NASA Ozone Study May Benefit Air Standards, Climate
PASADENA, Calif. – A new NASA-led study finds that when it comes to combating global warming caused by emissions of ozone-forming chemicals, location matters. (more…)
Category Archives: Environment
Global Warming May Have Severe Consequences for Rare Haleakala Silverswords
HONOLULU — While the iconic Haleakalā silversword plant made a strong recovery from early 20th-century threats, it has now entered a period of substantial climate-related decline. New research published this week warns that global warming may have severe consequences for the silversword in its native habitat. (more…)
Interview with Prof. Richard Rood: ‘The Saga of Climate Change’
Richard Rood, is a professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at the University of Michigan. He loves discussing the intersections of weather and climate, and climate and society. One of his current projects involves studying trends in extreme heat events. Rood is a blogger at Weather Underground and teaches a class on climate change problem solving. (more…)
New Path to More Efficient Organic Solar Cells Uncovered at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source
Why are efficient and affordable solar cells so highly coveted? Volume. The amount of solar energy lighting up Earth’s land mass every year is nearly 3,000 times the total amount of annual human energy use. But to compete with energy from fossil fuels, photovoltaic devices must convert sunlight to electricity with a certain measure of efficiency. For polymer-based organic photovoltaic cells, which are far less expensive to manufacture than silicon-based solar cells, scientists have long believed that the key to high efficiencies rests in the purity of the polymer/organic cell’s two domains – acceptor and donor. Now, however, an alternate and possibly easier route forward has been shown.
Working at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS), a premier source of X-ray and ultraviolet light beams for research, an international team of scientists found that for highly efficient polymer/organic photovoltaic cells, size matters. (more…)
Pesticides and Parkinson’s: UCLA Researchers Uncover Further Proof of a Link
Study suggests potential new target in fight against debilitating disease
For several years, neurologists at UCLA have been building a case that a link exists between pesticides and Parkinson’s disease. To date, paraquat, maneb and ziram — common chemicals sprayed in California’s Central Valley and elsewhere — have been tied to increases in the disease, not only among farmworkers but in individuals who simply lived or worked near fields and likely inhaled drifting particles.
Now, UCLA researchers have discovered a link between Parkinson’s and another pesticide, benomyl, whose toxicological effects still linger some 10 years after the chemical was banned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (more…)
Magma in Earth’s Mantle Forms Deeper Than Once Thought
Study simulating pressures in mantle beneath the ocean floor shows that rocks can melt at depths up to 250 kilometers
Magma forms far deeper than geologists previously thought, according to new research results.
A team led by geologist Rajdeep Dasgupta of Rice University put very small samples of peridotite, rock derived from Earth’s mantle, under high pressures in a laboratory.
The scientists found that the rock can and does liquify, at least in small amounts, at pressures equivalent to those found as deep as 250 kilometers down in the mantle beneath the ocean floor. (more…)
Invading Species Can Extinguish Native Plants Despite Recent Reports
TORONTO, ON – Ecologists at the University of Toronto and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) have found that, given time, invading exotic plants will likely eliminate native plants growing in the wild despite recent reports to the contrary.
A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reports that recent statements that invasive plants are not problematic are often based on incomplete information, with insufficient time having passed to observe the full effect of invasions on native biodiversity. (more…)
Previous Studies on Toxic Effects of BPA Couldn’t be Reproduced, says MU Research Team
The MU study is not claiming that BPA is safe, but that the previous series of studies are not reproducible.
COLUMBIA, Mo. — Following a three-year study using more than 2,800 mice, a University of Missouri researcher was not able to replicate a series of previous studies by another research group investigating the controversial chemical BPA. The MU study is not claiming that BPA is safe, but that the previous series of studies are not reproducible. The MU study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also investigated an estrogenic compound found in plants, genistein, in the same three-year study.
“Our findings don’t say anything about the positive or negative effects of BPA or genistein,” said Cheryl Rosenfeld, associate professor of biomedical sciences in MU’s Bond Life Science Center. “Rather, our series of experiments did not detect the same findings as reported by another group on the potential developmental effects of BPA and genistein when exposure of young occurs in the womb.” (more…)