Scientists conclude that, 65 million years ago, a 10-kilometer-wide asteroid or comet slammed into what is now the Yucatán peninsula, excavating the Chicxulub impact crater and setting into motion a chain of catastrophic events thought to precipitate the extinction of the dinosaurs and 75 percent of animal and plant life that existed in the late Cretaceous period.

“The impact of an asteroid or comet several kilometers across heaps environmental insult after insult on the world,” said

A biodegradable plastic made from toxic waste could solve pollution problems, scientists from Dublin announced today (Wednesday, 08 September 2004) at the Society for General Microbiology’s 155th Meeting at Trinity College Dublin.

The team from University College in Dublin have demonstrated that bacteria can use styrene, a toxic by-product of the polystyrene industry, to make a type of biodegradable plastic, polyhydroxyalkanoate, known as PHA.

Styrene is found in many type

ISURPAK has announced that it will have the first packaging machine for its ecological carton by the middle of 2005. The first prototype is to be developed by a consortium in which the engineering group IDOM is participating. This first machine will be able to fill 25 packs per minute – particularly suitable for small- and medium-sized production lines.

Compared to similar packages, this design is the most simple, with a rectangular shape and stiffness, plus a secure waterproof and

In the near future the usual summer ozone peaks exceeding the allowed threshold may be a thing of the past: the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland has developed a new type of catalytic conversion system, which filters nearly all nitrogen oxides out of diesel exhaust gases using a refined control technology. This eliminates the main cause of summer ozone build-up. The process requires a non-toxic urea solution, which future diesel engine commercial vehicles can take with them in a separat

Air quality has improved dramatically over the past 50 years. Professor Mike Piling, Head of Physical Chemistry at the University of Leeds, will reveal the latest about air quality research at the Festival of Science today.

The Clean Air Act was passed in 1956 in response to the devastating London smog of 1952 and led to substantial improvements. Since then road traffic has become a major contributor to air pollution and much of current legislation is designed to minimise the eff

Optical brighteners are a valuable component for bioinsecticide formulae based on baculovirus. These substances enhance their insecticidal capacity at the same time as they do not favour the development of resistance of the insects to these viruses, nor do they increase the probability that the insect might develop sublethal infections, rather than lethal ones. This is the conclusion of the Mexican engineer, Ana Mabel Martínez Castillo, in her thesis defended in the Public University of Navarre

High levels of mercury can have a toxic effect on the human nervous system. To help reduce the amount of mercury emitted from power plants during coal combustion, UAB has received a three-year, $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to find the best, most cost-effective method for mercury removal from power plant emissions.

“It is difficult for utilities to plan equipment improvements and new construction without quantitative data with which to evaluate alternative designs,” says

Hurricanes are one of those forces of nature that can only fully be captured by satellite imagery. For Hurricane Frances, currently thundering towards the United States coast, ESA’s Envisat is going one better, peering through the hurricane from top to bottom, even helping to ’see’ under the waves to map hidden forces powering the storm.

As its 235-km-per-hour winds passed the Bahamas, Frances was heading for landfall on the Florida coast some time on Saturday, and three quarters

The smudges of dark blue on this Envisat-derived ozone forecast trace the start of what has unfortunately become an annual event: the opening of the ozone hole above the South Pole.

“Ever since this phenomenon was first discovered in the mid-1980s, satellites have served as an important means of monitoring it,” explained José Achache, ESA Director of Earth Observation Programmes. “ESA satellites have been routinely observing stratospheric ozone concentrations for the last decade. “

About 25 miles beneath the Earth’s surface is a discrete boundary between the planet’s rocky crust and the mantle below that geologists call the Moho. But in the southern end of California’s San Joaquin Valley, the Moho just isn’t there, reports a team of geologists.

“The Moho is missing,” said team leader George Zandt, a professor of geosciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson. It’s the first report of such a disappearance in California.Zandt said the

The first green accounts for a public sector body are published today.

A pioneering set of Environmental Cost Accounts are contained in the latest annual report from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). They focus on the environmental impacts and costs of its staff, facilities and operations. Using the latest scientific information available, Forum for the Future, a leading sustainable development charity, put an estimated price of £2.1 million on avoiding or restoring N

If not for humans, the number of woodland caribou in northern Alberta would be seven times greater than it is now, a new study from the University of Alberta shows. Since 1987, woodland caribou in Alberta have been classified as threatened under the Alberta Wildlife Act.

“Caribou feed mostly on lichens that are typical for old-growth forest stands,” said Piotr Weclaw a PhD student at the U of A. “They need a pristine ecological environment with large areas of old-growth forests in or

Veterinarians from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) have confirmed the first-known case of canine distemper in a wild Siberian tiger in the Russian Far East, further threatening populations of this highly endangered big cat.

Kathy Quigley, veterinarian for the WCS Siberian Tiger Project, confirmed that an adult female tigress that wandered into a Russian town exhibiting abnormal behavior had the disease, which is fatal in cats. It is suspected that the tiger

The Directors of the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC)signed a Cooperation Agreement providing the JRC with real-time access to ECMWF weather forecast products for use in the European Flood Alert System (EFAS). Both organisations will work together to develop a system for early flood warnings up to 10 days in advance. An increased warning time could help to avoid casualties and reduce flood damages.

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Minute amounts of organic pollutants—including oestrone—can now be detected in river water as a result of a new optical sensing instrument realised in a project funded by the EU’s Environment Programme.

Pollution in water sources has been identified as a major source of environmental hazard, most recently associated with gender changes in fish, and implicated in falling levels of male fertility. Monitoring water quality and identifying pollution sources is therefore crucially impo

The area burned by wildfires in 11 Western states could double by the end of the century if summer climate warms by slightly more than a degree and a half, say researchers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and Pacific Northwest Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington.

Montana, Wyoming and New Mexico appear acutely sensitive, especially to temperature changes, and fire seasons there may respond more dramatically to global warming than in states suc