Local decision-makers looking for ways to reduce the impact of heat waves on their communities have a valuable new capability at their disposal: a new study on vegetation resilience. Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory completed a study of how well vegetation survived extreme heat events in both urban and rural … Read more
Finding reliable, eco-friendly power sources is crucial as our world grapples with increasing energy needs and the urgent call to combat climate change. Solar energy offers one solution, with scientists devising ever more efficient materials for capturing sunlight. Perovskite solar cells have emerged as a promising alternative to conventional, silicon solar cells, boasting a number … Read more
Discharge from ships with so-called scrubbers cause great damage to the Baltic Sea. A new study from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, shows that these emissions caused pollution corresponding to socio-economic costs of more than EUR 680 million between 2014 and 2022. At the same time, the researchers note that the shipping companies’ investments in … Read more
A Florida doctor who specializes in stroke rehabilitation is sharing five ways women can lower their risk of having a stroke — the brain attack is the fifth-leading cause of death for American women. A stroke occurs when blood flow to the brain is blocked or when a blood vessel bursts and leaks blood into the brain. … Read more
Households with gas or propane stoves regularly breathe unhealthy levels of nitrogen dioxide, a study of air pollution in U.S. homes found. “I didn’t expect to see pollutant concentrations breach health benchmarks in bedrooms within an hour of gas stove use, and stay there for hours after the stove is turned off,” said Stanford Doerr … Read more
When air temperatures in Antarctica rise and glacier ice melts, water can pool on the surface of floating ice shelves, weighing them down and causing the ice to bend. Now, for the first time in the field, CIRES-led research shows that ice shelves don’t just buckle under the weight of meltwater lakes — they fracture. … Read more
New research involving the University of East Anglia (UEA) suggests that countries’ current plans to remove CO2 from the atmosphere will not be enough to comply with the 1.5 ºC warming limit set out under the Paris Agreement. Since 2010, the United Nations environmental organisation UNEP has taken an annual measurement of the emissions gap … Read more
On an October morning in 2023, a chemical explosion detonated in a tunnel under the Nevada desert was the launch of the next set of experiments by the National Nuclear Security Administration, with the goal to improve detection of low-yield nuclear explosions around the world. Physics Experiment 1-A (PE1-A) is the first in a series … Read more
Human activities account for a substantial amount — anywhere from 20% to more than 60% — of toxic thallium that has entered the Baltic Sea over the past 80 years, according to new research by scientists affiliated with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and other institutions. Currently, the amount of thallium (element symbol TI), … Read more
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have successfully leveraged robotic assistance in the manufacture of wind turbine blades, allowing for the elimination of difficult working conditions for humans and the potential to improve the consistency of the product. Although robots have been used by the wind energy industry to … Read more