PVC makes up a vast amount of plastics we use on a daily basis. Much of the plastic used in hospital equipment — tubing, blood bags, masks and more — is PVC, as is most of the piping used in modern plumbing. Window frames, housing trim, siding and flooring are made of, or include, PVC. …
Published in Nature Communications, researchers have examined global climate and fire records in all of the world’s forests over the last 20 years. The researchers found that in all kinds of forests, there is a strong link between fire activity and vapour pressure deficit (VPD), which is a measure of the atmosphere’s thirst. VPD is …
Major fires an increasing risk as the air gets thirstier, research shows Read More »
Hochella and his colleagues examined the scientific evidence for seeding the oceans with iron-rich engineered fertilizer particles near ocean plankton. The goal would be to feed phytoplankton, microscopic plants that are a key part of the ocean ecosystem, to encourage growth and carbon dioxide (CO2) uptake. The analysis article appears in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. …
Tengfei Luo, the Dorini Family Professor of Energy Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and postdoctoral associate Seongmin Kim have devised a transparent coating for windows that does just that. The coating, or transparent radiative cooler (TRC), allows visible light to come in and keeps other heat-producing light out. The researchers estimate that this …
New research finds that the hot, exposed land in the central U.S. during the Dust Bowl drought influenced temperatures across much of North America and as far away as Europe and East Asia. That’s because the extreme heating of the Great Plains triggered motions of air around the Northern Hemisphere in ways that suppressed cloud …
1930s Dust Bowl led to extreme heat around Northern Hemisphere Read More »
Lead researcher Professor Nicky Eshtiaghi said existing methods could take days to remove microplastics from water, while their cheap and sustainable invention achieves better results in just one hour. The team says they have developed adsorbents, in the form of a powder, that remove microplastics 1,000 times smaller than those currently detectable by existing wastewater …
Magnetic material mops up microplastics in water Read More »
Led by Jagan Jayachandran, assistant professor of aerospace engineering, and Adam Powell, associate professor of mechanical and materials engineering, the work helps address an urgent climate change problem. Aviation accounts for approximately 2.5% of all global greenhouse emissions, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), and that number is only expected to increase. …
Researchers create method for making net-zero aviation fuel Read More »
The new approach, reported in Nature Catalysis, could help advance carbon-free alternatives to fossil fuels linked to global warming and climate change. The work is also the first demonstration of a device that mimics how these bacteria naturally synthesize acetate from electrons and CO2. “What’s amazing is that we learned how to selectively convert carbon …
To battle climate change, scientists tap into carbon-hungry microorganisms for clues Read More »
Some scientists claim that food webs in the oceans have seen very little change over the last 540 million or so years. However, a team of UNLV researchers has revealed that some ancient food webs were actually very different from today. The study, published in the latest edition of the journal Frontiers in Ecology and …
What ancient underwater food webs can tell us about the future of climate change Read More »
“Animals are our greatest allies in reforestation,” says Daisy Dent, a tropical ecologist from MPI-AB and the study’s senior author. “Our study prompts a rethink of reforestation efforts to be about more than just establishing plant communities.” The report also notes that situating regenerating forests near patches of old growth, and reducing hunting, encourages animals …
Animals are key to restoring the world’s forests Read More »
