A team of international researchers working on the North Greenland Ice Core Project recently recovered what appear to be plant remnants nearly two miles below the surface between the bottom of the glacial ice and the bedrock.

Researchers from the project, known as NGRIP, said particles found in clumps of reddish material recovered from the frozen, muddy ice in late July look like pine needles, bark or blades of grass. Thought to date to several million years ago before the last i

These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show the Dao Valles and Niger Valles, a system of outflow channels on Mars.

The images were taken during orbit 528 in June 2004, and show the Dao Valles and Niger Valles areas at a point where the north-eastern Hellas impact crater basin and the Hesperia Planum volcanic region meet.

The images are centred at Mars longitude 93° East and latitude 32° South. The image re

Heat waves in Chicago, Paris, and elsewhere in North America and Europe will become more intense, more frequent and longer lasting in the 21st century, according to a new modeling study by two scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. In the United States, heat waves will become most severe in the West and South. The findings appear in the August 13 issue of the journal Science.

Gerald Meehl and Claudia Tebaldi, both of NCAR, examined Earth

Clemson University students are in Florida, where they will hunt Hurricane Charley to gather research that may improve building techniques and codes to secure homes in the face of disaster.

Cos Gardner and Brian Dick, graduate students in Clemson’s civil engineering department, will meet with researchers from the University of Florida, Gainesville, and Florida International University to assemble a rapidly deployable 33-foot tall wind tower.

Each steel-reinforced platfor

Farm-raised salmon contain much higher levels of flame retardants than most wild salmon, and some wild Chinook have the highest levels of all, according to new research. Building on an earlier study of chemicals in the two types of fish, the findings suggest that consumers should choose their salmon carefully.

The report appeared online Aug. 10 in Environmental Science & Technology, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

Suspected large lakebeds that once were scattered on the planet Mars have not yet been found, say the research team that operated the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Their work appears in the current issue of Science magazine.

Members of the team have written several articles in the magazine, among them “The Spirit Rover’s Athena Science Investigation at Gusev Crater” that deals with the search for water on the red planet, and “Pancam Multispectral Imaging Results from the

University of Nevada, Reno researchers have for the first time recorded a cluster of nearly 1,600 small earthquakes 20 miles beneath Lake Tahoe — the world’s second-largest alpine lake. Based on observations from the university’s Nevada Seismic Network and an ultra-sensitive Global Positioning System (GPS) station at Slide Mountain, the researchers believe the quake cluster coincided with an unprecedented 8-millimeter uplifting of the ski resort mountain in the Sierra Nevada.

It’s like a scene out of a Stephen King novel, begun in the nineties and continued at a more rapid pace in the oughts: scores of deformed frogs flopping around as best they can, found often near cattle ponds and other wetlands throughout North America.

Researchers looked for chemical pollutants or hormonal changes in the frogs as culprits. But recent evidence linked the deformities – missing, extra, or deformed limbs – to the presence of Ribeiroia ondatrae, a frog parasite that h

Authors say results could have major impacts on ’green’ certification programs

A study by a scientist from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society has revealed how Africa’s giant mahoganies, the ancient trees driving the tropical logging industry, require specialized, poorly understood soil conditions – results that could have huge implications on how Africa’s tropical forests are managed.

The study, appearing in the latest issue of the journal Ecology, looked at

EarthScope Project Scientists Lead Modern-Day ’Journey to the Center of the Earth’ In a modern-day journey to the center of the Earth, geologists are exploring the structure and evolution of the North American continent at scales from hundreds of kilometers to less than a millimeter – from the structure of a continent, to individual faults, earthquakes and volcanoes. The project is called EarthScope. With approximately $200 million in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), EarthScope wi

For the second time in three years, a hypoxic “dead zone” has formed off the central Oregon Coast. It’s killing fish, crabs and other marine life and leading researchers to believe that a fundamental change may be taking place in ocean conditions in the northern Pacific Ocean.

The event appears similar to one in 2002, when an area of ocean water with low oxygen content formed in the nearshore Oregon coast between Newport and Florence, causing a massive die-off of fish and inver

NASA will extend operation of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) through the end of 2004, in light of a recent request from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The extension, to be undertaken jointly with NASA’s TRMM partner, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), will provide data during another storm season in the U.S. and Asia.

TRMM has yielded significant scientific research data over the last seven years to users around the globe. In

Just days after Alex, the season’s first Atlantic-basin hurricane, brushed the U.S. coastline, William Gray and Philip Klotzbach of the Colorado State University hurricane forecast team issued a report this morning slightly reducing the team’s seasonal forecast. However, the researchers still call for above-average hurricane activity this year and expect slightly above-average tropical cyclone activity in August and September.

As detailed in today’s updated Atlantic seasonal hurrican

Scientists at Stockholm University in Sweden may have developed a new method for predicting earthquakes with the help of geochemistry. The method involves metering the content of certain metals in underground water, which changes before and after an earthquake.

The team of researchers behind these discoveries, presented in the latest issue of the scientific journal Geology, is led by Alasdair Skelton, professor of petrology and geochemistry at Stockholm University. An other member o

Originally developed to pinpoint attacking aircraft during World War Two, today’s advanced radar technology can detect a very different moving target: shifts of the Earth’s crust that occur as slowly as the growth of your fingernails.

Radar data from satellites such as ESA’s Envisat are used to construct ’interferograms’ that show millimetre-scale land movements. These rainbow-hued images provide scientists with new insights into tectonic motion, and an enhanced ability to calculate

A novel and exciting study that will provide new insights into the key relationships between climate, water availability and human activities in the semi-arid regions of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is getting under way at the University of Reading. The research will help shape our perception of the past, present and future of one of the most complex – and often troubled – parts of the world.

With a major funding award of nearly £1,240,000 from the Leverhulme Trust, a uniq