Combined spatial and retrospective analysis of fluoroalkyl chemicals in fluvial sediments reveal changes in levels and patterns over the last 40 years.

Bed sediments and a dated sediment core were collected upstream and downstream from the city of Lyon (France) to assess the spatial and temporal trends of contamination by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) in this section of the Rhône River. Upstream from Lyon, concentrations of total PFASs (ΣPFASs) in sediments are low (between 0.19 and 2.

Occurrence of 1,1'-dimethyl-4,4'-bipyridinium (Paraquat) in irrigated soil of the Lake Chad Basin, Niger.

Increased use of agrochemical products to improve yields for irrigated crops in sub-Saharan Africa has been accompanied by a significant increase in the risk of environmental contamination. Detailed examples of the fate of pesticides after initial spreading on crop fields are scarce in tropical regions, where safe practices and related health risks are poorly understood by smallholder farmers. In the semi-arid environment of the Lake Chad Basin, SE Niger, both intrinsic properties of pesticides and extrinsic factors such as soil and climate helped to characterize processes leading to an accumulation of pesticides in soils.

A low level of extragalactic background light as revealed by gamma-rays from blazars.

The diffuse extragalactic background light consists of the sum of the starlight emitted by galaxies through the history of the Universe, and it could also have an important contribution from the 'first stars', which may have formed before galaxy formation began. Direct measurements are difficult and not yet conclusive, owing to the large uncertainties caused by the bright foreground emission associated with zodiacal light. An alternative approach is to study the absorption features imprinted on the gamma-ray spectra of distant extragalactic objects by interactions of those photons with the background light photons.

Discovery of very-high-energy gamma-rays from the Galactic Centre ridge.

The source of Galactic cosmic rays (with energies up to 10(15) eV) remains unclear, although it is widely believed that they originate in the shock waves of expanding supernova remnants. At present the best way to investigate their acceleration and propagation is by observing the gamma-rays produced when cosmic rays interact with interstellar gas. Here we report observations of an extended region of very-high-energy (> 10(11) eV) gamma-ray emission correlated spatially with a complex of giant molecular clouds in the central 200 parsecs of the Milky Way.

Discovery of very high energy gamma rays associated with an x-ray binary.

X-ray binaries are composed of a normal star in orbit around a neutron star or stellar-mass black hole. Radio and x-ray observations have led to the presumption that some x-ray binaries called microquasars behave as scaled-down active galactic nuclei. Microquasars have resolved radio emission that is thought to arise from a relativistic outflow akin to active galactic nuclei jets, in which particles can be accelerated to large energies.