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“The need for smaller, faster-charging batteries is greater than ever,” said Chao-Yang Wang, the William E. Diefenderfer Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State and lead author on the study. “There are simply not enough batteries and critical raw materials, especially those produced domestically, to meet anticipated demand.” In August, California’s Air Resources Board passed …

Battery tech breakthrough paves way for mass adoption of affordable electric car Read More »

“The need for smaller, faster-charging batteries is greater than ever,” said Chao-Yang Wang, the William E. Diefenderfer Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State and lead author on the study. “There are simply not enough batteries and critical raw materials, especially those produced domestically, to meet anticipated demand.” In August, California’s Air Resources Board passed …

Battery tech breakthrough paves way for mass adoption of affordable electric car Read More »

However, a new study suggests that while they do remove plastics and other items of marine litter, the quantities of litter removed can be comparatively low and they can also trap marine organisms. The study was led by researchers from the International Marine Litter Research Unit at the University of Plymouth, who have been studying …

Mechanical devices to clear the ocean of plastics may not be the answer Read More »

Rising air temperatures amplify the effects of melting caused by ocean warming, leading to greater ice loss from the world’s second largest ice sheet, a study reveals. While previous studies have shown that rising air and ocean temperatures both cause the Greenland ice sheet to melt, the new study reveals how one intensifies the effects …

Vast ice sheet facing climate fight on two fronts Read More »

Direct air capture (DAC) technologies are designed to remove carbon dioxide from the air, although there’s still a lot of room for improvement in DAC materials. Other molecules in the air, especially water, are in much higher concentrations than carbon dioxide, or CO2. They start competing with each other, and ultimately, carbon dioxide isn’t what’s …

Getting it to stick: Grabbing CO2 out of the air Read More »

While we often hear about the important role human emissions of carbon dioxide play in the climate today, much of our understanding of current and future climate is rooted in Earth’s long history of variable climate. Many factors affect the carbon cycle — with carbon moving between the atmosphere, oceans, rocks, soil, and living things. …

Could South American volcanoes have triggered whale extinctions? Read More »

This time period — called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM — is often used as a historic parallel for our own future under climate change, since humans have also rapidly poured carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the last 250 years. A University of Arizona-led team of researchers published a study in Proceedings of …

Maps of the past may shed light on our climate future Read More »

The paper describes how the scientists engineered a strain of duckweed, Lemna japonica, to accumulate oil at close to 10 percent of its dry weight biomass. That’s a dramatic, 100-fold increase over such plants growing in the wild — with yields more than seven times higher than soybeans, today’s largest source of biodiesel. “Duckweed grows …

Engineering duckweed to produce oil for biofuels, bioproducts Read More »

That turns out to be increasingly true for much of the United States, according to Northwestern University researchers. In a new study, researchers compared observed rainfall from two climatologically distinct time periods and across 17 different climate regions in the U.S. They found that when it’s rained in recent decades, it’s rained more. In most …

Rainfall is becoming more intense in most of the U.S. Read More »

That turns out to be increasingly true for much of the United States, according to Northwestern University researchers. In a new study, researchers compared observed rainfall from two climatologically distinct time periods and across 17 different climate regions in the U.S. They found that when it’s rained in recent decades, it’s rained more. In most …

Rainfall is becoming more intense in most of the U.S. Read More »