In Central Siberia alone, fires have destroyed 38 000 km2 in the extreme fire year of 2003. In that year the smoke plumes were so huge that they caused air pollution as far as in the United States. An international team of scientists believes that Siberian fires are influenced by climate change. The study was led by the Professor Heiko Balzter of the Department of Geography at the University of Leicester.

Professor Balzter said, “Last century a typical forest in Siberia had about 100 years after a fire to recover before it burned again. But new observations by Russian scientist Dr Kharuk have shown that fire now returns more frequently, about every 65 years.

Phytase research is helping to clean up the waterways in Delaware.

According to recent analyses by David Hansen, University of Delaware assistant professor of soil and environmental quality, there are now about 19 pounds of phosphorus in a ton of Delaware poultry litter compared to 25 to 30 pounds of phosphorus per ton of litter just five years ago. The 30-40 percent reduction is credited to phytase-modified diets and other nutrient management practices adopted by poultry farmers under Delaware's Nutrient Management Law of 1999.

A research team has found experimental evidence that supports a controversial theory of genetic conflict in the reproduction of those animals that support their developing offspring through a placenta.

The conflict has been likened to a “battle of the sexes” or an “arms race” at the molecular level between mothers and fathers. At stake: the fetus’s growth rate and how much that costs the nutrient-supplying mother.

The new research supports the idea of a genetic “arms race” going on between a live-bearing mother and her offspring, assisted by the growth-promoting genes of the father.

An ovary of the live-bearing placental fish, Poeciliopsis prolifica.

Picture a cool place, teeming with a multitude of hot bodies twirling about in rapidly changing formations of singles and couples, partners and groups, constantly dissolving and reforming.

That's a good description of the shells around dying stars, the place where newly formed elements make compounds and life takes off, said Katharina Lodders, Ph.D., research associate professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

“The circumstellar environment is where chemistry happens for the very first time,” said Lodders. “It's the first place a newly synthesized element can do chemistry. It's a supermarket of things from dust to gas and dust grains to molecules and atoms.

Neuroscientists have long believed that vision is processed in the brain along circuits made up of neurons, similar to the way telephone signals are transferred through separate wires from one station to another. But scientists at Georgetown University Medical Center discovered that visual information is also processed in a different way, like propagating waves oscillating back and forth among brain areas.

“What we found is that signals pass through brain areas like progressive waves, back and forth, a little bit like what fans do at baseball games,” said the study’s corresponding author, Jian-young Wu, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Georgetown.

Taking a radically new approach to security and identity protection, University of Houston professors developed the URxD face recognition software that uses a three-dimensional snapshot of a person’s face to create a unique identifier, a biometric.

Shown in government testing to be tops in its field, URxD can be used for everything from gaining access to secure facilities to authorizing credit card purchases. The identification procedure is as effortless as taking a photograph.

URxD leads the pack for 3D face recognition solutions based on the face’s shape, according to the results of the Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT 2006).

Urothelial cells are the specialised lining cells of the bladder that enable it to retain urine. The cells have a very low turnover rate, but scientists have found that if the bladder is damaged, the urothelial cells are able to rapidly re-grow to repair the wound. The researchers hope to harness this property to engineer new bladders.

The University of York researchers have developed a series of models that mean they can study human urothelial cells in the laboratory. Of these models, the most important is their development of a urothelial cell sheet that functions as it would in the bladder. When the researchers create a wound in this model, the cells regenerate to repair the damage - just as they would in the body.

There is so much green being bandied about that it’s practically impossible for us mere mortals to sort out the true green from the green wash. Some of the claims are indeed true, some are a pile of hocus pocus, and some are well, good in theory but too bloody bad because of unintended consequences. So in this, my new series about what’s green and what’s not, I am going to attempt to figure out just that. You and I can then vote green thumbs up, or alternatively, down. (See the thumb key at the end to see how to rate).

In this my inaugural piece, I thought I’d go straight for the jugular, and tackle that most maligned of issues… carbon credits.

Like most drugs, fluoride causes what it purports to cure - cavities. Dentists ignore science that shows Americans are fluoride-overdosed and prescribe more and more fluoride either directly or through the water supply. After over 60 years of water fluoridation, tooth decay rates are increasing in our most fluoridated population - todders - indicating fluoridation is either a failure or causing tooth decay. Dentists tell us that drinking “optimal” levels of fluoridated water - 1 part per million or 1 milligram fluoride per liter (quart) - each day, reduces tooth decay without serious side effects. But this dental dogma has never been proven scientifically.

Wal-Mart is successful and success often comes with criticism, especially from activist groups, but when it comes to going green, even huge success stories like Wal-Mart need some guidance, so they've been getting help from eco-friendly organizations including Greenpeace, World Wildlife International and Conservation International as they develop a broad strategy to improve sustainability efforts.

“We’re not looking for the same old answers,” said Nancy Nagle, director of development, “We’ve got to let go of some of our old, preconceived notions and look for input, not just for ourselves, but to pass along to our suppliers.”

Nagel described Wal-Mart’s three-pronged sustainability strategy; being supplied by 100% renewable energy, creating zero waste, and selling products that conserv