Teresa Riera Madurell, member of the European Parliament from Spain, was appointed last month as the rapporteur responsible for establishing Horizon 2020, the next European Union (EU) research-funding programme that will run during 2014–20. The former computer scientist leads five other parliamentary rapporteurs who, over the next year, will craft four legislative documents that will [...]

Early in his career, Paul Olsen sat in front of a television, expecting to see his own image. He had hosted a television crew on a research expedition to Manicouagan Crater in Canada, where he and his team were investigating the Triassic–Jurassic boundary in the geological record. Olsen, a palaeontologist at Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory of [...]

Spanish scientists have collected more than 32,000 signatures in less than a week in support of a petition that urges Spain’s tax authority to adopt a novel way of raising funds for research: adding a checkbox to income tax forms that would allow taxpayers to direct 0.7% of their contribution to science. The petition, launched [...]

An Indian government agency has agreed to sue the developers of genetically modified (GM) eggplant for violating India’s Biological Diversity Act of 2002. India’s National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) is alleging that the developers of India’s first GM food crop—Jalna-based Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company (Mahyco) partnered with St. Louis–based seed giant Monsanto and several local universities—used [...]

While scrubbers in smokestacks at coal plants can pull out toxic gases like sulfur dioxide, scientists haven’t yet developed a cost-effective technology to remove carbon dioxide from industrial exhaust. Now European researchers have tinkered with the chemical composition of limestone to produce a material that absorbs almost twice as much CO2 as the natural mineral [...]

Messieurs Goldman and Davenport, in Switzerland for the McCombie nuptials, invited Ms Crockett and Mr Laursen to an attempt on the Jaegihorn, above Saas Grund in the Swiss Valais region. Goldman and Davenport charmed the hut mistress into providing extra victuals. With full bellies and a 4am start, Laursen led the team on a circular [...]

The magma that rises from the mantle, forming new islands, may blast more than it bubbles. Where those plumes of magma originate — at the core-mantle boundary or the mantle-crust boundary — and how fast they rise to the surface are still open questions among volcanologists. But now a new study of minerals from the [...]

Northern Europe may have gotten stormier since the late Victorian Era. Looking at a fresh analysis of old atmospheric pressure data, researchers found that the annual number of windy days may have risen by one to five days per century in parts of northern Europe, and the intensity of such storms may have grown too. [...]

The ricochet of a rock fall resonates in the mind of anyone who has heard it. But it also sets off subterranean waves detectable by far-off seismic stations — and now researchers are using those signals to remotely model rockslides. Franziska Dammeier, an engineering geologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and [...]

Researchers are taking the long view, combined with a birds’-eye view, of Venice’s salt marshes to try to preserve them from rising seawater. They are relying on aerial photographs that reveal the wetlands’ changing shape The flow of water and sediment around Venice, Italy, has been artificial for centuries. Since the fall of the Roman [...]