A novel method that uses bacteria to mine valuable minerals from the ocean has been developed. Nodules collected from the Indian Ocean seabed can be treated to extract scarce land-based minerals in an environmentally sound way, says research published in the Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology.

Using the marine species Bacillus M1, Cobalt, Copper and Nickel can be extracted from the nodules at a near neutral pH and room temperature. In a single four-hour process, 45% Cobalt and

The scientific puzzle pieces are fitting together to form a definitive picture of the origin of corn, says a Duke University plant geneticist who has proposed that the world’s most important food crop originated in an ancient cross between two grasses.

Mary Eubanks described the latest evidence that corn, or maize, originated as a cross between teosinte and gamagrass, or Tripsacum, in a talk Friday, April 2, 2004, at a symposium on maize held at the annual meeting of the Society for Ame

New technology developed by CSIRO Livestock Industries (CLI) will lead to the development of new strategies designed to substantially reduce the $140 million lost each year due to Australian dairy cows contracting udder infections.

Developed with support from the Innovative Dairy Products Cooperative Research Centre (Dairy CRC), the bovine immune gene microarray provides researchers with the means to rapidly assess the gene activity profiles of infected and mastitis-resistant cattle.

Climate change could dramatically increase the forest cover of the Earth’s mountains, ecologists are predicting. Using data from the Austrian Alps, ecologists have developed a model that predicts the area covered by the local pine, Pinus mugo Turra, will increase from 10% today to 60% by the turn of the next millennium. The findings are published in the current issue of of the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Ecology and, the authors believe, this is the first paper to model tree lin

Experts find multiple threats and many extinctions

In the April, 2004, issue of BioScience, a team of 16 experts from around the world report on the diversity and plight of what may be the world’s most endangered group of animals – nonmarine mollusks (that is, terrestrial and freshwater mollusks). The World Conservation Union lists in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species a total of 1,930 threatened nonmarine mollusks, which is nearly half the number of all known amphibian spec

A faster, more efficient way of tracking water pollution and carrying out environmental surveys is being developed.

Work has begun to build “Springer”, an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) that will be able to operate in shallow water.

Funded primarily by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), this innovative vehicle will be built at the University of Plymouth by a multidisciplinary team including engineering and artificial intelligence experts. A wid

Scientists at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research are developing new plant breeding techniques which can improve the efficiency of cow digestion and reduce pollution at the same time. Grass isn’t the easiest food to digest, and even cows appear to have difficulty doing it efficiently. Dr. Alison Kingston-Smith and Mrs. Rosalind Shaw will present results at the SEB annual meeting at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh outlining how selective plant breeding can improve the amount of p

How land-living animals evolved from fish has long been a scientific puzzle. A key missing piece has been knowledge of how the fins of fish transformed into the arms and legs of our ancestors. In this week’s issue of the journal Science, paleontologists Neil Shubin and Michael Coates from the University of Chicago and Ted Daeschler from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, describe a remarkable fossil that bridges the gap between fish and amphibian and provides a glimpse of the struc

Promising results of soil treatments to sequester carbon lead to field tests

In a novel approach to stalling global warming while reinvigorating nutrient-depleted farmland, chemists have found they can promote soil’s natural ability to soak up greenhouse-gas carbon dioxide from the surrounding air.

Experiments led by Jim Amonette at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., and reported today at the American Chemical Societ

The first phase of a working unit that can remove greenhouse gases from ordinary air is to be completed by the end of this year, according to a report in Chemistry & Industry magazine. Marina Murphy describes the groundbreaking work being done by brothers Allen and Burton Wright (and Burton’s engineering firm, Kelly Wright & Assoc, Tucson, AZ) to create a wind scrubber – a 10 square metre structure that will capture excess carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere around it.

Scientists have s

During World War II, soldiers from the Fifth U.S. Army set up camp at an exclusive hunting estate in Italy, regrouping between military drives north against German troops and fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Sixty years later, forest pathologists are pointing to huge gaps of dead trees in the estate as the visible reminders of that brief stay.

In a new study published in the April issue of Mycological Research, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and in Italy, have unlock

A Purdue University researcher is working to restore the American chestnut, an important wildlife tree and timber resource that dominated the landscape from Maine to Mississippi before it was driven to near-extinction by a fungal disease introduced about 100 years ago.

Doug Jacobs, assistant professor of forestry in the Hardwood Tree Improvement and Regeneration Center at Purdue and director of the Indiana chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation, studies how well American chestnut trees

A team of geologists can tell you more about earthquakes in “Middle Earth” than can the whole trilogy of “The Lord of the Rings.”

Specifically, how do earthquakes happen in Earth’s tightly squeezed middle layers where pressure is far too great to allow any shifting of the rock? According to a paper published in the April 1 issue of the journal Nature, breakdown of the mineral serpentine provides enough wiggle room to trigger an earthquake. The report suggests a new mechanism to explain

How does a tree know it’s autumn? Thanks to its genes, which are turned on and off in a pre-determined order. But in what order? Scientists at Umeå Plant Science Center and the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm have now brought to light the autumn “genetic timetable” of a tree.

Philosophers like Winnie the Pooh are not the only ones who try to understand what goes on when nature explodes in a pageant of color during the fall. Researchers ask themselves those deep questions to

The role between plant genotypes and beavers in building ecosystems

The beaver (Castor canadensis), well known for altering ecosystems, may be more influential than originally suspected. Living along streams and rivers across the United States, many beavers encounter different varieties of cottonwoods. In a study published in the March issue of Ecology, “Beavers as molecular geneticists: a genetic basis to the foraging of an ecosystem engineer,” researchers from Northern Arizona Unive

If Washington state issues additional permits for water to be diverted from the Columbia River for farm irrigation, it should do so only under the condition that withdrawals can be stopped if river flows become critically low for endangered and threatened salmon, says a new report from the National Academies’ National Research Council. Salmon are at increased risk during periods of low flows and high water temperatures, conditions that are most likely to occur during the summer months when deman