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The "colour" of our environment is becoming "bluer", a change that could have important implications for animals' risk of becoming extinct, ecologists have found. In a major study involving thousands of data points and published this week in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Animal Ecology, researchers examined how quickly or slowly animal populations and their environment change over time, something ecologists describe using "spectral colour".

In the wake of several highly publicized suicides by gay teenagers, a new study finds that a negative social environment surrounding gay youth is associated with high rates of suicide attempts by lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youth. The study, "The Social Environment and Suicide Attempts in a Population-Based Sample of LGB Youth," appears in the April 18 issue of Pediatrics. It was conducted by by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar Mark L. Hatzenbuehler at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

David Keith is Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. The award-winning scientist, who was named one of TIME magazine's Heroes of the Environment in 2009, has worked near the interface of climate science, energy technology, and public policy for twenty years. He divides his time between Boston and Calgary, where he serves as president of Carbon Engineering-a start-up company developing industrial-scale technologies for capture of CO2 from ambient air. Here, Keith answers questions about his research and ideas for reducing climate change using innovative and sometimes controversial methods.

The explosive growth of cities worldwide over the next two decades poses significant risks to people and the global environment, according to a meta-analysis published today in Plos One.

Changing human activities coupled with a dynamic environment over the past few centuries have caused fluctuating periods of decline and recovery of corals reefs in the Hawaiian Islands, according to a study sponsored in part by the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University. Using the reefs and island societies as a model social-ecological system, a team of scientists reconstructed 700 years of human-environment interactions in two different regions of the Hawaiian archipelago to identify the key factors that contributed to degradation or recovery of coral reefs.

Eutrophication harms the environment in many ways. Unexpectedly, nitrogen fertilizer may also be positive for the environment. And even acidic soils, promoting the destruction of forests, can have a positive effect. Researchers from the Biogeochemistry Department at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz found out that nitrogen fertilizer indirectly strengthens the self-cleaning capacity of the atmosphere. Their study shows that nitrous acid is formed in fertilized soil and released to the atmosphere, whereby the amount increases with increasing soil acidity. In the air, nitrous acid leads to the formation of hydroxyl radicals oxidizing pollutants that then can be washed out. Previously, this nitrogen-effect has not been taken into account by geoscientists. The gap has now been closed by the Max Planck researchers.

In addition to its damaging effect on the environment and its illegal smuggling into developing countries, researchers have now linked e-waste to adverse effects on human health, such as inflammation and oxidative stress - precursors to cardiovascular disease, DNA damage and possibly cancer.

Research from North Carolina State University shows that so-called biodegradable products are likely doing more harm than good in landfills, because they are releasing a powerful greenhouse gas as they break down.

The rate of release of carbon into the atmosphere today is nearly 10 times as fast as during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), 55.9 million years ago, the best analog we have for current global warming, according to an international team of geologists. Rate matters and this current rapid change may not allow sufficient time for the biological environment to adjust.

Easy-to-follow recipes for radioactive compounds like those found in nuclear fuel storage pools, liquid waste containment areas and other contaminated aqueous environments have been developed by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories.

A carefully executed operation to validate data from CryoSat has shown what can be accomplished when ESA, NASA and others join forces to further our understanding of how the fragile polar environment is responding to climate change.

Sarah Saurer was seven years old when she was diagnosed with brain cancer. Her parents soon found out that several other children in their small town -- which sat just miles away from two troubled Illinois nuclear power plants -- had been diagnosed with brain cancer and leukemia. Then news broke that one of the plants had been leaking radioactive water for years before it was detected. A quick survey by concerned mothers found that every single home within a quarter mile of the spill housed someone who'd been diagnosed with cancer. "I want to remind you how important it is to protect people from the harmful things that are being put into our environment," Sarah Saurer told the scientists, her short stature and child-like face showing little sign of her 17 years.

A new source of biomass grown on unused land could help the UK meet renewable energy targets without affecting food production or the environment, according to the results of a new study.

The health implications of polluting the environment weigh increasingly on our public consciousness, and pharmaceutical wastes continue to be a main culprit. Now a Tel Aviv University researcher says that current testing for these dangerous contaminants isn't going far enough.

Scientists studying populations of gray wolves in the USA's Yellowstone National Park have developed a way to predict how changes in the environment will impact on the animals' number, body size and genetics, amongst other biological traits.

As global temperatures rise and climatic zones move polewards, species will need to find different environments to prevent extinction. New research, published today in the journal Molecular Ecology, has revealed that climate change is causing certain species to move and adapt to a range of new habitats.

Researchers at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) at the University of York have played a key role in a new study that shows that implementing 14 key air pollution control measures could slow the pace of global warming, save millions of lives and boost agricultural production.

On the other hand, humanity's malignant effect on the environment has accelerated the rate of extinction for plants and animals, which now reaches perhaps 50,000 species a year. But even here there was some good news. We reversed our first man-made global atmospheric crisis by banning chlorofluorocarbons -- by 2015, the Antarctic ozone hole will have shrunk by nearly 400,000 square miles. Stopping climate change has been a slower process. Nonetheless, in 2008, the G-8 did commit to halving carbon emissions by 2050. And a range of technological advances -- from hydrogen fuel cells to compact fluorescent bulbs -- suggests that a low-carbon future need not require surrendering a high quality of life. Technology has done more than improve energy efficiency. Today, there are more than 4 billion mobile-phone subscribers, compared with only 750 million at the decade's start. Cell phones are being used to provide financial services in the Philippines, monitor real-time commodity futures prices in Vietnam, and teach literacy in Niger. And streaming video means that fans can watch cricket even in benighted countries that don't broadcast it -- or upload citizen reports from security crackdowns in Tehran. Perhaps technology also helps account for the striking disconnect between the reality of worldwide progress and the perception of global decline. We're more able than ever to witness the tragedy of millions of our fellow humans on television or online. And, rightly so, we're more outraged than ever that suffering continues in a world of such technological wonder and economic plenty. Nonetheless, if you had to choose a decade in history in which to be alive, the first of the 21st century would undoubtedly be it. More people lived lives of greater freedom, security, longevity, and wealth than ever before. And now, billions of them can tweet the good news. Bring on the 'Teenies.

For more than 20 years, theoretical mathematical models have predicted that a delay built into a negative feedback system is at the heart of the molecular mechanism that governs circadian clocks in mammalian cells. Now, the first experimental proof of this theory has been provided by an international research team led by molecular biologists and information scientists from the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe. The demonstration of the feedback delay should lead to a better understanding of how cellular clocks function, and therefore how mammals adjust to the regular daily and seasonal changes in their environment. The work could also open the way to the development of treatments for circadian disorders, such as seasonal affective disorder, jet lag and even bipolar disorder.

Populations of Fraser River sockeye salmon are so fine-tuned to their environment that any further environmental changes caused by climate change could lead to the disappearance of some populations, while others may be less affected, says a new study by University of British Columbia scientists.