Acid rain was one of the world’s worst pollution problems of the 1970s and 1980s, affecting large areas of upland Britain, as well as Europe and North America.

In Wales, more than 12,000 km of streams and rivers have been acidified, harming fish, stream insects and river birds such as the dipper.

Over the last 20 years, action has been taken across Europe to clean up acid pollutants from power generation and industry, which was widely expected to bring recovery. However, new research led by Cardiff University’s School of Biosciences shows that the expected improvements in rivers are far short of expectations.

Recent studies in Galloway, the Scottish Highlands and Wales reveal that many streams are still highly acidified.

Deluges of Biblical proportions were apparently not all that uncommon when glaciers were more prevalent in the Eurasian continent.

A glacier served as a natural dam for Siberian rivers and gigantic lakes were formed in northern Asia. In the mountains, glaciers formed dammed basins, which periodically burst and flooded vast territories, sending huge water and mud flows rushing out at the speed of 20 meters per second.

Researchers of the Irkutsk State University and Institutes of the Earth’s Crust and Geochemistry have recently discovered traces of a catastrophic hydrobreaking in the middle flow of the Onon river, in Tchasuchey deep (Transbaikalia).

Carnegie Mellon University’s Yang Cai is developing new technology that could revolutionize the way archeologists work. Cai, director of the Ambient Intelligence Lab at Carnegie Mellon CyLab, is developing new software to scan 200-year-old gravestones at Old St. Luke’s Church in nearby Carnegie to help its Episcopal pastor identify all the names on the cemetery’s tombstones.

“We are very excited and pleased that Professor Cai and his research team are helping us reclaim our past by identifying some of the 20 graves at our cemetery,” said Rev. Richard Davis, director of Old St. Luke’s Church at 330 Old Washington Pike.

A recent survey shows that only 12% of American consumers believe in the safety of the global food system and many believe that local foods are safer and better for their health than foods from afar.

These are the views of a representative, nationwide sample of 500 consumers who participated in a web-based survey conducted by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture in July 2007. Their responses are summarized in a new Leopold Center report, "Consumer perceptions of the safety, health, and environmental impact of various scales and geographic origin of food supply chains." The paper was written by Rich Pirog, who leads the Center's Marketing and Food Systems Initiative, and Iowa State University graduate student Andy Larson.

It doesn't matter if it's wine or beer, the increased breast cancer risk from drinking three or more alcoholic drinks a day is similar to the increased breast cancer risk from smoking a packet of cigarettes or more a day.

Dr Arthur Klatsky said: “Population studies have consistently linked drinking alcohol to an increased risk of female breast cancer, but there has been little data, most of it conflicting, about an independent role played by the choice of beverage type.”

Dr Klatsky, adjunct investigator in the Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program, Oakland, USA, and his colleagues studied the drinking habits of 70,033 multi-ethnic women who had supplied information during health examinations between 1978-1985.

A new study finds that young girls and women are more likely to believe that negative past events predict future events, compared to boys and men. And that, according to researchers, may help explain why females have more frequent and intense worries, perceive more risk, have greater intolerance for uncertainty, and experience higher rates of anxiety than males.

In two studies involving 128 people, a researcher investigated 3- to 6-year-olds’ as well as adults’ knowledge that worry and preventative behaviors can be caused by thinking that a negative event from the past will or might reoccur in the future.

Immigration, official language policies, and changing cultural norms mean that many infants are being raised bilingually. Because nearly all experimental work in infant language development has focused on children who are monolingual, relatively little is known about the learning processes involved in acquiring two languages from birth.

A new study showed infants who are raised in bilingual homes learned two similar-sounding words in a laboratory task at a later age than babies who are raised in homes where only one language is spoken.

Recently, I have been struck by the number of anniversaries of significant events that have been acknowledged this year.  This past summer was the 40^th anniversary of the “Summer of Love”.  August was the 60^th anniversary of the independence of India and Pakistan.  This week marked the 50^th anniversary of the desegregation of public schools in Little Rock Arkansas.  This year is also the 10^th anniversary of the opening of the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain.  Next week is the 50^th anniversary of the launch

Despite the fact that many scientists have resorted to chemicals and non-biological means of controlling invasive species, none have truly worked especially when using it against those plant species such as the Japanese Knotweed that have become so established here in the United States. One method that can be used which few scientists have explored is Allelopathy.

In its ability to learn, the cockroach is a moron in the morning and a genius in the evening.

Dramatic daily variations in the cockroach’s learning ability were discovered by a new study performed by Vanderbilt University biologists and published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“This is the first example of an insect whose ability to learn is controlled by its biological clock,” says Terry L. Page, the professor of biological sciences who directed the project. Undergraduate students Susan Decker and Shannon McConnaughey also participated in the study.