Environment

Written by Peter Christey, PhD, co-founder and CEO of General Automation Lab Technologies Inc.   Thanks to exciting new insights into the nature and importance of microbiomes, the field of microbiology is being reinvigorated. Indeed, significant R&D resources are being committed to realizing the promise of microbiome-based diagnostics and therapeutics. Scientific papers consistently report advances…

Controllis, a supplier of hybrid power systems for mobile network operators (MNOs) and tower companies, has leveraged its experience to develop a carbon neutral site power system to help support a net zero emissions economy, established by the Paris Agreement. The new system, Controllis Zero will allow off-grid and poor-grid sites to produce cleaner energy…

Americans discard as much as 40% of their food, worth about $200 billion a year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A simple new method from Purdue University scientists could help cut down that amount of waste – and provide another renewable source of clean energy. The Purdue scientists developed a method to improve…

To better determine the potential energy cost savings among connected homes, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed a computer simulation to more accurately compare energy use on similar weather days. “Since no two weather days are alike, we created a simulated weather identification model that keeps environmental impacts such as temperature changes and sunlight…

PerkinElmer’s  Spectrum Two FT-IR spectrometer solution is onboard a research trip led by eXXpedition, a not-for-profit organization running all-women sailing voyages investigating ocean plastic pollution causes and solutions. The latest mission, launched October 2019 from Plymouth, England, runs through Spring 2021 and features over 30 stops­– from the Azores, Aruba, and the Galapagos, to Fiji,…

A new type of material for next-generation solar cells eliminates the need to use lead, which has been a major roadblock for this technology. Solar cells, incorporating the mineral perovskite, have been the focus of attention since the material was first shown to work in 2009. Solar cells that are built using this material are…

Southwest Research Institute engineers developed a new certification cycle, the Low-Load Cycle (LLC), to gauge the performance of heavy-duty diesel engine after-treatment systems in low-load conditions. Aftertreatment systems filter exhaust emissions and reduce pollutants escaping into the environment. SwRI’s Low-Load Cycle challenges aftertreatment systems by analyzing them in unfavorable, but common, low-load conditions, such as…

Increasing production of second-generation biofuels – those made from non-food biomass such as switchgrass, biomass sorghum, and corn stover – would lessen our reliance on burning fossil fuels, which contributes to climate change. Several barriers have prevented the efficient conversion of that biomass. Lignin, a complex compound in cell walls, blocks access to plant carbohydrates…

Antarctica’s ice sheet spans close to twice the area of the contiguous United States, and its land boundary is buttressed by massive, floating ice shelves extending hundreds of miles out over the frigid waters of the Southern Ocean. When these ice shelves collapse into the ocean, they expose towering cliffs of ice along Antarctica’s edge.…

A team of engineers, agronomists and economists at Purdue University’s Center for Sustainable Food, Energy and Water Systems (SFEWS), supported by the National Science Foundation, are developing novel photovoltaic (PV) module designs for use on agricultural land to cogenerate electricity while growing food crops. The enabling insights from their modeling results were just published in…

Polystyrene persists in the environment for millennia, according to some international governmental agencies. This estimate is based on the amount of time required for microbes to break down the plastic. But now researchers have challenged this common assumption with the finding that sunlight can break down polystyrene over a much shorter time scale, from decades…

“When I found out, I took off running across the lab.” That’s how Kevin Cox, a postdoctoral associate at the Danforth Center, describes the moment he found out that he had received the Hanna H. Gray Fellowship from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. “It was definitely emotional. I had applied to this same fellowship a…

Chi Chen, a Boston University graduate researcher, and Ranga Myneni, a BU professor of earth and environment, are the lead and senior authors of a new paper in Nature Sustainability that reveals how humans are influencing the Earth’s plant and tree cover. On the surface, it may look like a no-brainer that “greening” of the planet would be…

The Arctic is melting faster than we thought it would. In fact, Arctic ice extent is at a record low. When that happens–when a natural system behaves differently than scientists expect–it’s time to take another look at how we understand the system. University of Utah mathematician Ken Golden and atmospheric scientist Court Strong study the patterns…

A better understanding of terrestrial flux dynamics will come from elucidating the integrated effects of climate and vegetation constraints on gross primary productivity (GPP), ecosystem respiration (ER), and net ecosystem productivity (NEP), according to Dr. Shutao Chen, Associate professor at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology. Dr. Chen and his team–a group of researchers…

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers are one step closer to understanding how life could potentially survive on Mars. The researcher team found that bacterium called Sulfurihydrogenibium yellowstonense or Sulfuri for short, controls the formation of ancient rock on Earth that looks like pasta and thrives in harsh environments that are similar to what is…

With climate change, the Arctic tundra is likely to become drier. Lakes may shrink in size and smaller lakes may even disappear according to a new Dartmouth study. In western Greenland, Kangerlussuaq experienced a 28 percent decrease in the number of smaller lakes (those less than 10,000 square meters) and a 20 percent decrease in…

The University of Texas at Austin team that led a twin satellite system launched in 2002 to take detailed measurements of the Earth, called the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), reports in the most recent issue of the journal Nature Climate Change on the contributions that their nearly two decades of data have made…

A University of Oklahoma-led interdisciplinary global study expands the understanding of activated sludge microbiomes for next-generation wastewater treatment and reuse systems enhanced by microbiome engineering. Wastewater treatment and reuse are critical to global health and sustaining a world population predicted to reach 10 billion by 2050. “In May 2014, we established a Global Water Microbiome…

For one scientist, engaging with the public is one of the more important—and rewarding—parts of her research. Mónica Ramírez-Andreotta, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Soil, Water and Environmental Science at the University of Arizona often works with ‘citizen scientists’—everyday members of the public—to conduct research near hazardous waste sites or in environmental…