Scientists from six institutions, including Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, are closing the gap in deciphering one of the most puzzling aspects of the world’s oceans. “Ocean mixing,” the complex motions of seawater that span large-scale phenomena down to tiny, centimeter-sized turbulent motion, serves a key role in redistributing heat throughout the oceans. Although ocean mixing is a key element in the climate system and important for sea life for d

The largest single archaeological excavation in the UK, at the planned Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, has yielded an unprecedented insight into the way mankind has used the landscape over the last 8000 years.

A team of around 80 archaeologists has been working at the 100-hectare (250- acre) site of Terminal 5 for over a year and has found evidence of human activity going back to hunter-gatherers in the Stone Age, around 6,000BC, as well as Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman, Saxon, Medieva

Coral reefs across the Caribbean have suffered a phenomenal 80% decline in their coral cover during the past three decades, reveals new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, published this week in the international online journal Science Express.

The amount of reef covered by hard corals, the main builders of reef framework, has decreased on average from 50% to just 10% in the last 25 years. Although the majority of the l

Communicating with ESA’s spacecraft such as Mars Express, or SMART-1, Rosetta and Venus Express – yet to be launched – will be even easier and more effective when the new Cebreros ground station, near Avila (Spain), becomes operational in September 2005.

On 22 July, in Madrid, the Director General of ESA, Jean-Jacques Dordain, the Spanish Secretary of State for Defence, Mr Fernando Díez Moreno, and the Spanish Secretary of State for Science and Technology, Mr Pedro Morenés Eulate, wil

A range of measures to help prevent Europe’s best scientists abandoning their careers in Europe in favour of more lucrative opportunities in the US and elsewhere were proposed today by the European Commission.

Based on a thorough analysis of career prospects in the EU, the Communication “Researchers in the European Research Area: one profession, multiple careers” identifies factors that impact on the development of careers in R&D, namely training, recruitment methods, employment condi

A team of UK astronomers have announced the discovery that some supernovae have bad habits – they belch out huge quantities of ’’smoke’’ known as cosmic dust. This solves a mystery more than 10 billion years in the making. The new observations published on 17th July in the journal ’’Nature’’, answer long-standing questions about the origin of the first solid particles ever to form in the Universe.

The team measured the cold cosmic dust in ’’C