Researchers from Nottingham University in the United Kingdom have developed a new method for reducing the level of contamination of chickens by the foodborne bacterium Campylobacter jejuni. They are using bacterial viruses to target and kill the organism. They report their research today at the 104th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

In the study, the researchers isolated a number of naturally occurring bacterial viruses (called bacteriophage) that can infect and kil

CSIRO Livestock Industries scientists in Rockhampton have observed larger-than-expected numbers of a parasitic nematode in the gut of insects responsible for transmitting them – buffalo flies.

The ’filarial’ nematode (Stephanofilaria sp)- one of a group of worms transmitted by insects, and which live in the blood and tissues of their animal or human hosts – has been found in around 50 per cent of female buffalo flies in northern Australia.

The discovery could have implications fo

Across the world, rivers wash mountains into the sea. In the beautiful and rugged mountains of southeast Alaska, glaciers grind mountains down as fast as the earth’s colliding tectonic plates shove them up.

“Like an ice palace cheese grater, glaciers sweep and grind rocks off of mountains. No matter how fast the plate pushes the rock up, the glacier will erode it just as fast,” said James A. Spotila of Blacksburg, assistant professor of geosciences at Virginia Tech. The National Science

Ohio State University engineers are helping satellites form a clearer picture of water quality in the Great Lakes.

The study — the first ever to rate the effectiveness of various computer models for monitoring the Great Lakes — might also aid studies of global climate change.

As algae flourishes in the five freshwater lakes every summer, satellite images show the water changing color from blue to green, explained Carolyn Merry, professor of civil and environmental engineeri

Hollywood’s latest disaster movie, The Day After Tomorrow, is about to be released. It is a fictional account of the havoc wreaked by out-of-control climate as North America is beset by the chilling beginnings of a new Ice Age in the course of 10 days. The movie features numerous catastrophic weather events including hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and tidal waves striking New York.

“It’s a good yarn,” said Dr Tony Haymet, Chief of CSIRO Marine Research. “Like many of the catastroph

Dramatic climate change as a result of global warming could happen in a single lifetime – instead of being a slow process evolving over centuries, according to a University of Ulster academic.

Professor Marshall McCabe of the School of Environmental Sciences said that given the right set of circumstances, “a climate can flip in a lifetime”. And the result could be the return of Arctic conditions last seen in the British Isles thousands of years ago.

He said that the North Atlantic

When it comes to restoring nature, some members of the natural world are shunned for good reason

Restoring wetlands has a foreseeable and inevitable downside: the creation of mosquito habitat.

Breeding disease-transmitting mosquitoes isn’t just a surprising side effect of creating wetlands, but an inevitable and foreseeable consequence that must be acknowledged when planning wetland restoration projects, said Elizabeth Willott, an assistant professor in the department o

A deadly combination of industry and human activity may soon wipe out Alberta’s grizzly bear population, but new University of Alberta research that identifies the province’s highest mortality spots.

Scott Nielsen, from the Department of Biological Sciences, has isolated specific spots where the bears are dying at the highest rates, all sites where grizzly habitats overlap areas that humans frequent regularly. Nielsen’s paper, published in the journal “Biological Conservation

Researchers at the University of Warwick have found a way of using some the most difficult waste material from coal mines and quarries that will also significantly reduce the rapid depletion of the world’s best peat resources.

The researchers in the University of Warwick’s horticultural research arm, Warwick HRI, have been able to develop new substitute products from quarry and coal mine waste which can replace some of the 250,000m³ of peat are used each year for growing mushroom

Research recently conducted on the Texas South Plains may help wine grape growers conserve irrigation water without reducing grape yield or quality.

“The concept is known as deficit irrigation. You give the vines less than 100 percent of their actual water needs prior to veraison, or ripening,” said Ed Hellman, Texas Cooperative Extension viticulture specialiast based in Lubbock. Hellman has a joint appointment with Texas A&M University and Texas Tech University.

“Deficit irrigati

University of Southampton archaeologists Professor David Peacock and Dr Lucy Blue have just returned from a pioneering expedition investigating Roman sites in the East African country of Eritrea alongside colleagues from the University of Asmara. The University group is the first from the UK to work in the country since it won its independence more than a decade ago. They are already planning to return to this remote area on the shores of the Red Sea, previously part of Ethiopia.

Investigati

In today’s issue of Science (21 May 2004), a team of U.S. and Brazilian scientists show that the rate of forest destruction has accelerated significantly in Brazilian Amazonia since 1990. The team asserts, moreover, that Amazonian deforestation will likely continue to increase unless the Brazilian government alters its aggressive plans for highway and infrastructure expansion.

“The recent deforestation numbers are just plain scary,” said William Laurance of the Smithsonian Tropical Res

Studies of seabed algae and sandbanks have shown the potential of using autonomous sensors for environmental monitoring. SUMARE has proven them to be more efficient, cost-effective and accurate.

Led by the Management Unit of the North Sea Mathematical Models at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, one of the tasks of this IST programme-funded project was to map maerl, a calcareous alga which forms large deposits or ’beds’ on the seabed of Brittany, the North Sea and Ir

Of the four representative species of the Mediterranean climate – the holm oak ( Quercus ilex ), the kermes oak ( Quercus coccifera ), the Aleppo pine ( Pinus halepensis ), and the Phoenician juniper ( Juniperus phoenicea ) – the last is the one which best adapts to the adverse conditions of water stress. However, this does not mean the disappearance of the other three species that have been studied. This is the conclusion drawn from his PhD by Francisco Javier Baquedano, agricult

Scientists working in the stormy and inhospitable waters off the Antarctic Peninsula have found what they believe is an active and previously unknown volcano on the sea bottom. The international science team from the United States and Canada mapped and sampled the ocean floor and collected video and data that indicate a major volcano exists on the Antarctic ontinental shelf, they announced on May 5 in a dispatch from the research vessel Laurence M. Gould, which is operated by the National Sc

Earth’s climate system is more sensitive to perturbations now than it was in the distant past, according to a study published this week in the journal Nature. The findings suggest a previously unrecognized role for tropical and subtropical regions in controlling the sensitivity of the climate to change. Christina Ravelo, an ocean scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) , and her coauthors at UCSC and Boise State University, Idaho, focused on the Pliocene epoch, from