Search Results for: ocean

Partners to invest $3.1-mln in marine initiative that encompasses five protected areas & safeguards threatened species in Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia & Ecuador

In one of the most ambitious marine conservation initiatives in the western hemisphere, four Latin American nations, the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, the United Nations Foundation (UN Foundation), Conservation International (CI) and others are consolidating a marine protected area that stretches from Costa Rica to Ecuador and

Global temperatures have increased dramatically over the past century, which is causing major impacts on climate patterns, ocean circulation and wildlife preservation. The increase in temperature is largely due to a rise of anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, of which CO2 is one of the most important.

To understand the capacity of ecosystems to sequester excesses of atmospheric CO2 and improve our ability to predict future climate change scenarios, we must first improve our knowled

Scientists have developed a new system that uses basic information about the ecology of “vector” borne diseases – malaria, Lyme disease or some of the new emerging diseases such as Avian flu – to mathematically predict how they might change, spread and pose new risks to human health.

The approach, developed by researchers from Oregon State University and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, could become enormously valuable to agencies that are trying to understand what a disease might d

The Vanuatu island arc, in the South-West Pacific, is 1 700 km long. It corresponds to a convergence zone where the Australian plate is slipping eastwards under the North Fiji Basin, which is part of the Pacific plate, thus generating earthquakes. On 26 November 1999, the central islands of Vanuatu, particularly Ambrym and Pentecost, were strongly shaken by a 7.5 magnitude surface earthquake followed by a tsunami. The earthquake and the many landslips it generated caused 10 deaths and considerable d

Visible from ESA’s Proba spacecraft 600 kilometres away in space are the largest of the many Nasca Lines; ancient desert markings now at risk from human encroachment as well as flood events feared to be increasing in frequency.

Designated a World Heritage Site in 1994, the Lines are a mixture of animal figures and long straight lines etched across an area of about 70 km by 30 km on the Nasca plain, between the Andes and Pacific Coast at the southern end of Peru. The oldest lines date from a

A compound currently used to treat patients with severe sepsis also protects brain cells in an unexpected way, say researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center in the Feb. 19 issue of the journal Neuron.

Doctors currently use a modified version of activated protein C or APC to reduce inflammation or increase blood flow in patients with severe sepsis, and last year neuroscientist Berislav Zlokovic, M.D., Ph.D., led a team that showed that the compound also protects the cells tha