ScienceDaily (Mar. 3, 2011) — Scientists working in the remotest part of Antarctica have discovered that liquid water locked deep under the continent's coat of ice regularly thaws and refreezes to the bottom, creating as much as half the thickness of the ice in places, and actively modifying its structure. The finding, which turns common perceptions of glacial formation upside down, could reshape scientists' understanding of how the ice sheet expands and moves, and how it might react to warming climate, they say.

Deep sea mining is a relatively new mineral retrieval process that takes place on the ocean floor. Ocean mining sites are usually around large areas of polymetallic nodules or active and extinct hydrothermal vents at about 1,400 - 3,700 meters below the ocean’s surface. The vents create sulfide deposits, which contain precious metals such as silver, gold, copper, manganese, cobalt, and zinc. The deposits are mined using either hydraulic pumps or bucket systems that take ore to the surface to be processed. As with all mining operations, deep sea mining raises questions about environmental damages to the surrounding areas. As undersea mining grows ever more likely, one major question looms: Can these valuable minerals be extracted on a large scale without causing significant environmental damage, particularly to the unique ecosystems near the deep hydrothermal vents where the minerals accumula

Marine scientists are debating whether 80-plus bottlenose dolphins found dead along the U.S. Gulf Coast since January were more likely to have perished from last year's massive oil spill or a winter cold snap. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared "an unusual mortality event" last week when the number of dead dolphins washing up in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida had reached nearly 60, about half of them newly born or stillborn calves. The death toll along 200 miles of shoreline has climbed to at least 82 since then, many times the normal mortality rate for dolphins along the Gulf Coast this time of year. Although none so far showed outward signs of oil contamination, suspicions immediately turned to petrochemicals that fouled Gulf waters after a BP drilling platform exploded in April 2010, rupturing a wellhead on the sea floor.

Vitamin D is essential for the formation, growth, and repair of bones and for normal calcium absorption and immune function. It is obtained primarily through exposure of the skin to ultraviolet radiation in sunlight, but it can also be obtained from some foods and dietary supplements. Some recent research suggests vitamin D may be able to stop or prevent cancer. Now, a new study finds an enzyme that plays a role in metabolizing vitamin D can predict lung cancer survival. The study, from researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, suggests that this enzyme stops the anti-cancer effects of vitamin D. Levels of the enzyme, called CYP24A1, were elevated as much as 50 times in lung adenocarcinoma compared with normal lung tissue. The higher the level of CYP24A1, the more likely tumors were to be aggressive. About a third of lung cancer patients had high levels of the enzyme. After five years, those patients had nearly half the survival rate as patients with low levels of the enzyme.

Nearly half of UK businesses said that they had cut business flights over the past two years and, of these, 85% said they don’t intend to return to 'business as usual' flying. Together, these findings suggest that future business flying will not return to pre-recessionary levels.

The Eastern cougar, a likely subspecies of the mountain lion, was officially declared extinct today by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, ending 38 years on the Endangered Species List (ESA). The cougar, which once roamed the Eastern US, had not been confirmed since 1930s, although sightings have been consistently reported up to the present-day.

In a "stunning win for the oceans", Costco recently stepped up its Sustainable Seafood policies. Improving on voluntary changes announced last August, Costco issued its Seafood and Sustainability report agreeing to stop selling 12 red-listed varieties of fish.

The door could now be open for a "significant" number of new offshore drilling permits, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Wednesday, as the administration comes under increased pressure to tackle surging world oil prices. The Interior department on Monday issued a permit for a deepwater well co-owned by Noble Energy Inc and BP, the first such permit since a rig explosion unleashed millions of barrels of oil from BP's Macondo well into the Gulf of Mexico last year. "There are other deepwater permits that are pending and the ones that will go out the door will hopefully be the templates that will allow us to move forward with an additional, significant number of deepwater permits," Salazar told a Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee hearing. After the BP oil spill, the department imposed a temporary ban on exploratory drilling at depths of more than 500 feet. While the moratorium was lifted last October, no new deepwater permits were issued until this week. The department has faced intense criticism, as well as legal action, over the slow pace of permitting.

[Feb. 28, 2011] The U.S. government launched what's being billed as the largest study ever conducted of how an oil spill affects human health. The Gulf Long-Term Follow-Up Study will survey Gulf of Mexico residents who helped with the cleanup of last year's Deepwater Horizon oil spill and follow them for at least 5 years.

On March 1, 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") announced its plans to postpone the upcoming deadline for mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas ("GHG") emissions, which is currently scheduled for the end of this month. EPA has not set a revised deadline, though the agency reported that it "is in the process of finalizing a user friendly online electronic reporting platform," which it plans to unveil this summer.

Butanol may be used as a fuel in an internal combustion engine. Because its longer hydrocarbon chain causes it to be fairly non-polar, it is more similar to gasoline than it is to ethanol. Butanol has been demonstrated to work in vehicles designed for use with gasoline without modification. University of California, Berkeley, chemists have engineered bacteria to churn out a gasoline-like biofuel (butanol) at about 10 times the rate of competing microbes, a breakthrough that could soon provide an affordable transportation fuel. The potential feedstocks are the same as for ethanol: energy crops such as sugar beets, sugar cane, corn grain, wheat and cassava, prospective non-food energy crops such as switchgrass and even guayule in North America, as well as agricultural byproducts such as straw and corn stalks.

