Allergies, glaciers, and pikas: climate change in action
You don't just feel the heat of global warming, you can see it in action all around.
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Ocean's heat cycle shows that atmospheric carbon may be headed elsewhere
As humans continue to pump the atmosphere with carbon, it's crucial for scientists to understand how and where the planet absorbs and naturally emits carbon.
Climate action can limit Asia's growing water shortages
Even "modest" action to limit climate change could help prevent the most extreme water-shortage scenarios facing Asia by the year 2050, according to a new study led by MIT researchers.
Scientists participate in month-long experiment to study indoor air pollution
Scientists can tell us a lot about outdoor air pollution and its effects on human health and the environment, but less is known about the air we breathe in homes, offices and other indoor spaces.
Australia must embrace transformation for a sustainable future
Last Friday, the Australian government released its first report on our progress towards meeting the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
Proposed NSW logging laws value timber over environmental protection
New South Wales is revamping its logging laws for the first time in two decades, drafting regulations that will govern more than two million hectares of public native forest.
In Paris, the risk of flooding is never far away
In 1910, Paris was subject to a historic flood that is still remembered, and it's far from a unique event. In France, the risk of flooding is the number-one natural hazard, affecting one in four people, or 17 million residents. ...
From Cape Town to São Paulo, large cities are facing water shortages
Will South Africa's second largest city dry up on August 19 of this year? By launching an official countdown, Cape Town City Council wished to highlight the impending cuts to domestic water supply for its more than 3.7 million ...
Turning around urban decline
We've all seen the photos of Detroit when it was at its lowest point after the 2008 recession: street after street of vacant lots and abandoned homes—a city in visible decline. It might have been the poster child for urban ...
Palm oil: The carbon cost of deforestation
A recent study by EPFL and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) shows that intensive farming of palm oil has a major impact on the environment. Both short- and long-term solutions exist, ...
New blood test reveals susceptibility to costly disease in dairy cows
Oregon State University researchers have developed a blood test to identify dairy cows are susceptible to bovine clinical mastitis.
Coral reef 'oases' offer glimmer of hope
The identification of small 'oases' in the world's oceans, where corals appear to be thriving, could offer vital insights in the race to save one of the world's most threatened ecosystems.
Checking China's pollution by satellite
Air pollution has smothered China's cities in recent decades. In response, the Chinese government has implemented measures to clean up its skies. But are those policies effective? Now an innovative study co-authored by an ...
Overuse of agricultural chemicals on China's small farms harms health and environment
The size of farms in China is a key contributor to the overuse of agricultural chemicals, and as a result they may be too small to be environmentally sustainable, a new study has found.
Local interventions boost coral's resilience to bleaching
Local conservation actions, like rounding up predatory snails, can significantly boost the resilience of corals to climate-induced bleaching, according to a study led by Duke University researchers.
Egypt's shrinking 'Pharaonic Sea' has fishermen worried
Egypt's shrinking freshwater "Pharaonic Sea" has residents in its nearly 50 surrounding fishing villages worried.
Studies show groundwater holding own against drilling boom
New research suggests drinking water supplies in Pennsylvania have shown resilience in the face of a drilling boom that has turned swaths of countryside into a major production zone for natural gas.
Marine reserves are vital—but under pressure
A massive study of nearly 1800 tropical coral reefs around the world has found that marine reserves near heavily populated areas struggle to do their job—but are a vast improvement over having no protection at all.
Study identifies challenges and opportunities to safeguard one of Mesoamerica's last forest blocks
The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Yale University have created a plan to preserve one of the last intact forest strongholds for the jaguar and other iconic species in Central America: the Moskitia Forest Corridor.
Meeting Paris climate targets will require a substantial reallocation of global investment
A new analysis by an international team of scientists led by IIASA shows that low carbon investments will need to increase markedly if the world is to achieve the Paris Agreement aim of keeping global warming well below 2°C.
Why a minor change to how EPA makes rules could radically reduce environmental protection
Since the Reagan administration, federal agencies have been required to produce cost-benefit analyses of their major regulations. These assessments are designed to ensure that regulators are pursuing actions that make society ...
Why ordinary people must have a say in water governance
Most emerging democracies in Africa have implemented decentralisation in some form since the 1990s. In the water sector, decentralisation aims to share responsibility for managing water resources and services. It shifts responsibility ...
Germany will fail 2020 climate goals, now eyes 2030 target
Germany will likely miss its goal of cutting emissions by 40 percent by 2020, the country's environment minister said Monday, an embarrassing admission for a government that wants to lead the charge on limiting climate change.
Better safe than sorry—economic optimization risks tipping of Earth system elements
Optimizing economic welfare without constraints might put human well-being at risk, a new climate study argues. While being successful in bringing down costs of greenhouse gas reductions, the concept of profit maximization ...
Warned 30 years ago, global warming 'is in our living room'
We were warned.
