Emma Brown looks at how new genetic research on the mysterious and fragile world of the American eel might help conservation projects

Sarah Gaunt on how we know whether it’s safe to go for a swim

From hammerstones to biotechnology: Lizzie Norris looks at the engineering that has helped us to increase our lifespan and improve our quality of life.

It has long been hypothesised that Earth’s water originated from comets, but new data from the ESA’s Rosetta may indicate otherwise

Kat Austen, chemist-turned-artist,tells us why she’s drowning little people in her bath in a new science-based immersive theatre experience

From the ingenious to the ridiculous: Hannah Wilson describes startling super biological adaptations

The extreme dehydration that one race runner suffered after getting lost in a desert storm …

The world below the waves came into focus with the invention of the humble swimming goggles …

As a chilly winter comes to a close, find out more about the fascinating properties of ice …

Dead fish after an overflow event. Image: Thames Anglers Conservancy. There once was a time when the Thames was teeming with life. Otters, eels, and even salmon were abundant. But time has not been kind to the river, and it has been subjected to the worst consequences of human development. The use and abuse of […]

Residents lead the way in restoring the River Wandle Bright and early on a June weekend morning, volunteers in a park in South London are pulling on waders, grabbing litter pickers, and slipping their hands into protective gloves. It’s time to clean up the River Wandle. The River Wandle starts in Croydon, runs through South […]

Pluto’s fifth moon discovered Image: Hubblesite A new moon has been found orbiting Pluto, bringing the number of satellites known around the former planet to five. P5 – the moon’s temporary designation – is between 10 to 25 km across (less than the diameter of London’s North Circular Road), and was discovered by scientists at […]

Despite it being July, and officially British summer time, it still feels like October. This is the wettest summer in living memory and it has started to feel as if the rain will never stop. However, whilst most of us are bemoaning the loss of our suntans and the barbeque season, scientists at Lancaster University […]

With thanks to Adair Farrar The San Juan River Goosenecks State Park in Utah, USA, overlooks a deep meander of the San Juan River, a 600-km-long tributary of the Colorado River. One of the best examples of entrenched river meanders in the world, the river flows through 8 kms of canyon while progressing westwards only […]

This article is taken from the Winter 2011 issue of I, Science magazine Antonio Torrisi uncovers the secrets held by the mysterious Lake Vostok, Antarctica’s as-yet unexplored sub-surface lake. The Antarctic is one of the most extreme places on Earth, so it follows it would be one of the least explored. However, remote areas spark […]

Fact of the day #1 Drinking absolutely pure water can kill you. All the water we normally drink – from taps, from bottles, from the garden hose – contains impurities which affect a property of water called tonicity. This is the ability of a solution to draw or repel water from ajacent solutions when separated by […]

In the same year as Anderson’s experiment demonstrated the existence of antimatter, another oft-overlooked discovery was made. William and Alun Hughes published an article on Nature in which they stated that in pouring soap solution drops in water, they could observe in addition to floating drops some other small drops (about 1-4 mm of diameter), […]

The most recent financial crisis caused by the housing bubble, which popped as subprime mortgages in the US and many Western European countries defaulted, has been having dramatic consequences in many aspects of Western Europe and US economies such as high rate of unemployment and economical policies based on ”cut if you can”. Stock market […]

BY JOSEPH MALONE In 1969, as part of the “green revolution” in India, Union Carbide established a chemical plant in Bhopal to manufacture the pesticide Carbaryl. It contained the lethal compound Methyl Isocyanate (MIC), twice as heavy as air, meaning should a leak occur, it would create a blanket of deadly gas, smothering anything that […]

Four and half billion years ago, a meteorite the size of Mars slammed into Earth, melting the entire surface of our planet and throwing billions of tonnes of rock into space.  In time, the ejected rubble – baked dry by the explosion’s searing heat – condensed into a parched, lifeless satellite, the Moon.  This is […]

The Sun has finally got his London hat on.  So to celebrate, here’s a warming story about smart scientists using solar energy to alleviate water poverty. The Middle East is almost always sunny.  Jordan, for example, gets some of the highest levels of solar energy in the world – seven times as much as London […]

Your home is your only place of sanctuary. Yet, lurking in the walls is a silent menace. It is a noxious, suffocating, toxic presence, creeping out of cracks and threatening to overwhelm you if you let your guard down. If you venture out to collect food, you face attack: your only option is to flee […]

An unusually snowy winter, and weeks of heavy rainfall in south east USA has resulted in the Mississippi River flooding to record levels.  As a response, US engineers have released the rising waters onto the floodplains surrounding the river, in order to save the heavily populated regions further downstream. The economic costs of such an […]

Globally, polluted water kills 14,000 people every day.  In India, over 350,000 children die of diarrhoea from dirty drinking water every year.  In China, 90% of cities suffer from some type of water pollution.  In the US, a recent study found contaminants in 45% of the country’s stream miles and 47% of lake acres.  Despite […]

Last year, I had the good fortune of going on a white water rafting trip. Shivering uncontrollably from the combination of the cold and the danger, it was, all things considered, an amazing adventure. One factor, which at the time, I was very grateful for was the raft – a sturdy construction of rubber and […]

  Chicken wire is great for describing graphene – it’s often used by scientists when talking about the new wonder-material. Imagine there’s one atom of carbon at every point of every hexagon and that the wires are bonds joining the carbon atoms together.  Then imagine that the whole photograph is only a few nanometres across (1 nanometre […]

Some shocking statistics about the world’s rivers: Every day, 2 million tons of human waste are disposed of in water courses. (Source: World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP)) In developing countries, 70 percent of industrial wastes are dumped untreated into waters where they pollute the usable water supply. (Source: WWAP) Projected increases in fertilizer use for […]

Take yourself into the middle of nowhere and hold a radio receiver to the sky.  Above the snapcracklepop of static, you might just be lucky enough to catch a whistler. Sounding like weaponry from an early sci-fi film, whistlers are the remnants of lightning strikes that have travelled tens of thousands of miles through space […]

The startling yellow chemical in this photo is the ferricyanide anion, [Fe(CN)6]3−. Ferricyanide has a colourful history, rising to prominence for its use in the dark Prussian Blue dye when combined with iron. More recently, its electroactivity has become important in a range of applications. In this experiment, the ferricyanide is being used to mediate, […]

When it’s cold, do you get grumpy?  Ill?  Hungry?  A sudden urge to emigrate?  Well, according to a study published in this week’s Science journal, that’s nothing new: changes in climate have been causing Europeans to migrate, starve, die of horrible diseases and invade our neighbours – the ultimate expression of grumpiness – since the […]