Starting fire with water

When firefighters want to extinguish a blaze, they often douse it with water. Astronauts on board the ISS, however, are experimenting with a form of water that does the opposite. Instead of stopping fire, this water helps ...

Disposable masks could be used to improve concrete

With the pervasive single-use masks during the pandemic now presenting an environmental problem, researchers have demonstrated the idea of incorporating old masks into a cement mixture to create stronger, more durable concrete. 

Streams stressed by pharmaceutical pollution

Pharmaceuticals commonly found in the environment are disrupting streams, with unknown impacts on aquatic life and water quality. So reports a new Ecological Applications paper, which highlights the ecological cost of pharmaceutical ...

War declared on world's growing e-waste crisis

Weighing more than all commercial airliners ever built and worth more than most countries' GDP, electronic waste poses a growing economic and environmental threat, experts said Thursday, as they launched a global initiative ...

Life on Mars: Will humans trash the planet like we have Earth?

Mountains of garbage, plastics that take thousands of years to disintegrate, oil spills in pristine environments from drilling into the soil or underneath the ocean: When we go to Mars, is it inevitable we'll repeat the same ...

Turning mixed plastic into useful chemicals

Almost 80% of plastic in the waste stream ends up in landfills or accumulates in the environment. Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists have developed a technology that converts a conventionally unrecyclable mixture of ...

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