Large outdoor study shows biodiversity improves stability of algal biofuel systems
A diverse mix of species improves the stability and fuel-oil yield of algal biofuel systems, as well as their resistance to invasion by outsiders, according to the findings of a federally funded outdoor study by University ...
James Hansen wishes he wasn't so right about global warming
James Hansen wishes he was wrong. He wasn't.
Property crisis looms due to sea level rise, experts warn
Along Florida's sun-splashed shorelines, home prices are on the rise, developers are busy building new complexes, and listings just blocks from the beach describe homes that are "not in a flood zone," meaning no flood insurance ...
US property crisis looms as sea level rises, experts warn
Along sun-splashed shorelines in the US state of Florida, home prices are on the rise, developers are busy building new complexes, and listings just blocks from the beach describe homes that are "not in a flood zone," meaning ...
Chesapeake Bay: Larger-than-average summer 'dead zone' forecast for 2018 after wet spring
Ecologists from the University of Michigan and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science are forecasting a larger-than-average Chesapeake Bay "dead zone" in 2018, due to increased rainfall in the watershed ...
Landslides, flash floods as monsoon batters southern Myanmar
Flooding in southern Myanmar has caused a landslide at a famed Buddhist pagoda, submerged homes and displaced hundreds of people as monsoon rains batter the country.
AP Was There: The age of climate change begins
On June 23, 1988, a top NASA scientist told Congress and the world that global warming had arrived. NASA scientist James Hansen predicted that 1988 would be the world's hottest year on record, thanks to the burning of fossil ...
Mount Everest, the high-altitude rubbish dump
Decades of commercial mountaineering have turned Mount Everest into the world's highest rubbish dump as an increasing number of big-spending climbers pay little attention to the ugly footprint they leave behind.
When the river runs high
A massive world-wide study of dry riverbeds has found they're contributing more carbon emissions than previously thought, and this could help scientists better understand how to fight climate change.
How to calculate the carbon emissions from your daily commute
The problem with carbon emissions is that they're invisible. Unlike other pollutants, greenhouse gases don't dirty the sidewalk or stink up the air. This makes them easy to forget about and hard to measure in our everyday ...
Who is to blame for marine litter?
Members of the public are more likely to blame the global marine litter crisis on retailers, industry and government, according to new research led by the University of Plymouth.
Scientists refine 'Profile' of a fungal tree killer
A team of Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and university scientists has identified two new species of fungi as the puzzling killer of hundreds of thousands of Hawaii's beloved 'ōhi'a trees.
Japan passes anti-plastic law but with no sanctions for polluters
A bill intended to reduce the volume of microplastics dumped into the ocean was approved by Japan's parliament on Friday, but it included no sanctions for failure to comply.
Agricultural intensification not a 'blueprint' for sustainable development
New research suggests that the combined social and ecological results of increased agricultural intensification in low and middle-income countries are not as positive as expected.
Key ocean fish can prevail with changes to farmed fish, livestock diets
Anchovies, herring, sardines and other forage fish play an essential role in the food web as prey for seabirds, marine mammals and larger fish like salmon. When ground into fishmeal and oil, they are also a key food source ...
A volcanologist's view of Kilauea
In the late 1980s, geologist Thomas Wright oversaw the production of a volcano hazard map that would help guide zoning and land use decisions on the island of Hawaii.
Delhi reels as summer haze catches Indian capital off guard
Air pollution soared in New Delhi on Thursday to hazardous levels rarely seen outside winter as sand blown from deserts enveloped the Indian capital in a once-in-a-decade phenomenon.
Lake Tahoe clarity sinks to all-time low in 2017
Scientists at Lake Tahoe say the clarity of the alpine lake that straddles the California-Nevada line sank to an all-time low last year.
Site of the next major earthquake on the San Andreas Fault?
Many researchers hypothesize that the southern tip of the 1300-km-long San Andreas fault zone (SAFZ) could be the nucleation site of the next major earthquake on the fault, yet geoscientists cannot evaluate this hazard until ...
Can evolution explain why the young are often more susceptible than adults to infection?
In many species, including humans, the young are often more susceptible to infection than adults, even after accounting for prior exposure to infection. From an evolutionary perspective this may seem puzzling, as dying young ...
Strange 'nude' fossil creature from half a billion years ago
Scientists have discovered the fossil of an unusual large-bodied 'nude' sea-creature from half a billion years ago.
Climate change to overtake land use as major threat to global biodiversity
Climate change will have a rapidly increasing effect on the structure of global ecological communities over the next few decades, with amphibians and reptiles being significantly more affected than birds and mammals, a new ...
Interaction of paired and lined-up electrons can be manipulated in semiconductors
The way that electrons paired as composite particles or arranged in lines interact with each other within a semiconductor provides new design opportunities for electronics, according to recent findings in Nature Communications.
