Researchers cooking up new gelled rocket fuels

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WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Engineers and food scientists are teaming up to develop a new type of gelled fuel the consistency of orange marmalade designed to improve the safety, performance and range of rockets for space and military applications.

"This is a very multidisciplinary project," said Stephen Heister, the Purdue University professor of aeronautics and astronautics who is leading one of two teams on the project, which is funded by the U.S. Army Research Office.

Industrialization of China increases fragility of global food supply

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Global grain markets are facing breaking point according to new research by the University of Leeds into the agricultural stability of China.

Experts predict that if China's recent urbanisation trends continue, and the country imports just 5% more of its grain, the entire world's grain export would be swallowed whole.

The knock-on effect on the food supply - and on prices - to developing nations could be huge.

Project MARGO: A new tool which improves the reliability of climate models

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Scientists: Earthquakes, El Ninos fatal to earliest civilization in Americas

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GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- First came the earthquakes, then the torrential rains. But the relentless march of sand across once fertile fields and bays, a process set in motion by the quakes and flooding, is probably what did in America's earliest civilization.

So concludes a group of anthropologists in a new assessment of the demise of the coastal Peruvian people who built the earliest, largest structures in North or South America before disappearing in the space of a few generations more than 3,600 years ago.

Nile Delta fishery grows dramatically thanks to run-off of sewage, fertilizers

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NARRAGANSETT, R.I. – January 19, 2009 – While many of the world's fisheries are in serious decline, the coastal Mediterranean fishery off the Nile Delta has expanded dramatically since the 1980s.

The surprising cause of this expansion, which followed a collapse of the fishery after completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1965, is run-off of fertilizers and sewage discharges in the region, according to a researcher at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography.

Food choices and location influence California sea otter exposure to disease

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Sea otters living along the central California coast risk higher exposure to disease-causing parasites as a consequence of the food they eat and where they feed.

Sea otters that eat small marine snails are at a higher risk of exposure to Toxoplasma gondii, a potentially deadly protozoal pathogen, than animals that feed exclusively on other prey, while sea otters living along the coast near San Simeon and Cambria are more at risk than sea otters that live outside this area.

Report calls aerosol research key to improving climate predictions

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WASHINGTON -- Scientists need a more detailed understanding of how human-produced atmospheric particles, called aerosols, affect climate in order to produce better predictions of Earth's future climate, according to a NASA-led report issued by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program on Friday.

Slight changes in climate may trigger abrupt ecosystem responses

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Some of these responses, including insect outbreaks, wildfire, and forest dieback, may adversely affect people as well as ecosystems and their plants and animals.