Environment

After 13 years with the same seafloor-mapping system, the research vessel Nautilus from the non-profit Ocean Exploration Trust (OET) is surveying the deep Pacific around Wake Atoll, a U.S. territory located about 3,000 miles east of the Philippines. The ship is now putting a newly installed multibeam sonar system to work at depths of up to 11,000 meters (36,089 feet), approximately 6.8 miles and deep…

At the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), we are undertaking integrated research aligned with U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) priorities and industrial needs to increase the recovery of hydrocarbons from challenging subsurface formations and enable the development of secure, efficient, and low-impact oil and gas systems. In April 2026, DOE’s Hydrocarbons and Geothermal Energy Office established the Oil and Gas Center of Excellence at NETL. Our capabilities and expertise position us to advance the…

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is partnering with Oxylus, a Yale spinout focused on CO2 electrolysis technology, to develop and, potentially, commercialize a reactor that could convert carbon waste to methanol without alkali cations.   LLNL won $2 million from the DOE’s Industrial Technologies Office through the Technology Commercialization Fund with the aim of advancing the technology toward commercial use. The partnership between LLN and Oxylus is a Cooperative Research and Development…

A team of researchers from the U.S. and South Korea have developed a potentially more sustainable way to refine crude oil, reducing the energy needed for the process by 31.6% in process simulations. The team published their findings in Nature. The scientists investigated the use of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) membranes, which are commonly used as a non-selective…

 An international team of researchers developed a method to convert the carbon dioxide emitted from factories into fuel feedstock without cleaning or purifying the gas. Traditionally, carbon capture requires costly, energy-intensive purification steps. A paper published in Science estimates that separating carbon dioxide from coal flue gas and compressing it to 150 bar requires at least 0.11 megawatt-hours per ton, or about 0.4 GJ. The…

The Human-Occupied Vehicle (HOV) Alvin is returning to the ocean, now with an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that could enable scientists to explore deep-sea trenches.   The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) announced that the U.S. Navy’s Director of Submarine Programs (DSP) has certified the human-occupied submersible Alvin to return to service after its overhaul and testing program.   Alvin is owned by…

NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS), which launched in 2016, is deorbiting on New Year’s Day. The technology will live on, commercialized by Muon Space, a Silicon Valley startup that grew out of a Stanford class project.   The satellites lack propulsion systems, so they have been steadily losing altitude since launch.  They would naturally deorbit sometime next year, burning up on reentry, but NASA decided…

At least 11 states have enacted bans on expanded polystyrene (EPS), which is commonly used in packing peanuts and food packaging, due to environmental harm. The food packaging industry is now looking for compliant alternatives. However, these tend to be more expensive than conventional polystyrene.   Researchers have created a sustainable alternative to polystyrene using sawdust…

When researchers Marc Hillmyer and Christopher Ellison created their compostable plastic, they focused on accelerating PLA’s degradation without sacrificing other properties such as strength and shelf life.  In a paper published in ACS Central Science, the researchers describe polylactide (PLA) blends that reach 90% biodegradation in 11 days under composting conditions and hold up on…

A new study published in Nature found that Antarctic ice loss is remarkably predictable for the next few decades, but varies by glacier. Near-term Antarctic ice loss is linearly predictable through the mid-21st century, but this predictability isn’t a single number. Instead, it’s governed by a physical property called “reservoir timescale” which swings from roughly…

For years, international climate targets have been calculated using the assumption that the world’s northern permafrost would act as a carbon sink through the end of the century. Now, a paper published in Science Advances finds that the northern land carbon sink will become a carbon source in the 2050s.  The northern permafrost region, which…

The Trump administration is dismantling the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), a $368 million network of over 900 deep-ocean instruments that provide researchers with real-time, long-term data on marine ecosystems, coastal environments and global climate patterns.  This could lead to permanent gaps in long-term oceanographic datasets, disrupting longitudinal studies on climate change and ocean health. The…

According to measurements from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations averaged approximately 431 parts per million (ppm) last month, a record high.  In 1958, when continuous monitoring began, levels were below 320 ppm. Before the Industrial Revolution, levels were approximately 280 ppm or less.  NOAA data…

A new study published in Nature Climate Change concluded that atmospheric microplastics may significantly contribute to global warming. The study showed that microplastics’ warming effect equates to about 16.2% of that of black carbon, or soot.  In hotspots such as the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, the warming effect of microplastics can exceed that of local…

A team of researchers at Southern Illinois University Carbondale is using microbes to turn single-use plastics into biodegradable plastics and bioproducts, including biodegradable jet fuel, nylon and chemicals used in chemotherapy and child myopia treatments. They published their findings in Trends in Biotechnology.  Common recycling practices can only use a fraction of plastic waste in…

A research project in Hawaii is turning recycled plastic waste into asphalt, aiming to reduce the environmental impact of marine debris and improve the state’s infrastructure. The program, called Nets-to-Roads, is run by Hawaii Pacific University’s Center for Marine Debris Research (CMDR).  The CMDR pulls approximately 200 tons of plastic from the ocean each year,…

Researchers at Brno University of Technology have developed magnetic microbots that can remove nanoplastics from water via electrostatic attraction. They published their findings in Environmental Science: Nano.  Nanoplastics, plastic particles smaller than 100 nm, are considered more dangerous than microplastics because their size allows them to cross cell membranes. They have been detected in the…

Interphex 2026 brought over 600 exhibitors to the Javits Center in New York City this week. Among the hundreds of vendors, a few themes emerged: AI and automation, digitalization and sustainability.  The show indicated that discussions around the digital transformation are turning into action. “I think we’re seeing the transition of the discussion around digital…

Ryan Davis and Nathan Bays, scientists at Sandia National Laboratories, set out to find a better way to absorb and degrade per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in water sources, but quickly discovered that detecting the chemicals in the water took too long. They pivoted and have developed a faster, cheaper way to test for PFAS…

President Donald Trump’s budget request, released April 3, asks for major cuts to research funding at the National Science Foundation (NSF) while proposing $900 million to fund the construction of a new Antarctic research icebreaker.  In 2025, the NSF ended its lease of the RV Nathaniel B. Palmer icebreaker, which it had relied on to…

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the HHS’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) will spend $144 million on external research grants over five years as part of the Systematic Targeting Of MicroPlastics (STOMP) program.  The program aims to create…

Carbamazepine, a common antiepileptic, is frequently detected in surface water, groundwater and drinking water, where it can induce toxic effects in aquatic organisms and potentially impact human health through long-term exposure. Conventional treatment technologies are often inefficient, have high energy demands or cause secondary pollution when addressing persistent compounds such as pharmaceutical contaminants. Current advanced…

Researchers from Beijing Normal University and East China Normal University have developed a new disaster detection framework called Single-temportal High-spatial resolution image Individual unsupervised change Detection (Shield). They published their research in the Journal of Remote Sensing. The system allows satellites to detect disaster-affected areas directly in orbit. By combining change detection and anomaly detection,…

Black flies, sometimes known as “buffalo gnats,” may not be as widely recognized as the common housefly, but they are undeniably more pernicious. Females of most black fly species need a blood meal to produce eggs, and rather than cleanly piercing the skin like a mosquito, they slice it open and lap up the pooled…

A research team from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics in China has developed a new process that uses sunlight to convert polystyrene waste and excess sulfur into valuable organic products. They published their findings in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.  The chemical industry produces over 20 million tons of polystyrene annually for…