Best ever at splitting light, new material could improve LEDs, solar cells, optical sensors
Place a chunk of the clear mineral Iceland spar on top of an image and suddenly you'll see double, thanks to a phenomenon called double refraction—a result of a quality of the crystal material called optical anisotropy. ...
New model for gauging ice sheet movement may improve sea-level-rise predictions
A just-published paper in Science changes the formula scientists should use when estimating the speed of huge ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica that flow into the ocean and drive mounting sea levels around the globe.
Controlling magnetic spin with electric fields
EPFL physicists have found a way to reverse electron spins using electric fields for the first time, paving the way for programmable spintronics technologies.
Bees love blue fluorescent light, and not just any wavelength will do
Researchers at Oregon State University have learned that a specific wavelength range of blue fluorescent light set bees abuzz.
World's first known manta ray nursery discovered
A graduate student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego and colleagues from NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries have discovered the world's first known manta ray nursery.
Scientists see human immune response in the fruit fly
Washington State University researchers have seen how both humans and fruit flies deploy a protein that a plays a critical role in their immune responses to invading bacteria. The discovery gives scientists evolutionary insight ...
Road rules for gene transfer are written in DNA
A new discovery suggests that bacteria's ability to transfer genes, like those associated with antibiotic resistance, are governed by a previously unknown set of rules that are written in the DNA of the recipient.
Cells can trap viruses in protein cage to stop their spread, study reveals
Researchers at The Francis Crick Institute in London have discovered that cells can trap viruses in a protein cage to stop them from spreading to neighboring cells. The study, which will be published June 19 in the Journal ...
A new way to measure the light-warping properties of hyperbolic metamaterials
Manipulating light in a variety of ways—shrinking its wavelength and allowing it to travel freely in one direction while stopping it cold in another—hyperbolic metamaterials have wide application in optical communications ...
New testing method suggests baby Anzick-1 was same age as surrounding Clovis artifacts
A team of researchers from the University of Oxford, Texas A&M University and Stafford Research LLC has found evidence bolstering the theory that the skeletal remains of an infant unearthed in Montana are those of the only ...
Method could help boost large scale production of graphene
The measure by which any conductor is judged is how easily, and speedily, electrons can move through it. On this point, graphene is one of the most promising materials for a breathtaking array of applications. However, its ...
Game-changing finding pushes 3-D printing to the molecular limit
New University of Nottingham research proves that advanced materials containing molecules that switch states in response to environmental stimuli such as light can be fabricated using 3-D printing.
Sister species of birds reveal clues to how biodiversity evolves
Extensive new datasets about the world's birds are helping to solve the riddle of how life on Earth diversified.
Blue gene regulation helps plants respond properly to light
Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS) have discovered a process through which gene expression in plants is regulated by light. Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ...
Groundbreaking discoveries could create superior alloys with many applications
Many current and future technologies require alloys that can withstand high temperatures without corroding. Now, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have hailed a major breakthrough in understanding ...
X-ray fluorescence mapping to measure tumour penetration by a novel anticancer agent
A new anticancer agent developed by the University of Warwick has been studied using microfocus synchrotron X-ray fluorescence (SXRF) at I18 at Diamond Light Source. As described in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, ...
Hunting molecules to find new planets
It's impossible to obtain direct images of exoplanets as they are masked by the high luminous intensity of their stars. However, astronomers led by UNIGE propose detecting molecules present in the exoplanet's atmosphere in ...
How dragonfly larvae could inspire more effective artificial heart valves
The way dragonfly larvae control the water jets they use to move and breathe could have a range of engineering and medical applications, according to new research.
Study of bonobos finds that day care pays off for the babysitters
Drawn to a behavior she didn't understand, a UO researcher watching bonobos in a zoo has revealed how young female bonobos prepare for motherhood.
Exotic invasions can drive native species extinct
Latest research from the University of Southampton has revealed the impact of exotic species upon native wildlife, which could potentially lead to native plant species extinctions within their natural habitats.
Collecting bacterial communities from puddles helps solve ecosystem riddles
Researchers have used puddle ecosystems to start to unravel the roles different bacteria play in complex communities.
How to track and trace a protein: Nanosensors monitor intracellular deliveries
Researchers at the University of Basel's Biozentrum have developed a method for tracing the movement of proteins within the cell. They tagged proteins with tiny nanosensors, so-called nanobodies, which enable the scientists ...
Most protein info ever captured from a single cell thanks to new 'nanoPOTS' technology
Scientists have obtained a slew of key information about proteins, the molecular workhorses of all cells, from single human cells for the first time.
New study explores cell mechanics at work
It's a remarkable choreography. In each of our bodies, more than 37 trillion cells tightly coordinate with other cells to organize into the numerous tissues and organs that make us tick.
Researchers capture best ever evidence of rare black hole
ESA's XMM-Newton observatory has discovered the best-ever candidate for a very rare and elusive type of cosmic phenomenon: a medium-weight black hole in the process of tearing apart and feasting on a nearby star.
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