A study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the “la Caixa” Foundation, has shown that Europe has adapted better to low temperatures than to high temperatures over the last two decades. The research, carried out in collaboration with the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC) and published in The Lancet … Read more
Urbanization has a huge impact on the ecosystem and poses enormous challenges to animals and plants. The ongoing, worldwide increase in urbanization is considered one of the main causes of the steady decline in biodiversity. Urban ecology is the field of research that focuses on the effects of urbanization on different organisms. For example, many … Read more
Wild fig tree rings offer a cheap method for tracking toxic atmospheric mercury, a byproduct of gold mining in the Global South, according to a new Cornell University study. Research was conducted in the Peruvian Amazon and published April 8 in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science. Computer models suggest that atmospheric mercury can potentially … Read more
In 1962, when environmentalist and author Rachel Carson pennedSilent Spring, alerting the world to the dangers of the pesticide DDT, it was the reproductive threat to birds — the bald eagle in particular — that spurred people to action. Six decades later, Rutgers University-New Brunswick researchers are taking the measure of another global environmental pollutant … Read more
Iron and its alloys, such as steel and cast iron, dominate the modern world, and there’s growing demand for iron-derived products. Traditionally, blast furnaces transform iron ore into purified elemental metal, but the process requires a lot of energy and emits air pollution. Now, researchers in ACS Energy Letters report that they’ve developed a cleaner … Read more
Preparing catalysts by sending hot, steamy car exhaust over them could improve their efficiency and reduce the amount of rare and expensive metals required in vehicle catalytic converters and many other emission control and industrial processes. Reporting in the journal, Nature, an international team of researchers found that the hot car exhaust containing nitrogen oxides … Read more