Imagine a landscape in front of you as barren and endless as your eye can see. And then imagine that your task is to cross it, on foot, through eye stinging dust storms, unbearable heat and a body willing you to stop with every step. Welcome to the Sahara! Welcome to your "marathon of the sands". Aptly named the Sahara meaning "The Great Desert," it is a land-mass almost as large as Europe or the United States! Making it the largest hot desert in the world, second only to Antarctica, which although not commonly thought of as a desert because of its cold climate, is classified as such when the amount of rainfall is measured. The cheetah may be the fastest sprinter on the planet – reaching from 0 to 60mph in less than 3 seconds! But what about over long distances? In this incredible video from Life of Mammals, we see how different animals respond to the challenges of survival that require the use of their fitness and strength.

The World Bank has offered Tanzania an alternative to stop a major road project across the Serengeti national park that conservationists say threatens one of Africa's biggest wildlife spectacles. Conservation groups say the government's planned highway through the northern edge of the Serengeti would hinder the annual migration of some 2 million wildebeest. The World Bank's John Murray McIntire said it was ready to help the east African nation in financing an alternative route for the road that would otherwise cut through the park. "The World Bank is proposing alternatives that we believe will achieve Tanzania's development objectives while preserving the unique character of the Serengeti as part of the world's environmental heritage," the World Bank country director for Tanzania, Uganda, and Burundi, told Reuters in an emailed response to questions. He said the World Bank could finance an alternative road through new development assistance to the country, dependent on officials making the request.

In another twist of the Belo Monte Dam saga, a Brazilian judge has ordered that work be suspended on the massive construction project. About one month ago, construction of the dam had been approved by the Brazilian environmental agency, IBAMA. The federal judge, Ronaldo Desterro, said that IBAMA had granted approval for the Belo Monte project under pressure from Norte Energia (a.k.a. NESA), the dam's contractor. The judge also cited concerns over the dam's impact on indigenous tribes and the environment.

Critics are often quick to point out that car companies are somewhat disingenuous when they use the phrase "zero emissions vehicle" when promoting their all-electric offerings. The term "elsewhere emissions vehicle" has been suggested as a more accurate description, on the basis that many electric vehicles (EVs) get their juice from coal-fired power stations...

Almost 600 million years ago, before the rapid evolution of life forms known as the Cambrian explosion, a community of seaweeds and worm-like animals lived in a quiet deep-water niche near what is now Lantian, a small village in south China. Then they simply died, leaving some 3,000 nearly pristine fossils preserved between beds of black shale deposited in oxygen-free and unbreathable waters. Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Virginia Tech in the United States and Northwest University in Xi'an, China report the discovery of the fossils in this week's issue of the journal Nature. The long-running puzzlement about the appearance of the Cambrian fauna, seemingly abruptly and from nowhere, centers on three key points: whether there really was a mass diversification of complex organisms over a relatively short period of time during the early Cambrian; what might have caused such rapid change; and what it would imply about the origin and evolution of animals. Interpretation is difficult due to a limited supply of evidence, based mainly on an incomplete fossil record and chemical signatures left in Cambrian rocks. The Lantia discovery suggests a much part of the picture.

China, the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter, wants rich nations to vow bigger cuts to emissions as part of a new international deal on fighting global warming, Beijing's top climate negotiator said on Tuesday. The negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, said he expects "arduous" wrangling about that and other issues facing governments seeking to settle on the key parts of a comprehensive climate change pact at talks in Durban, South Africa, in late 2011. Above all, Xie said in a policy-setting essay in China's official People's Daily, Beijing will not budge from demanding a second lease of life for the Kyoto Protocol, the greenhouse gas emissions pact which Japan, Russia, Canada and other critics have said does too little to curb the fast-growing emissions of China and other big developing countries.

Farms do not have highly hazardous chemicals? It is not just factories that use such chemicals but so do farms. ADI Agronomy, Inc., which owns a group of farm supply facilities in southeast Missouri and northeast Arkansas, has agreed to pay a $54,922 civil penalty to the United States for chemical Risk Management Program violations at its Ag Distributors retail facility at Kennett, Mo., which sells liquid fertilizer made with anhydrous ammonia. EPA Region 7 issued an administrative compliance order to the Kennett facility in July 2010, after an inspection noted eight violations of the chemical Risk Management Program regulations contained in the federal Clean Air Act. Specifically, Ag Distributors failed to establish and implement maintenance procedures to ensure the ongoing integrity of its anhydrous ammonia process equipment, and failed to document that the equipment complied with recognized and generally accepted good engineering practices, among other violations.

Over the last few years, there has been a large decrease in the crude oil production in Mexico. To counter the effects of it, the Mexican government has started to look for new venues for energy that would create less of a dependence on fossil fuels.

Jews celebrate the holiday of Purim on the 14th day of Adar II, which falls this year on the evening of Saturday, March 19 until sunset on March 20. In Jerusalem and other ancient walled cities, the one-day celebration begins Sunday evening and is known as Shushan Purim (see Esther 9:18-19). Purim commemorates the events of the biblical book of Esther, which describes how the beautiful and noble Queen Esther and her uncle Mordechai foil the evil Haman's plan to destroy the Jewish people of the 127 nations in the ancient Persian Empire.