Global Plastics Treaty: production, pollution and politics
The revised draft global plastics treaty will be discussed at the 4th meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, which will be held in Ottawa from 23 to 29 April 2024.…
The revised draft global plastics treaty will be discussed at the 4th meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, which will be held in Ottawa from 23 to 29 April 2024.…
Across the world, every mine that opens will have to close at some point – because every resource is finite. But what does a successful closure look like, when looked at through social, cultural, economic and environmental lenses?
The date when the first Homo sapiens arrived in the Americas has been a subject of investigation and speculation for decades.…
As 2023 ends and a new year begins, the International Journal of Astrobiology is preparing to begin a new journey. Beginning in 2024, all articles in IJA will be available under Gold Open Access.
The Brandon Bridge Formation Lagerstätte (site of exceptional fossil preservation) also known as the Waukesha Biota, from Wisconsin, is noteworthy for being one of the best sources of soft-bodied early Silurian fossils.…
Dragan Savic, Editor-in-Chief of Cambridge Prisms: Water, explains how technology, combined with the right management philosophy, can help solve global water challenges “Water security is a multi-dimensional and enduring human goal,” states Professor Dragan Savic.…
The Mineralogical Society, in collaboration with Cambridge University Press, is launching Geo-Bio Interfaces journal.
Richard Fenner, Editor-in-Chief of Cambridge Prisms: Water, explains why a multi-disciplinary approach is crucial to meet human needs and maintain healthy ecosystems Ensuring water security, which is threatened by the twin threats of climate change and a growing population, is one of the biggest challenges of our time.…
William I. Ausich and Mark A. Wilson The Mississippian is recognized as the “Age of Crinoids” with well-known crinoid-bearing deposits worldwide from many ancient depositional environments.…
Palaeontologists have known the fossil rich laminated platy limestones from Kozja dnina (Slovenia) since the beginning of the 20th century. Locality of Kozja dnina is situated in the Vrata valley in the north-eastern part of the Julian Alps.
Cambridge Prisms: Extinction Co-Editors-in-Chief John Alroy and Barry Brook explain why swift and decisive action is required from governments, policy-makers and the public Public understanding of the main drivers of extinction – habitat loss, climate change, over-exploitation, invasive species, and pollution – is crucial if we are to stop biodiversity loss and maintain the ecosystems that sustain human populations.…
Emeritus Professor Tom Spencer, Editor-in-Chief of Cambridge Prisms: Coastal Futures, reflects on the influence of ‘wonderful’ teachers and the need to understand a plethora of viewpoints in relation to our coastlines The window for meaningful action relating to the world’s coastlines is closing fast, but Tom Spencer remains ‘guardedly optimistic’ that there is still time for societies and communities to come up with sustainable strategies for those that live and work at the coast. …
Author of The Cosmic Microwave Background 2nd Edition, Ruth Durrer, answers 3 questions for International day of Women and Girls in Science
Cameroon has pledged to restore over a quarter of its land or 12,062,800 ha, Guatemala has pledged over 10% of its land for restoration with 1.2 million ha, India committed over 8% of its land, a staggering 26,500,000 ha to restoration, and the list of countries pledging hectares of land to restoration continues.
Trilobites- extinct marine arthropods that roamed the world’s oceans from about 520 million years ago until they went extinct 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period – may have grown in a similar fashion and reached ages that match those of extant crustaceans, a new study has found.…
Public interest in nature and the environment is at an all-time high thanks to many factors including new species discoveries, nature documentaries and the unfortunate reality of climate change. One important method for gauging this interest is Google Trends.
Coastal zones of the seas and oceans pose a major challenge to Quaternary researchers because of their particular vulnerability to change.…
The languages we speak today are an incredibly rich record of the past. By analyzing the words they’re made up of, and the rules that guide how those words have evolved, we can gain insights into cultural contacts and the movements of peoples reaching back thousands of years.
