The U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has been chosen to lead a consortium for a U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center on Building Energy Efficiency. The Center will develop technologies for low-energy residential and commercial buildings, as well as work on commercialization of those technologies and research how human behavior affects building energy use. (more…)
Resulting ecological damage is serious, but could be reduced by wider use of more sustainable, time-honored practices
Humans are overloading ecosystems with nitrogen through the burning of fossil fuels and an increase in nitrogen-producing industrial and agricultural activities, according to a new study. While nitrogen is an element that is essential to life, it is an environmental scourge at high levels. (more…)
To tally the energy consumption of a city, the usual method is to add up all the energy used by residents—when they drive their car or turn on the air-conditioning—plus all the energy consumed by commercial buildings and industries in their day-to-day operations. But how should one account for the energy that went into building the office park where people work or paving the roads that people drive? And what about the energy required to make the clothes they are wearing? (more…)
VANCOUVER, Wash. – Underground magma movement was the trigger of a swarm of 30,000 earthquakes in Saudi Arabia last year, according to a new study published in Nature Geoscience Sunday. (more…)
COLUMBIA, Mo. — When people discuss climate change, they usually think of impacts above ground, such as atmospheric changes, rising ocean levels, or melting glaciers. Less attention is paid to the effects right under their feet. Now, with the help of a $1.2 million grant from the federal Plant Feedstock Genomics for Bioenergy program, University of Missouri researchers are peering underground to see how climate change affects plant roots.
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Researchers have discovered that women, female monkeys and female mice have major similarities when it comes to how bisphenol A (BPA) is metabolized, and they have renewed their call for governmental regulation when it comes to the estrogen-like chemical found in many everyday products.
Dark-colored dust that settles on snow in the Upper Colorado River Basin makes the snow melt early and robs the Colorado River of about 5 percent of its water each year, says a new study co-authored by researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder-based Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES.
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— How could climate change and our response to it affect the Great Lakes’ water quality? That’s the primary question a team of 27 researchers from across the University of Michigan and collaborators at other institutions will answer with a new $5-million grant from the National Science Foundation. (more…)
