http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Research conducted by a Harvard undergraduate has traced the rise of mercury pollution in endangered seabirds and highlighted the importance of museum collections as a time capsule concerning conditions on Earth over the past century. http://phys.org/news224494980.html Space & Earth Fri, 13 May 2011 08:43:14 EST news224494980 The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers detonated explosives at the Birds Point levee near Wyatt, Missouri, at 10:02 p.m. on May 2, 2011. Water from the intentional breach flooded a 130,000-acre stretch of land. Two more breaches were detonated on May 3 and 5. This image from the Advanced Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft shows the resultant flooding of farmland west of the Mississippi 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of the levee breach. On the image, vegetation is displayed in red, bare fields in gray and water in blue. The image covers an area of 30.7 by 39 miles (49.5 by 63 kilometers), and is located near 36.5 degrees north latitude, 89.4 degrees west longitude. http://phys.org/news224431359.html Space & Earth Thu, 12 May 2011 15:02:57 EST news224431359 Pollution experts at Teeside University, UK, are close to solving a problem which has led to over 100 tonnes of discharges from old iron stone mine workings pouring into the Noth Sea every year. http://phys.org/news159699336.html Space & Earth Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:56:18 EST news159699336 Plants absorbed carbon dioxide more efficiently under the polluted skies of recent decades than they would have done in a cleaner atmosphere, according to new findings published this week in Nature. http://phys.org/news159626551.html Space & Earth Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:43:01 EST news159626551 (AP) -- U.S. manufacturers, including major drugmakers, have legally released at least 271 million pounds of pharmaceuticals into waterways that often provide drinking water - contamination the federal government has consistently overlooked, according to an Associated Press investigation. http://phys.org/news159425418.html Space & Earth Mon, 20 Apr 2009 05:51:13 EST news159425418 Forests that today soak up a quarter of carbon pollution spewed into the atmosphere could soon become a net source of CO2 if Earth's surface warms by another two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), cautions a report to be presented Friday at the UN. http://phys.org/news159176135.html Space & Earth Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:36:20 EST news159176135 (PhysOrg.comOne of my pet peeves is the focus we have on global warming. While global climate change is important, it continues to provide a red herring of sorts, taking attention away the public health concern that is air pollution. Recent developments in pollution tracking may change things. With help from satellites, scientists are beginning to understand just how dirty our air is becoming. http://phys.org/news158943299.html Space & Earth Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:55:36 EST news158943299 Thousands of merchant ships chug in and out of South Florida's bustling ports each year, bringing boatloads worth of economic benefit to the region. http://phys.org/news157744326.html Space & Earth Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:52:41 EST news157744326 (AP) -- Ron Kurth, who grew up in Gary and worked in the steel mills, raised his family in the region near the outskirts of Chicago. He always wondered about the smoke and smog that overcast the Lake Michigan shoreline. http://phys.org/news157290393.html Space & Earth Thu, 26 Mar 2009 12:47:06 EST news157290393 We are used to thinking of heart disease as a product of genetic factors or lifestyle choices, such as what we eat and how much we exercise. There is another road to heart disease: breathing. http://phys.org/news157019589.html Medicine & Health Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:55:03 EST news157019589 International experts are warning that potentially lethal air pollution has boomed in fast-growing big cities in Asia and South America in recent decades. http://phys.org/news157003027.html Space & Earth Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:57:38 EST news157003027 A shoal of robotic fish which can detect pollution in the water are set to released into the sea off Spain, British scientists said Thursday. http://phys.org/news156681859.html Electronics Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:45:44 EST news156681859 Carnegie Mellon University's Cliff I. Davidson, Joseph B. Kadane and Nanjun Chu have found that polluted air in the highly populated East End areas of Pittsburgh are more affected by major sources to the city's southeast than previously thought. http://phys.org/news156519054.html Space & Earth Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:32:20 EST news156519054 The Obama administration intends to close an EPA program heavily promoted by the Bush Administration that rewards voluntary pollution controls by hundreds of corporations with reduced environmental inspections and less stringent regulation, according to EPA sources and internal emails. http://phys.org/news156451193.html Space & Earth Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:40:44 EST news156451193 Throughout the world, nitrogen compounds are released to the atmosphere from agricultural activities and combustion of fossil fuels. These pollutants are deposited to ecosystems as precipitation, gases, and particles, sometimes many hundreds of miles downwind of their release point. The Catskill Mountains of southeastern New York are a case in point—though they contain little in the way of industrial or agricultural pollution sources, they receive some of the highest nitrogen deposition rates in North America due to pollutants drifting in from midwestern power plants and east-coast cities. http://phys.org/news156434150.html Biology Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:56:48 EST news156434150 People who have had a heart attack are likely to report having been in traffic shortly before their symptoms began, researchers reported at the American Heart Association's 49th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention. http://phys.org/news156180373.html Medicine & Health Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:26:26 EST news156180373 Diesel exhaust causes arteries to lose their flexibility. