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What’s driving re-burns across California and the West?

“Rapid climate change is the force behind these re-burns, which are increasing across the West at roughly the same rate as single-burn fires,” said Kurt Solander, a hydrologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Solander is corresponding author of the artificial-intelligence-based paper in the journal Environmental Research: Climate. “Predictive computer models of re-burns are thus essential …

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Biodiversity safeguards bird communities under a changing climate

Climate change has undisputable global effects on ecosystems and ecological community compositions, but why certain communities are better able to resist the effects of climate change than others remains unclear. In a recent scientific study covering nearly all North American bird species, researchers studied community composition changes and community diversity over half a century. Consistently, …

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Improving perovskite solar cell resistance to degradation

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) can be made with low-cost materials, are highly efficient, can surpass traditional silicon solar cells, and have the potential to revolutionize renewable energy. However, one of the current drawbacks preventing their widespread use has is their lack of operational stability. Now, scientists at EPFL and Sungkyunkwan University in Korea have found …

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Using fungi, researchers convert ocean plastic into ingredients for drug industry

The chemical-biological approach for converting polyethylene uses an everyday soil fungus called Aspergillus nidulans that has been genetically altered. The results were reported recently in the paper “Conversion of Polyethylenes into Fungal Secondary Metabolites” published in Angewandte Chemie, a journal of the German Chemical Society. “What we’ve done in this paper is to first digest …

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Increased atmospheric dust is masking greenhouse gases’ warming effect

The UCLA research, published today in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, found that the amount of desert dust has grown roughly 55% since the mid-1800s, which increased the dust’s cooling effect. The study is the first to demonstrate the overall cooling effect of atmospheric desert dust. Some effects of atmospheric dust warm the planet, but …

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Our future climate depends partly on soil microbes — but how are they affected by climate change?

The answer is surprising: increased temperature decreases the rate at which soil microbes respire CO2 — but only in the summer. During the rest of the year, microbial activity remains largely historically consistent. But there’s a catch to this seemingly happy story. Soil microbes are releasing less CO2 in the summer because they’re starving. And …

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Glassy and reactive: Plants are more dynamic than you think

The question of how plants sense and respond to their environment has fascinated scientists and philosophers since ancient times. More than two millennia ago, Plato wrote in his Timaeus that plants have a “soul” that experiences “sensation, pleasure, pain, and desire” while lacking “judgment and intelligence.” To move, or not to move While modern scientists …

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Climate conundrum: Study finds ants aren’t altering behavior in rising temperatures

Ants are ectotherms — animals whose body temperature depends on the environment. While these animals experience a range of temperatures in daily life, most ectotherms prefer habitats that are slightly cooler than the so-called optimal functioning temperature in which an ectothermic animal is able to best perform all of life’s functions. If it encounters an …

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