European lead in reading past climates from ice cores

Climate change is a reality today, but how can we find out about the future dangers it poses? What we really need is a full record of the Earth’s climate for several hundred thousand years, complete with samples of air from different epochs that can be taken to the lab for analysis. Incredibly,...

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Podcast: The Chair of the EuroDYNA Scientific Committee speaks about his achievements and his involvement

Coling Logie, Chair of the EuroDYNA Scientific Committee, speaks about scientific achievements through the EUROCORES Programme EuroDYNA (Dynamic Nuclear Architecture and Chromatin Function) and his personal experiences, at the ELSO Conference, Dresden, Germany in September.

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New Breakthroughs in Geological Dating Imminent

A breakthrough in geological dating can be expected within the next few years, combining existing methods to yield higher accuracy over longer time scales closer to the earth’s origin. This will bring great benefits not just for earth sciences, but also for other fields that rely on accurate dating...

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Call for EU to launch major project to map out all our proteins

Biologists still have no clear idea how many active genes there are coding for proteins in humans and other organisms, even though for some species the genomes have been completely sequenced. This is because many of the genes and their protein products have only been predicted by computer...

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LESC’s Ceulemans among the most cited Plant Science authors in Europe

Professor Reinhart Ceulemans, the Vice-dean of the Faculty of Sciences and the head of Research Group of Plant and Vegetation Ecology at the Universiteit Antwerpen, has been named one of the 30 most cited European authors in Plant Science during 1999-2005 by Lab Times. Professor Ceulemans also...

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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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