Farm equipment in the future might very well resemble the robot R2D2 of Star Wars fame. But instead of careening through a galaxy far, far away, these ag robots might be wobbling down a corn row, scouting for insects, blasting weeds and taking soil tests.
University of Illinois agricultural engineers have developed several ag robots, one of which actually resembles R2D2, except that it’s square instead of round. The robots are completely autonomous, directing themselves down corn rows, tur

On the 17 and 18 June a meeting was held at the head office of AZTI-TECNALIA in the Basque port of Pasaia to launch a new project for a Spanish System of Operational Oceanography. Working on the project are the principal research centres, bodies in the field of oceanography and meteorology as well as other agencies involved in coastal management such as the Spanish Ports Authority. More than 50 experts, national and international, bringing together a wide range of multidisciplinary experience, took

Snow quality may affect the Canadian lynx’s ability to kill its prey, according to new research suggesting climate may be impacting one of the most fascinating ecological systems to intrigue biologists for decades. The University of Alberta’s Dr. Stan Boutin is part of a research team to study the relationship between the lynx and the snowshoe hare—an interaction that has grave implications on the dynamics of the whole boreal forest.

Boutin teamed up with other researchers from Canada, the U

The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) will today publish interim findings relating to how the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is being implemented in four African countries. The Fund was established in 2002 as a mechanism to get additional resources to affected countries to control these devastating diseases.

The findings, which appear in the Lancet, are based on interviews with 137 national level respondents. They reveal that the conditions set by the

A team of researchers led by Melinda Smith at Yale and Travis Huxman at the University of Arizona report that, from desert to rainforest, during drought conditions, the maximum rain use efficiency (RUEmax), or effective productivity of plant growth per unit of precipitation converges to a common value.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the International Biological Program (IBP) began to study how water affects productivity in different ecosystems. It was not until this current group

Inkoa Systems, Engineering and Consultation, specialised in the agricultural foods sector, is currently developing an expert system to carry out prediction and diagnosis of diseases in the agricultural sector, specifically for its application in the wine-growing sector.

The expert system – an intelligent information system, simulates human reasoning, enabling the prediction and diagnosis of diseases, blights and nutritional failings, just like an expert would. The system incorporates consu

Recent research has shown that over the past 50 years the evaporative demand at the terrestrial surface has decreased in many regions, while rainfall has remained constant or even increased a little, effectively making the land wetter. Much of the research to date has been undertaken in the Northern Hemisphere, but a new report details the changes specific to Australia between 1970 and 2002. Results are published this week in the International Journal of Climatology.

In the time period stud

Conservation workers have had their first look at satellite-derived map products that show a remote habitat of endangered African mountain gorillas in unprecedented detail. Production versions of these prototype products will help protect the less than 700 of the species remaining alive.

“It’s very exciting to get a look at some of the products we’re going to be able to take into the field in future,” remarked Maryke Gray, regional monitoring officer of the International Gorilla Conservation

Camping out, for anything up to two months, on vast ice sheets in the Arctic is just one of the challenges scientists faced performing the first of a series of six validation experiments in support of ESA’s CryoSat mission.

CryoSat will be the first Earth Explorer to be launched as part of ESA’s Living Planet Programme. Due for launch at the end of this year, it will measure changes in the elevation of ice sheets and sea ice with unprecedented accuracy in order to determine whether or

They will come by land, sea, and air to probe the skies and take measure of the air we breathe. And the University of New Hampshire will be at the center of it all – the largest and most complex air quality-climate study ever attempted.

Satellites will fly overhead scanning the Earth’s atmosphere, research aircraft will make tight spirals down a 40,000-foot column of air and “sniff” for hundreds of chemical species. Planes will fly wingtip-to-wingtip gathering air samples and comparing meas

Jeffrey Kirwan, associate professor of forestry and Extension specialist at Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources, has been advising students and teachers at Ocean View Elementary School in Norfolk, Va., to save what appears to be the last mature dune in Norfolk on the southern shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

The dune, which has an elevation of 70 to 85 feet, has historic significance. Some of the trees on the site were present at the time of the Sarah Constant landfall in 1607 and are

Viruses’ growing resistance to drugs means diseases such as hepatitis B and C are increasingly difficult to treat. New pandemics may arise with unforeseeable consequences. The EU is therefore contributing € 9 million to the “Vigilance against Viral Resistance” (VIRGIL) project, to be launched today in Lyon (France). It will start by addressing drug resistance in viral hepatitis and influenza, but will broaden its scope to other viruses. The network will be based on research and technological platfo

Scientists affiliated with the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), an international scientific research program designed to contribute fundamental knowledge to the topics of climate change, geologic hazards, energy resources, and Earth’s environment, departed Astoria, Ore., June 28, for the first leg of six planned expeditions. At the Juan de Fuca Ridge, off the coast of British Columbia, the first IODP expedition will undertake hydrologic, microbiological, seismic and tracer stud

A new approach that is one of the first to successfully store carbon dioxide underground may have huge implications for global warming and the oil industry, says a University of Alberta researcher. Dr. Ben Rostron is part of an extensive team working on the $28 million International Energy Agency Weyburn CO2 Monitoring and Storage Project—the largest of its kind—that has safely buried the greenhouse gas and reduced emissions from entering the atmosphere.

“It’s one thing to say that undergrou

One of the largest environmental research centres in Europe opens in Lancaster this week. The £25 million Lancaster Environment Centre brings together around 300 researchers and lecturers, all working to find solutions to major environmental problems.

This joint venture between the Natural Environment Research Council’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and the University of Lancaster is housed in a state-of-the-art laboratory on the University campus. It provides cutting-edge equipme

A paper published this week in the journal Science supports the hypothesis that heat transfer by ocean currents – rather than global heating or cooling – may have been responsible for the global temperature patterns associated with the abrupt climate changes seen in the North Atlantic during the past 80,000 years.

Authored by the University of Bremen’s Frank Lamy and colleagues, the paper provides new evidence that Southern Hemisphere climate may not have changed in step with Northern Hem