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology found that exposure to engine pollution resulted in arterial stiffness in a group of healthy volunteers. http://phys.org/news156161791.html Medicine & Health Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:17:23 EST news156161791 A University of Maryland-led team has compiled the first decades-long database of aerosol measurements over land, making possible new research into how air pollution changes affect climate change. http://phys.org/news156087278.html Space & Earth Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:35:09 EST news156087278 Children with asthma have an easier time breathing if they spend even a few days in the country, safeguarded from urban air pollution, a study led by Giovanni Piedimonte, M.D., professor and chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at the West Virginia University School of Medicine, finds. http://phys.org/news155892672.html Medicine & Health Tue, 10 Mar 2009 08:32:21 EST news155892672 Although large numbers of headache sufferers, particularly individuals who struggle with migraines, attribute their pain to the weather, there has been little scientific evidence to back up their assertions. Now, a study of more than 7,000 patients, led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), provides some of the first large-scale data on how environmental conditions -- weather, as well as air pollution -- influence headache pain. Reported in the March 10 issue of the journal Neurology, the findings demonstrate that higher temperatures, and to a lesser degree, lower barometric pressure, contribute to severe headaches. http://phys.org/news155843261.html Medicine & Health Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:48:23 EST news155843261 (PhysOrg.com) -- Dust blown off the continents and deposited in the open ocean is an important source of nutrients for marine phytoplankton, the tiny algae that are the foundation of the ocean food web. But new findings show that some sources of dust also carry toxic elements that can kill marine phytoplankton. http://phys.org/news155842133.html Space & Earth Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:31:39 EST news155842133 Most college students will admit to searching their couch cushions for extra coins to do laundry. But Jon McKinney's cushion hunt isn't about finding money. He wants to help epidemiologists identify what's triggering diseases like asthma in children, and he's got the backing of the Environmental Protection Agency. http://phys.org/news155396158.html Technology Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:36:23 EST news155396158 Humans and farm animals were known to emit harmful greenhouse gases through digestion, but German researchers said Tuesday that aquatic worms and bugs are also culprits, releasing laughing gas. http://phys.org/news155287675.html Space & Earth Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:30:02 EST news155287675 Globally, commercial ships emit almost half as much particulate pollution into the air as the total amount released by cars, according to a new study. Ship pollutants affect both the Earth's climate and the health of people living along coastlines. http://phys.org/news154878659.html Space & Earth Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:51:37 EST news154878659 Newborns whose first few months of life coincide with high pollen and mold seasons are at increased risk of developing early symptoms of asthma, suggests a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. http://phys.org/news154684858.html Medicine & Health Tue, 24 Feb 2009 08:01:30 EST news154684858 Severe fires in Indonesia - responsible for some of the worst air quality conditions worldwide - are linked not only to drought, but also to changes in land use and population density, according to a new study in Nature Geoscience led by Robert Field of the University of Toronto. http://phys.org/news154540375.html Space & Earth Sun, 22 Feb 2009 15:53:38 EST news154540375 An international group of scientists is renewing calls for policymakers to reduce both nitrogen and phosphorus when attempting to alleviate eutrophication - or nutrient pollution problems - in fresh and coastal waters. In the February 20 edition of Science, the researchers argue that dual-nutrient reduction strategies are likely to be more successful due to complex interactions between nitrogen and phosphorus in fresh and coastal water ecosystems. http://phys.org/news154283461.html Space & Earth Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:31:32 EST news154283461 Protecting drinking water and preventing harmful coastal "dead zones", as well as eutrophication in many lakes, will require reducing both nitrogen and phosphorus pollution. Because streams and rivers are conduits to the sea, management strategies should be implemented along the land-to-ocean continuum. In most cases, strategies that focus only on one nutrient will fail. http://phys.org/news154278113.html Biology Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:02:22 EST news154278113 A study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University found an association between increasing levels of indoor particulate matter pollution and the severity of asthma symptoms among children. The study, which followed a group of asthmatic children in Baltimore, Md., is among the first to examine the effects of indoor particulate matter pollution. The results are published in the February 2009 edition of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. http://phys.org/news154264285.html Medicine & Health Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:12:20 EST news154264285 Is the air we breathe on a daily basis slowly killing us? It may not be that severe, but the air we breathe and water we drink may be more harmful than we realize. http://phys.org/news154096321.html Chemistry Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:32:29 EST news154096321