Dec 29 2014

Trawling makes for skinny fish

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Trawling the seabed doesn't just remove some of the fishes living there; it also makes some of the survivors thinner and less healthy by forcing them to use more energy finding less nutritious food. That's the conclusion of a new paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, based on the work Dr Andrew Frederick Johnson undertook while studying for his PhD at Bangor University.
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Dec 15 2014

Asphalt Mounds Found Off West African Coast

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Scientists have discovered a large area of the deep seabed strewn with mounds of asphalt off the coast of Angola, hosting rich animal life. This is the first such discovery in the Atlantic proper or in the Southern Hemisphere, and the first time the creatures living around them have been studied in detail. It arises from a long-term collaboration between energy company BP and scientists at NERC's National Oceanography Centre (NOC).
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Feb 02 2014

New study on human origins

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Radiocarbon dating of human remains from one of the deepest prehistoric sites in the Near East throws into question widely-held ideas about how the first modern people spread across the world during the Palaeolithic era. The traditional view is that the first humans with anatomy like ours evolved in Africa, then from about 50,000 years ago started to spread into the Near East before continuing into Asia and Europe. But the new study suggests they may have settled the Near East a lot later than previously thought, and that therefore the region may not be the single vital crossroads through which early humans passed on their way to colonising the whole Eurasian landmass. If so, the story of our spread out of Africa may need to be rewritten. Instead of colonising the Levant then moving into Europe, our distant ancestors may have first settled in the central Asian steppes before turning west again.
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Jan 14 2014

Economic benefits of reducing nitrogen pollution

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Falling levels of nitrogen in the atmosphere across Europe may be much more economically beneficial than previously believed, according to a recent study. Indeed, scientists think the UK alone benefits by around £65 million a year. Levels of atmospheric nitrogen have fallen by around a quarter in Europe since 1990, mostly because of tighter rules on emissions from engines and industry. Scientists are still working to understand the consequences. This is difficult, because excess nitrogen affects the benefits that nature gives us (known as 'ecosystem services') in many different ways – some positive and some harmful. For example, nitrogen is an important plant nutrient, which means services that depend on plant growth, such as crops and timber from woodlands, will benefit from more of it in the atmosphere. Conversely, falling nitrogen levels will harm these services - so cutting pollution costs the economy money.
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Aug 09 2013

River health revealed in bird eggs!

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Birds' eggs show just how serious a problem river pollution remains in the UK's former industrial heartlands, according to a new study. Scientists analysed the eggs of Eurasian Dippers living in 33 rivers in South Wales, comparing the eggs of birds living along urban waterways with those of their rural peers. The city-dwellers' eggs contained large amounts of several harmful chemicals – in some cases four times higher than their country cousins, and approaching levels known to cause permanent damage.
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Jun 01 2012

Study highlights food risk hotspots

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You might assume getting richer would always make a country safer from drought and famine, but that turns out not to be the case. Instead, the very poorest countries seem to become more vulnerable in the early stages of development. There's a crucial period before the benefits of modernisation start to kick in, during which they are more vulnerable to problems like drought than when they started.
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Dec 29 2010

Coral bleaching may be over-estimated

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Problems with how scientists communicate with the media and in how reefs' health is assessed have created a skewed public understanding of coral bleaching, according to a new study. Coral bleaching is a widespread phenomenon in which corals lose their vivid colours. It's a major concern to conservationists, as it can be triggered by rapid environmental change and sometimes presages the death of whole reefs, along with the complex ecosystems they support. But the researchers suggest we need to take a more complex view of the matter - bleaching isn't always a bad thing. 'We go out to Indonesia twice a year, and in spring when the waters are warmest the reefs are always bleached,' says Dr David Suggett, a marine biologist at the University of Essex's Coral Reef Research Unit and co-author of the paper, published in Global Change Biology.
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Oct 22 2010

Fences reduce water pollution

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There are plenty of high-tech ideas to tackle pollution, but recent research suggests that some of the biggest gains in keeping our waterways clean could come from a more traditional technology - fences. Simply fencing off streams and drainage ditches so farm animals can't deposit manure in and around them could cut levels of faecal pollution dramatically, according to scientists.
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