When I first worked in Madagascar in 2005, I was carrying out biodiversity surveys in little known forests, but by the time I left a decade later I was spending much more time working with rural farming and fisher communities that I was with the birds and the beasts.…
The ratification of the Paris Agreement opened a new chapter in Turkey’s climate policies. Followed by the declaration of a net-zero emissions target for 2053, Turkey’s ratification of the agreement came after a six-year delay, with exhausting bilateral post-Paris negotiations.…
Today marks the release of the first batch of articles in Environmental Data Science (EDS). We are thrilled to celebrate Earth Month with this first release of articles!…
Lansing is an American anthropologist and complexity scientist, currently a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. His most recent book is Islands of Order (with Murray Cox), Princeton University Press.
Antarctic Science International Bursary winner Kate Winter recently co-authored a paper published by Nature Reviews on her research on subglacial lakes, which was supported by her 2018 award.…
As an ecologist, I am interested in conserving forgotten crop landraces and vanishing cropping systems of indigenous agrarian societies. Indigenous food production systems are always polycrop systems, growing diverse food and non-food crops on marginal lands, depending no external materials (e.g. agrochemicals, machiney, fossil fuel). Dozens of experimental studies proved the superior productive efficacy of multiple cropping systems, growing mostly 2 or 3 crops), over monocultures promoted by modern, industrial agriculture.
Authors Benjamin Carter, Jeff Blackadar and Weston Conner joined each other in conversation for this new blog post for Advances in Archaeological Practice.…
I am the Director of Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies. I have a background in International Development with several years-experience of researching global environmental change specializing in poverty, governance and differential vulnerability.
We are pleased to be collaborating with Guest Editors at NOAA, the Met Office, the German Aerospace Center, the Climate Research Centre in Singapore and Oxford University on a Call for Papers on the topic of Environmental Informatics (deadline for submission 12 November) for Environmental Data Science, a new open access journal published by Cambridge University Press.…
On July 25th, 2021, a wall of sand engulfed the Chinese city of Dunhuang. As the dust rolled in, the air in the city took on a nearly opaque burnt orange hue that made travel practically impossible.…
The digit-like branches of Codium, or Dead Man’s Fingers, are a common sight in modern day salt-water bays and lagoons, particularly in areas impacted by fertilizer-rich runoff.…
Researchers use deflections of trees by wind to infer unknown wind speed.
Past extinction events are key to understanding how modern life will respond to climate change. For ecologists who study communities of interacting organisms, the fossil record holds a wealth of information about how different species react to environmental perturbations, but with a major drawback — it only captures species with bones and shells.
When Alban Sauret and his colleagues at FAST laboratory tried to create a tsunami in a lab setting, it would be fair to say they had their work cut out.
Jakob Runge heads the Climate Informatics working group at the German Aerospace Center’s Institute of Data Science in Jena since 2017 and is guest professor of computer science at TU Berlin since 2021.…
As one of the very few species species of mammals to live and breed all year in the Antarctic Ocean, Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii) can give us clues as to how Antarctic predators will adapt to changes in their warming environment.
We celebrate World Ocean Day to remind us of how important the marine habitat is today and its need for better environmental stewardship tomorrow.…
Perhaps no Cambrian invertebrate can claim greater public enthusiasm than Anomalocaris. Not only is it bizarre looking – the story of its discovery, being pieced together from fragments thought to belong to different animals, is uniquely compelling.…
The many impacts of climate change including desertification, rising-sea levels, extreme weather events, flooding, and other natural disasters, could lead to mass human displacement over the coming century as more land becomes increasingly uninhabitable for our species.…
We’re partnering with GOBI Library Solutions on a series of blog posts to give our customers insights into our Hot Topics collections.…
A recent study in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics has tried to understand and model the role of porosity present in the birds' wing on the combined aerodynamic and acoustic performance.
