Antarctic whales, seals and penguins could be threatened by food shortages in the Southern Ocean. Numbers of Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba), a shrimp-like crustacean at the heart of the food chain, are declining. The most likely explanation is a dramatic decline in sea-ice. The results are published this week in the journal Nature.
Sea-ice is a vital feeding ground for the huge number of krill in the Southern Ocean. The new research shows that krill numbers have dropped b
Dinosaurs ruled the earth for hundreds of millions of years, then disappeared so completely that to find even a partially complete skeleton of a single multi-ton animal is rare. Meanwhile, the Virginia Museum of Natural History has scores of fossils of Tanytrachelos ahynis, a 12 to 18-inch reptile that also lived millions of years ago, at the same time as the earliest dinosaurs.
Tanytrachelos is a long-necked reptile that was related to the perhaps better-known nine-foot (up to t
Russian researchers have developed a small, smart and tolerant to vibrations spectrometer, which is equally reliable in the outer space and in oceanic depths. The development was performed with financial support from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) and the Foundation for Assistance to Small Innovative Enterprises (FASIE). The unique device is based on a completely new principle: the light goes through an acoustooptical filter in the device.
Specialists of the Sci
Yesterday, an important milestone was reached in the development of ESAs GOCE (Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer) mission, when a contract, worth €7.8 million, was signed between ESA and the Institute for Astronomical and Physical Geodesy (IAPG) from the Technical University of Munich.
The contract means that the scientific data resulting from the GOCE mission will be analysed by a consortium of 10 European universities and research institutes led by
For the first time, the public will have the extraordinary opportunity to observe live brain surgery in a pioneering event at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre in London, on Thursday 28 October.
Broadcast for the first time to a UK audience, visitors to the Dana Centre will not only watch live surgery, but be able to direct questions to the surgical team in the USA whilst the operation takes place. Live from Brainworks will be broadcast across the Atlantic Ocean from Overlook Hosp
Earthquakes can be triggered by the Earths tides, UCLA scientists confirmed Oct. 21 in Science Express, the online journal of Science. Earth tides are produced by the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun on the Earth, causing the oceans waters to slosh, which in turn raise and lower stress on faults roughly twice a day. Scientists have wondered about the effects of Earth tides for more than 100 years. (The research will be published in the print version of Science in November.