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With the global population rising, analysts and policymakers have targeted Africa's vast wet savannas as a place to produce staple foods and bioenergy groups at low environmental costs. But a new report published in the journal Nature Climate Change finds that converting Africa's wet savannas into farmland would come at a high environmental cost and fail to meet some existing standards for renewable fuels.

Financial markets notwithstanding, most of us were happy to see gas prices fall. It has certainly helped to put a little extra breathing room in our household budgets, even though we suspect it could lead to increased use of fossil fuels. On the other hand, it could open the door for some new initiatives to help control emissions, such as a carbon tax, or a fee and rebate plan that would tax the production of fossil fuels and give the proceeds out to all Americans.

Perhaps this would be a good time to take a closer look at what that gallon of gasoline actually costs us, when all the impacts are considered. 

A new study confirms that snowfall in Antarctica will increase significantly as the planet warms, offsetting future sea level rise from other sources – but the effect will not be nearly as strong as many scientists previously anticipated because of other, physical processes.

That means that many computer models may be underestimating the amount and rate of sea level rise if they had projected more significant impact from Antarctic snow.

Results of the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, were reported this week in the journal Nature Climate Change.

In a world first, a research team including James Cook University scientists has discovered how geckos manage to stay clean, even in dusty deserts. 

The process, described in Interface, the prestigious journal of the Royal Society, may also turn out to have important human applications. 

JCU's Professor Lin Schwarzkopf said the group found that tiny droplets of water on geckos, for instance from condensing dew, come into contact with hundreds of thousands of extremely small hair-like spines that cover the animals' bodies. 

Zoos and aquariums around the world have a crucial role to play in helping people understand how they can protect animals and their natural habitats, new research from the University of Warwick, the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) and Chester Zoo has found.