A new NASA study [Antarctic Mass Balance] confirms that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation [Siegert, 2003] that began 10,000 years ago in East Antarctica (EA) [Fig.…
Within hours of assuming office, President Joe Biden began taking steps to reverse his predecessor’s devastating policies on climate change. He returned the United States to the Paris Agreement, declared that his administration would cooperate with other countries to tackle the problem, and pledged that Americans would substantially cut their greenhouse gas pollution.…
With a total length of up to 5.5m, the tiger shark is one of the largest predatory sharks known today. This shark is a cosmopolitan species occurring in all oceans worldwide.…
Dealing with a warming world and providing enough food for a growing planet (and doing so in a sustainable fashion that is adapted to changing climate) is one of the key challenges humanity must face in coming decades.…
Ricinuleids are cryptic, slow-moving arachnids that live under bark, in leaf litter, and in caves in tropical and subtropical areas of the world: Central and South America and West Africa.…
In popular science horses are considered to be the archetype for demonstrating evolution within a time-stratigraphic framework. From small species, horses evolved into the large forms we know today, symbols of power and freedom.…
At the end of the first volume for Experimental Results, we take a look back at the journal’s first year of publication.…
Mayflies, present in many modern freshwater streams, are often known by their mass hatches in which large numbers gain wings and fly in the air for as little as one day to procreate before dying.…
Extinct dinosaurs are popular subjects in many CGI-animated movies, documentaries and TV shows, but how they are portrayed as living, breathing animals often depends on a lot of guesswork.…
‘Multispecies sustainability’ addresses a contradictory reductionism in the original definition by recognizing the interdependence of living beings and their wellbeing, and expanding the concept to non-human species and their needs An interdisciplinary team led by Senior Researcher Dr.…
The protection of tropical forests globally is indispensable for significantly increasing climate ambition in line with Paris Agreement goals as illustrated by a tremendous return on climate investment, according to our new article in the journal Global Sustainability.…
Environmental Data Science: a new open access venue for the transformative potential of AI and data science in addressing environmental challenges It’s my pleasure to announce the launch of Environmental Data Science, a new peer-reviewed, open access journal dedicated to the potential of artificial intelligence and data science to enhance our understanding of the environment and to address climate change. …
The greatest challenge that we face as a species for our planet’s continued habitability is, ultimately, a rate problem.
The paper ‘Framing conservation: ‘biodiversity’ and the values embedded in scientific language, published in Environmental Conservation, has been chosen as the latest addition to the Editor’s Choice Collection We all know that political groups are very thoughtful about how they frame the issues that matter to them.…
For about thirty million years in the Late Cretaceous, a shallow salty seaway flooded the interior of North America. This separated eastern and western North America into different landmasses.…
There are no crocodilians in Europe, which is good for the safety of those of us who like to peacefully fish or swim in lakes and rivers, but it is somewhat sad for those who prize biodiversity or simply like these fascinating predators.…
We are delighted to have won the inaugural Sustainability Award at this year’s UK Independent Publishing Awards!
