Scientists have observed the first evidence that the Southern Ocean's ability to absorb the major greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, has weakened by about 15 per cent per decade since 1981.

In research published today in Science, an international research team – including CSIRO's Dr Ray Langenfelds – concludes that the Southern Ocean carbon dioxide sink has weakened over the past 25 years and will be less efficient in the future. Such weakening of one of the Earth's major carbon dioxide sinks will lead to higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the long-term.

Scientists supported by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) at the National Institutes of Health have created two mouse strains that will permit researchers to trace, in a live animal, the activity of an enzyme believed to play a crucial role both in the normal immune response as well as autoimmunity and B cell tumor development.

Researchers at the University of Illinois have constructed the first global family tree of metabolic protein architecture. Their approach offers a new window on the evolutionary history of metabolism.

Their work relies on established techniques of phylogenetic analysis developed in the past decade to plot the evolution of genes and organisms but which have never before been used to work out the evolutionary history of protein architecture across biological networks.

B12 is an essential vitamin for and also turns out to be an essential ingredient for growing marine plants that are critical to the ocean food web and Earth's climate, scientists have found.

The presence or absence of B12 in the ocean plays a vital and previously overlooked role in determining where, how much, and what kinds of microscopic algae (called phytoplankton) will bloom in the sea, according to a study published in the May issue of the journal Limnology and Oceanography.

Storing carbon in agricultural soils presents an immediate option to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide and slow global warming. Farmers who adopt practices that store carbon in soil may be able to "sell" the stored carbon to buyers seeking to offset greenhouse gas emissions. Before farmers can sell carbon credits, however, they need to be able to verify that changing soil management has increased the soil organic carbon (SOC) in their fields.

British scientists working with David A. Russell have made it possible to gain information about the lifestyle of a person from their fingerprint - this includes drug and doping transgressions, what foods have been consumed, diagnosis of diseases and they can even use specific antibodies to differentiate between the fingerprints of smokers and nonsmokers.

Knowing more about the lifestyle of the person who made the fingerprints will allow investigators to shrink the pool of crime suspects, the researchers say.