What makes Mars magnetic?

Earth’s surface is a very active place; its plates are forever jiggling around, rearranging themselves into new configurations. Continents collide and mountains arise, oceans slide beneath continents and volcanoes spew. As far as we know Earth’s restless surface is unique to the planets in our...

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All change at the Earth’s core

Pressures and temperatures at the Earth’s core are stupendous – more than 3.5 Mbar and 7000K – and currently it is impossible to recreate these conditions in the laboratory. Our information about the core comes from observing the way that seismic waves travel through the core, extrapolating from...

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Keeping the Earth’s plates oiled

Beneath continents the asthenosphere appears at around 150km depth, while under oceans it can be as shallow as 60km. Above the asthenosphere lies the lithosphere: a more rigid layer that includes the crust. By 220km depth the asthenosphere comes to an end and the mantle goes back to a less flexible...

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Jaap Sinninghe Damsté awarded the Vernadsky Medal, at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna, for innovative use of biomarkers

In April 2007, the Dutch scientist Jaap Sinninghe Damsté was presented with the prestigious Vernadsky Medal at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly. Sinninghe Damsté, from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research NIOZ, was awarded this medal for his cutting edge work in the...

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Investigating coral reefs to help understand past and future climate change

Increasing Earth temperatures and rising sea levels. Both of these are effects of climate change. The current concern is that human activity is changing our climate at a rate well above the natural climate cycling. Understanding how the Earth’s climate system works and responds to human impact is...

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Searching for a biofilm formula

What do 'newly emerging' teeth of small children and a stone in a riverbed have in common? Within a very short time countless bacteria and micro-organisms are to be found on their surfaces. They constitute a so-called biofilm. Tom Battin from the department of limnology und hydro botany at the...

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Protecting the biodiversity of microbes

European and American scientists discussed the biodiversity of microbes during an European Science Foundation (ESF) workshop organised by Tom Battin (University of Vienna) and Peter Frenzel (Max-Planck-Institute Marburg) at the “WasserCluster” Lunz last week. In conclusion to the meeting, the...

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International Review Panel commends ESF’s efforts in collaborative research

A detailed Review Panel Report submitted to and approved by the ESF Governing Council on 19 - 20 April 2007 outlines how to best develop the EUROCORES (European Collaborative Research) Scheme, one of the European Science Foundation’s most successful instruments, in the future. The Scheme currently...

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Liposuctioned fat stem cells to repair bodies

Expanding waistlines, unsightly bulges: people will gladly remove excess body fat to improve their looks. But unwanted fat also contains stem cells with the potential to repair defects and heal injuries in the body. A team led by Philippe Collas at the University of Oslo in Norway has identified...

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Cancer is a stem cell issue

There is an urgent reason to study stem cells: stem cells are at the heart of some, if not all, cancers. Mounting evidence implicates a clutch of rogue stem cells brandishing ‘epigenetic’ marks as the main culprits in cancer. Wiping out tumours for good, some biologists believe, depends on...

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