WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s top health agency will undertake a “massive testing and research effort” to determine the cause of autism, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Thursday. Kennedy, a longtime vaccine critic who has pushed a discredited theory that routine childhood shots cause the developmental disability, said the effort … Read more
In the largest study of its kind to date, a team of international researchers has investigated how pharmaceutical pollution affects the behaviour and migration of Atlantic salmon. The study, led by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, revealed that commonly detected environmental levels of clobazam — a medication often prescribed for sleep disorders — increased … Read more
The Guaymas Basin is an active tectonic basin with hydrothermal activity that is known for its natural oil discharge sites. Here, microorganisms use the seeping oil as a source of energy and nutrition and thereby fuel the carbon cycle. Because microorganisms preferentially break down water-soluble organic molecules, it is important to understand how hydrothermal processes … Read more
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
While the daily ebb and flow of people across a city might seem chaotic, new research reveals underlying universal patterns. A study published in the leading international journal Nature Communications by a team led by Chair Professor Bo Huang from the Department of Geography at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) unveils fundamental spatiotemporal scaling … Read more