Modern day crustaceans, including lobster, shrimp, crayfish, and crabs, are perhaps most familiar from our dinner plates. They, along with less familiar forms such as isopods (your garden pillbugs), belong to the huge living group Eumalacostraca, which includes some tens of thousands of species.…
The Early Jurassic meat-eating dinosaur Dilophosaurus wetherilli is a common figure of many dinosaur movies, books, art, and toys. The distinctive two crests on its head, for which Dilophosaurus owes its name, are unique among dinosaurs and make the animal fascinating to the fossil enthusiast and paleontologist alike.…
Researchers have discovered the first fossil of a Jurassic dinosaur from the Isle of Eigg in Scotland. The limb bone is thought to belong to a stegosaurian dinosaur, like Stegosaurus.…
What are the best ways to help people and societies adopt sustainable lifestyles? Where should charities, NGOs and decision-makers put their money and effort?…
In the last few months an interesting collection of papers related to Geothermal Energy has been published in NJG – Netherlands Journal of Geosciences.…
Higher Education from Cambridge University Press is our new online textbook website, launched in August 2020. In recent months Cambridge University Press has introduced a new set of strategies to support changing teaching and learning needs as higher education institutions prepare for a more digitally driven future in the wake of pandemic.…
Let’s face it – stepping (sitting) in front of a camera has become a staple component of working from home during the global pandemic.…
Many of us are discovering that working at home for a long stretch can be difficult. Staying productive and motivated is a challenge, and it is not always easy to find a routine to keep things running smoothly.…
The mass extinctions at the end of the Ordovician took out up to 60% of marine genera – the second-most devastating extinction event of the Phanerozoic and the end of the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE).…
This is the latest of an ongoing series of interviews with people involved with our new Open Access journal, Experimental Results – a forum for short research papers from experimental disciplines across Science, Technology and Medicine, providing authors with an outlet for rapid publication of small chunks of research findings with maximum visibility.…
Just as humans and squirrels are part of the larger group called mammals, mammals are part of a larger group of animals called synapsids.…
From diamonds to volcanic degassing to the deep biosphere and more, scientists within the Deep Carbon Observatory have covered a lot of ground since the initiative’s start 10 years ago.…
Scientists are increasingly breaking away from the lab or leaving their computer screens to talk to the public about their research.…
Throngs of young (and not so young) people refusing to pretend that the human race is not in the most serious crisis it has ever faced.…
Co-creation is not a new idea. For years companies have been seeking advice from their customers about how they can improve their products and services, either by asking directly, by quietly listening, or by learning from data.…
The paper: “Ancient parasitic DNA reveals Toxascaris leonina presence in Final Pleistocene of South America“ is freely available for a month.…
The latest Paper of the Month for Parasitology is ‘The impact of botfly parasitism on the health of the gracile mouse opossum (Gracilinanus agilis) by Emerson Vieira Two of the researchers associated with my lab, Priscilla L. …
Could a large-enough battery cushion the swings in wind and solar power? And can renewable energy be trusted, or are we just seeing technical challenges to implementation? In a recent review article published in MRS Energy & Sustainability, energy experts weigh in on these questions and consider the challenges and opportunities for technology and policy in relation to large-scale battery storage. The article also addresses a fascinating case study from South Australia, which currently houses the world's biggest battery.
This special issue in Business History Review on Business and the Environment seeks to promote new approaches in business history designed to explore of the role of business in both creating and addressing the mounting environmental crisis that has become apparent over the last half century.
As the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) released an update to last year’s order on energy storage, MRS Energy & Sustainability publishes a timely collection of papers that unpack the issue of energy storage in the Midwest and beyond. Last February, FERC unanimously approved a landmark order in the fast-developing field of energy storage. FERC Order 841 directed grid operators across the US to develop market rules for energy storage to participate in the wholesale energy, capacity and ancillary services markets by treating storage as a generation resource.
