Microbes found living underground in Antarctica

September 28th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Australian researchers have discovered 850 new species of invertebrates, which include various insects, small crustaceans, spiders, worms and many others, in underground water, caves and "micro-caverns" amid the harsh conditions of the Australian outback. The team, led by Professor Andy Austin (University of Adelaide), Dr Steve Cooper (South Australian Museum) and Dr Bill Humphreys (Western Australian Museum), has conducted a comprehensive four-year survey of underground water, caves and micro-caverns across arid and semi-arid Australia.

September 10th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists, in a new research, have found that about 34 million years ago, Antarctica had more room for ice than previously thought. Scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara, US, carried out the research.

August 19th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists have found that naturally occurring organic matter in water and sediment appears to play a key role in helping microbes convert tiny particles of mercury in the environment into a form that is toxic to most living creatures. According to Duke University environmental engineers, this finding is important because it could change the way mercury in the environment is measured and therefore regulated.

June 26th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new research has indicated that living microorganisms and the food that sustained them can be detected in shallow ice layers, which will help find life on icy worlds. The research is a part of the Project SLIce, which means, Signatures of Life in Ice.

June 20th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists has found that the highest microbial life on Earth appears to be in South America, around vents near the rim of the Socompa volcano, which sits on the border between Argentina and Chile in the Atacama Desert. The newfound creatures, at a height of almost 19,850 feet (6,050 meters) above sea level, are the highest-altitude microbial communities known, Steve Schmidt, a microbiologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, US, told National Geographic News.

June 20th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new research in China, scientists have determined that immobilized microbes can break down potentially harmful phthalates, thus proving useful in treating industrial waste water and preventing these materials from entering the environment. Phthalic Acid Esters (PAEs), commonly known as phthalates, are widely used as additives in polymer manufacture as plasticizers.

June 9th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists in the US have come up with a cheap, environmentally friendly way to kill termites and other pests. In their study, they have found that a substance derived from glucose can weaken the insects' immune systems, making them vulnerable to infections from lethal microbes.

May 11th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists in California, US, are reporting the use of a new bioprocess that could help pave the way for producing biofuels from agricultural waste, easing concerns about stress on the global food supply from using corn and other food crops. The bioprocess involves a first-of-its-kind approach to craft genetically engineered microbes with the much-sought ability to transform switchgrass, corn cobs, and other organic materials into methyl halides - the raw material for making gasoline and a host of other commercially important products.

April 17th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new research has led to the discovery of unusual microbial life under an inland Antarctic glacier, a place where cold, darkness and lack of oxygen would previously have led scientists to believe nothing could survive. The microbes were found in an unmapped reservoir of briny liquid chemically similar to sea water, but buried under an inland Antarctic glacier.

April 9th, 2009 SYDNEY - The death of methane-producing microbes, among the earth's earliest life forms, gave us oxygen and life in all its complexity, according to a new study. Because they produced methane, a gas which reacts with oxygen, these early microbes prevented the earth's early atmosphere from being oxygenated, said the study's co-author Mark Barley, professor at University of Western Australia's (UWA) School of Earth and Environment.

March 30th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new study, dust trapped deep in Antarctic ice sheets is helping scientists unravel details of past climate change. The study, carried out by the Universities of Edinburgh, Stirling and Lille, has found that the very coldest periods of the last ice age correspond with the dustiest periods in Antarctica's past, thus establishing a link between the two.

February 28th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Ice in Antarctica suddenly appeared about 35 million years ago. For the previous 100 million years the continent had been essentially ice-free.

February 17th, 2009 BUENOS AIRES - A Bahamas-flagged cruise ship with 104 people onboard has run aground off Antarctica, an Argentine news channel reported. The Ocean Nova has been stuck on a sandbank near the Antarctic base of San Marin since early Tuesday, C5N said.

January 22nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - Much of Antarctica has been warming, not getting any colder, as suspected by scientists studying climate change. The study found that warming in West Antarctica exceeded a tenth of a degree Celsius per decade for the last 50 years and more than offset the cooling in East Antarctica.

January 22nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - Antarctica is warming, despite the recent scientific consensus that the southernmost continent was not being impacted by global warming, a study published in the journal Nature said Thursday. Scientists had observed warming in the Antarctic Peninsula that extends north from the icy continent, but the rest of the continent was believed to be stable or even cooling as the rest of the Earth's continents saw temperatures increase.