Icebergs have long gripped the popular imagination, whether as relatively run-of-the-mill floating hazards that cause "unsinkable' ships to founder or, more recently, as enormous breakaway pieces of ice the size of states or small countries.

But, according to a paper published in this week's Science magazine, scientists have discovered that these floating ice islands--some as large as a dozen miles across--have a major impact on the ecology of the ocean around them, serving as "hotspots" for ocean life, with thriving communities of seabirds above and a web of phytoplankton, krill and fish below.

The icebergs hold trapped terrestrial material, which they release far out at sea as they melt.

David H. Ingbar MD, president of the American Thoracic Society, today called the proposed standards issued by the Environmental Protection Agency for ozone pollution–commonly known as smog-“unhealthy for America’s kids, unhealthy for America’s seniors, and unhealthy for America.”

“The science is clear,” Dr. Ingbar said, “ozone pollution is causing unnecessary, illnesses and death in America. The proposed EPA standards fall short of providing the protection needed to keep Americans safe from ozone air pollution.”

University of Nottingham scientists have been instrumental in helping to establish a pioneering branch of chemistry in Ethiopia.

They have helped to introduce Green Chemistry, an emerging field of sustainable science that will help African nations to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Green Chemistry focuses on greener ways of creating chemicals, and is now regarded as one of the major routes to more environmentally-friendly production of the chemicals that underpin modern society.

Global climate change is causing Antarctic ice shelves to shrink and split apart, yielding thousands of free-drifting icebergs in the nearby Weddell Sea. According to a new study in this week’s journal Science these floating islands of ice – some as large as a dozen miles across – are having a major impact on the ecology of the ocean around them, serving as “hotspots” for ocean life, with thriving communities of seabirds above and a web of phytoplankton, krill, and fish below.

The icebergs hold trapped terrestrial material, which they release far out at sea as they melt. The researchers discovered that this process produces a “halo effect” with significantly increased phytoplankton, krill and seabirds out to a radius of more than two miles around the icebergs.

A hundred years since Russian microbiologist Elie Metschnikow first discovered the invertebrate immune system, scientists are only just beginning to understand its complexity. Presenting their findings at a recent European Science Foundation (ESF) conference, scientists showed that invertebrates have evolved elaborate ways to fight disease.

By studying starfish, Metschnikow was the first to see cells digesting bacteria, a process he called phagocytosis (the eating of cells by other cells). Phagocytosis, it turns out, is an important immune defence in all living things. Since Metschnikow’s work, scientists have studied the immune systems of simpler organisms (such as invertebrates) in the hope of understanding the immune systems of more complex organisms, like us.

Compared to people with normal vision, those who were blind at birth tend to have excellent memories. A new study shows that blind individuals are particular whizzes when it comes to remembering things in the right order.

The findings are a good example of the familiar adage that “practice makes perfect” and reveal that mental capabilities may be refined or adjusted in order to compensate for the lack of a sensory input, according to researchers Noa Raz and Ehud Zohary of Hebrew University.

“Our opinion is that the superior serial memory of the blind is most likely a result of practice,” Zohary said. “In the absence of vision, the world is experienced as a sequence of events.

Laboratory measurements of a high-pressure mineral believed to exist deep within the Earth show that the mineral may not, as geophysicists hoped, have the right properties to explain a mysterious layer lying just above the planet’s core.

A team of scientists, led by Sébastien Merkel, of the University of California, Berkeley, made the first laboratory study of the deformation properties of a high-pressure silicate mineral named post-perovskite.

The genes that make up the immune system of the Aedes aegypti mosquito which transmits deadly viral diseases to humans have been identified in new research out today in Science.

The immune system of this mosquito is of great importance as scientists believe it plays a key role in controlling the transmission of viruses that cause yellow and dengue fevers – diseases that infect over 50 million people worldwide every year.

Scientists have provided new details about how proteins used to destroy bacteria and viruses may help treat Alzheimer’s disease. Gunnar K. Gouras, associate professor of neurology and neuroscience at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, and colleagues provide new insights into how these proteins, called antibodies, reduce the main hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease and raise hopes for a vaccine against the disease.

“Antibodies are probably the most promising experimental approach to fight Alzheimer’s disease at this time,” Gouras says. “The discoveries made using antibodies are so encouraging that results of ongoing vaccine trials against the disease are much anticipated.”

It may not seem so at the time, but women who suffer through morning sickness during their pregnancies actually may be fortunate.

Those women may have a 30 percent lower risk of developing breast cancer later in life than mothers-to-be who experience nine nausea-free months, a new study by epidemiologists at the University at Buffalo suggests.

“Although the exact mechanism responsible for causing nausea and vomiting during pregnancy has yet to be pinpointed, it likely is a result of changing levels of ovarian and placental hormone production, which may include higher circulating levels of a hormone called human chorionic gonadotropin,” said David Jaworowicz, Jr., first author on the study.