The duck-billed hadrosaurs walked the Earth over 90-million years ago and were one of the most successful groups of dinosaurs. But why were these 2-3 tonne giants so successful?…
Studying how biodiversity on our planet has developed through time and how it reacted to environmental changes would be relatively straight-forward if we could time-travel, as ecologists.…
In October 2018 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a special report (SR15) warning of the impacts of a global rise in temperature above 1.5 C average, explaining that only 12 years remained before irreversible changes and disasters were ‘baked’ into the global system.…
Renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar power are becoming commonplace across the world, but yet it often seems that we are still searching for the renewable resource that will revolutionise the energy industry.…
Upper jaws of a new dinosaur from Victoria, Australia, give fresh insight into the diversity of small herbivorous dinosaurs that once inhabited the ancient Australian-Antarctic rift valley 125 million years ago A new, wallaby-sized herbivorous dinosaur has been identified from five fossilized upper jaws in 125 million year old rocks from the Cretaceous period of Victoria, southeastern Australia.…
The latest special issue “Advances in Palaeogeography” in Geological Magazine presents a collection of ten articles widely addressing a range of new and important topics within the field of palaeogeography.…
Climate change is the greatest challenge facing humanity. It’s an almighty catastrophe that will only become worse with time. We’ll be seeing more powerful storms, increasingly devastating wildfires, longer droughts and recurring floods, to name but a few of the impacts of climate change that are quickly becoming commonplace globally.…
Freshwater shark lived in South Dakota, had teeth shaped like “Galaga” spaceships SUE the T. rex is the most famous fossil from the Hell Creek Formation of South Dakota—the most complete skeleton ever discovered of the world’s most popular dinosaur.…
Addressing climate change effectively requires making low-carbon technologies competitive against existing fossil-fuel based energy technologies. Bargaining over policies to promote clean energy is often as a domestic issue, pitting interest groups against each another as they vie to shape national polices.…
Dr. Jacqueline Halpin is a Research Fellow in the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) and Adjunct Researcher in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Ore Deposits (CODES) and Earth Sciences at the University of Tasmania.…
In 2011, I published an article titled “From Foe to Friend? Business, the Tipping Point and U.S. Climate Politics” in the journal Business & Politics.…
Can tiny fossilized teeth from a prehistoric animal most closely resembling a lamprey provide crucial information about climatic change from over 450 million years ago?…
The world’s oceans that make up more than 70% of the earth’s surface face a wide range of human pressures. This applies particularly to the coastal zone, where marine mammal communities in almost 50% of the world’s coastal waters are considered at high-risk.…
Learn how termites are inspiring new building designs, how the star-nosed mole can sniff underwater, and what goes into making your toothpaste!…
New research published in MRS Bulletin explores how materials researchers are flocking to the field of Perovskites as a way to meaningfully impact the solar energy market and energy consumption at large. Watch our video introduction and read the paper for free!
Listening to tornadoes to increase warning times and save lives, studying the effect of ice on the combustion of oil spills, and investigating how sea ice affects our climate – discover the latest research in Fluid Dynamics.…
Climate change is currently one of the biggest threats to human existence. Carbon sequestration – the storage of CO2 underground – is one innovative method that could help to reduce the amount of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere and ultimately save the human species.…
For the past 20 years in Vietnam, thousands of bears have been held in cages up and down the country so that bile, extracted directly from a bear’s gallbladder, can supply the Traditional Asian Medicine market.…
One of the biggest challenges facing the energy sector is how to store our energy when it’s not being used so that we can satisfy the peaks and troughs of our daily energy demands.…
Inequities in the enforcement of environmental regulations are an important problem, as a number of studies show that ethnic minorities and low-income citizens are likely to suffer disproportionately from the effects of toxic waste, and air and water pollution. …
Deposits of loess (deposits of windblown dust of silt size) are widely distributed in mid- and high-latitude areas of North America, Europe, and Asia.…
Geological Magazine Guest Editor, Xian-Hua Li answers questions on the thematic issue “From Snowball Earth to the Cambrian Explosion: Evidence from China”.…
Southern Tanzania is home to over half of East Africa’s elephants making it a globally important region for their conservation. Unfortunately, abrupt boundaries between protected areas and farmland mean elephants easily wander into village farms and eat or trample human food crops or both.…
Imagine if, many millions of years ago, dinosaurs drove cars through cities of mile-high buildings. A preposterous idea, right? Over the course of tens of millions of years, however, all of the direct evidence of a civilization—its artifacts and remains—gets ground to dust. How do we really know, then, that there weren’t previous industrial civilizations on Earth that rose and fell long before human beings appeared? It’s a compelling thought experiment, and one that Adam Frank, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, and Gavin Schmidt, the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, take up in a paper published in the International Journal of Astrobiology.