The so-called 'Tunguska Event' refers to a major explosion that occurred on 30 June 1908 in the Tunguska region of Siberia, causing the destruction of over 2000 km2 of taiga, globally detected pressure and seismic waves, and bright luminescence in the night skies of Europe and Central Asia, combined with other unusual phenomena. The 'Tunguska Event' may be related to the impact with the Earth of a cosmic body that exploded about 5-10 km above ground, releasing in the atmosphere 10-15 Mton of energy. Fragments of the impacting body have never been found, and its nature (comet or asteroid) is still a matter of debate. We report results from the investigation of Lake Cheko, located ∼8 km NNW of the inferred explosion epicenter. Its funnel-like bottom morphology and the structure of its sedimentary deposits, revealed by acoustic imagery and direct sampling, all suggest that the lake fills an impact crater. Lake Cheko may have formed due to a secondary impact onto alluvial swampy ground; the size and shape of the crater may have been affected by the nature of the ground and by impact-related melting and degassing of a permafrost layer. © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

The growing interest in sensory analysis of olive oil, as required by European Union (EU) law 2568/91 (EEC Reg.) and following revisions (EC Reg. 796/02), calls for the need to define an analytical method to properly describe the sensory attributes for harmonic pairing of virgin olive oil to a specific food. To accomplish that, in February 2006, the sensory analysis panel of the Department of Food Sciences of the University of Bologna (Italy) carried out systematic sensory analyses of extra virgin olive oils and foods to evaluate the harmony of the pairing. Specific scorecards for olive oil, food and pairing harmony were defined; the resulting harmony was visualized graphically. Some examples of virgin olive oil and food pairing were also presented. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS The key finding in this study is its use in the development of a method and relative harmony scorecard for virgin olive oil and food pairing. The results of the study suggest a disharmonic index to evaluate the harmony of pairing.

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