the University of Chicago showed how to make liquid threads that measure only 10 microns in diameter (approximately one-fifth the diameter of a human hair). Now his Chicago colleague Wendy Zhang reports in the current issue of Physical R

The contract for a fourth Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) spacecraft was signed today, ensuring continuity of European meteorological satellite services with the delivery of data for weather forecasting, climate and the environment for many years into the future.

The contract and cooperation agreement for construction of the MSG-4 satellite were signed at ESA Headquarters in Paris by Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA Director General, Lars Prahm, EUMETSAT Director General, and Pascale

In 1998, Shuhai Xiao and colleagues reported finding thousands of 600 million year old embryo microfossils in the Neoproterozoic Doushantuo Formation, a fossil site near Weng’an, South China, (Xiao, S., Zhang, Y., and Knoll, A.H., 1998, “Three-dimensional preservation of algae and animal embryos in a Neoproterozoic phosphorite,” Nature, v. 391). Within the egg cases they examined at that time, they discovered animals in the first stages of development – from a single cell to only a few dozen cel

A revolutionary software system which could help manufacturers reduce CFC emissions is being developed thanks to an £80,000 investment from NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), the organization which invests in UK creativity.

London-based Quantemol receives this investment to develop the world’s most powerful tool to predict how molecules and electrons interact on a quantum subatomic level.

Offering a more precise and comprehensive understan

EUREKA project E! 2634 EUROENVIRON TEAP (Tool Evaluating Air quality impact of air Pollution) has created a real-time software solution to provide pollution forecasts for industrial plants, cities and air quality authorities. It will change the way pollution is dealt with and is set to increase the lead partner’s turnover by 25%.

The TEAP software program runs daily on a set of interconnected PCs, providing a detailed pollution forecast based on complex mathematical and chemical mo

A Virginia Tech graduate student put a car battery and Hurricane Ivan to good use in his studies of sinkholes.

Benjamin Schwartz, a Ph.D. student in geosciences in the College of Science, who is from Doe Hill, Va., in Highland County, is using an innovative technique to characterize ground water movement in sinkholes. His goal is to recommend management strategies to reduce contamination of aquifers in regions that are rife with sinkholes. Hurricane Ivan’s downpour in South

Virginia Tech researchers from geosciences and biology are looking at where arsenic occurs in water, how it is getting there, and how to prevent it. They will present their findings at the 116th national meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver Nov. 7-10.

Since health data have demonstrated that arsenic is a carcinogen, the U.S. standard for arsenic in drinking water has been lowered from 50 to 10 parts per billion, which is the same as the European Union stand

Climate scientists agree that atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) has increased about 35 percent over the industrial period and that it will continue to rise so that CO2 will reach double its pre-industrial value well before the end of this century. How much this doubled CO2 concentration will raise Earth’s global mean temperature, however, remains quite uncertain and is the subject of intense research — and heated debate.

In a paper to be published in the November issue of the Jour

Efforts to protect coral reefs should be refocused on terminating self-reinforcing processes that accelerate degradation of these biological marvels, according to a Forum article published in the November 2004 issue of BioScience. The article, by Charles Birkeland of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, blames a series of “ratchets” — destructive forces that are hard to reverse — for the failure of most current efforts to halt continuing losses.

Birkeland identifies seven ecological

Copper mining in Butte and Anaconda, Montana, starting in 1860’s, poisoned the air, the land, and the water; well over 100 years later, contaminants are still found as far as 300 miles down the Clark Fork River, whose headwaters are in that area.

The presence of the contaminants has been known for many decades. But the interaction of the heavy metals and other compounds in the soil, streams, and rivers were unknown until Virginia Tech professor of geosciences Michael Hochella

There were 20 million metric tons of lead bullets fired in the United States in the 20th century. Is that lead having an environmental impact? Not at or near the U.S. Forest Service firing range near Blacksburg, Va., according to research by Virginia Tech geological scientists. Donald Rimstidt, a professor in the Department of Geosciences, College of Science at Virginia Tech will report the conclusions of a five-year study at the 116th national meeting of the Geological Sciences of America

Representatives of civic groups and local council members have been invited to a meeting on Monday 1st November to discuss how they see land and water uses in the Slea catchment changing in the future. The meeting is being organised by Sleaford Development Group at the Solo Club, Seaford and will brief those attending about a study investigating ways to manage nitrate pollution of groundwater.

The study, being carried out in collaboration with the School of Environmental Sciences a