Invitation to a press conference for the start of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program’s Arctic Coring Expedition, ACEX, on board the icebreaker Oden in the port of Tromsø, Norway on Friday 6 August 2004 at 11.00

Three icebreakers will carry a team of international scientists to the Arctic Ocean next month (8 August), to study its geological history. The Arctic Coring Expedition, ACEX, aims to reach several hundreds of metres into the sediments of the Lomonosov Ridge, an unde

These images of ‘yardangs’, features sculpted by wind-blown sand seen here near Olympus Mons on Mars, were obtained by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board the ESA Mars Express spacecraft.

This image was taken during orbit 143 with a resolution of 20 metres per pixel. This scene shows a structure south of Olympus Mons at 6° N latitude and 220° E longitude, which was probably formed by the action of the wind. Loose sand fragments were transported by wind, and impacted on the be

A University of Surrey spin-out company, Cybersense Biosystems Ltd, has developed a portable toxicity screening device. The ROTAS system can be literally wheeled on to a brown field site and carry out field-based screening of contaminated soils and waters and results can be read within minutes. It is especially relevant with the Government’s vision to see more contaminated industrial land made safe for housing.

“The key benefit of ROTAS is its ability to dramatically reduce the cost of sit

Forest ecologists have long wondered why forests decline in the absence of catastrophic disturbances. A new study, in part funded by the British Ecological Society, and published in this week’s Science, has shed new light on this problem.

This study investigated natural forested stands across each of six ’chronosequences’ or sequences of soils of different ages since the most recent major disturbance. These sequences were located in a range of climatic zones, including northern Sweden (a se

The lowermost region of the earth’s mantle, the D” layer, has presented great problems to geophysicists for a long time. This irregularly bounded layer, which is about 150 kilometres thick on average, shows very different physical properties to those lying above. The reason why the Earth’s mantle at the interface to the core should have such anomalous structure and properties could not be convincingly explained until now. Artem R. Oganov from the Laboratory for Cristallography at ETH Zurich and Shig

Within the €3.6 million EU research project PROMESS1 (PROfiles across MEditerranean Sedimentary Systems), with an EU contribution of €2.7 million, European scientists have collected 500 000 year-old sediment cores from the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. These samples will allow researchers to reconstruct climate variations since pre-historic times, thus providing keys for understanding what is happening to Earth’s climate now. Ocean drilling is crucial in understanding changes in climate, as the s

“When I started at Rolls-Royce last September, I didn’t think I would have the chance to work on a new engine concept.” Angel Gallo, graduate trainee, Rolls-Royce. Researchers from Cambridge University and graduate trainees from Rolls-Royce are currently working together in a quest to explore possible future designs for a completely new type of aircraft engine.

Engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce is a partner in the Cambridge-MIT Institute’s ‘Silent Aircraft’ Initiative. This is a unique thre

Using innovative Geographic information system (GIS) technology and land parcel identification systems (LPIS), the European Commission is playing a key role in preventing agricultural subsidy irregularities. Through better monitoring of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reforms, the Commission is ensuring that subsidies are distributed more efficiently, fairly and reliably.

The Agriculture and Fisheries Council Meeting in Brussels today will underline that implementing fair CAP reforms is es

Naked oats has proved to be an excellent avian feed in terms of nutritional value. In fact, oat-based feed turned out to be better than expected in nutritional studies. This has aroused great economic interest, especially in the UK, which is the world’s leading developer of naked oats.

Speaking at the International Oat Conference in Helsinki, Cark Maunsel of Oat Services Ltd. said that naked oats are equal to top feed-grade wheat. Naked oats have a high energy content, with the added adv

An embryonic rift valley in Botswana, the southwestern extension of the East African Rift System, where some of the earliest hominids have been discovered, may also hold answers to continental breakup, according to a University of Missouri-Rolla geologist who is studying how the rift has formed.

“This rift will provide us with an early snapshot of how continental rifting all begins,” says Dr. Estella Atekwana, an associate professor of geology and geophysics at UMR. The study of rift basins

Once dismissed as a nautical myth, freakish ocean waves that rise as tall as ten-storey apartment blocks have been accepted as a leading cause of large ship sinkings. Results from ESA’s ERS satellites helped establish the widespread existence of these ’rogue’ waves and are now being used to study their origins.

Severe weather has sunk more than 200 supertankers and container ships exceeding 200 metres in length during the last two decades. Rogue waves are believed to be the major cause in

While rovers and orbiting spacecraft scour Mars searching for clues to its past, researchers have uncovered another piece of the red planet in the most inhospitable place on Earth — Antarctica.

The new specimen was found by a field party from the U.S. Antarctic Search for Meteorites program (ANSMET) on Dec. 15, 2003, on an ice field in the Miller Range of the Transantarctic Mountains, roughly 750 kilometers from the South Pole. This 715.2-gram black rock, officially designated MIL 03346, w

Several Montana State University researchers will present their findings at the 89th annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America. The Aug. 1-6 meeting in Portland, Ore. is expected to be the group’s largest meeting ever. Some topics that may interest you are listed below.

Camping impacts

Camping in the mountains leads to major ecological changes, including loss of vegetation and trampled soil. Researchers studied disturbed, undisturbed and restored campsites

Here is a list of Montana State University researchers who are conducting studies in Yellowstone National Park.

Yellowstone wildlife

Scott Creel, ecology professor, monitors elk-wolf interactions and trends in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. http://www.montana.edu/wwwbi/staff/creel/creel.html#Creel’s
See news story at http://www.montana.edu/commserv/csnews/nwview.php?article=352

Robert Garrott, ecology professor, examines predator-prey dynamics in a wol

Page by page, America’s rich agricultural history is being ravaged, not by boll weevils, not by locusts, not by critters of any kind, but by time.

However, librarians at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are engaged in a fierce battle to save hundreds of aged publications – the core history and literature on Illinois agriculture, as they see it.

Their weapon? Microfilm – miles of it. More than a century of endangered materials have accumulated and are in dire need of

Some fungi, it turns out, may be a western white pine’s best friends.

Decades after the white pine blister rust fungus swept through the vast and valuable stands of Idaho’s state tree, new work by University of Idaho scientists is providing the rest of the story.

The take-home message is: not all forest fungi are bad, and in fact it may be best to fight fungi with fungi.

A new group of fungi discovered in the green needles of western white pines by UI researchers m