Month: February 2017

  • High Selenium Levels Found in Fish in N.C. Lakes Receiving Coal Ash Waste

    A new Duke University study has found high levels of selenium in fish in three North Carolina lakes receiving power plants’ coal ash waste.“Across the board, we’re seeing elevated selenium levels in fish from lakes affected by coal combustion residual effluents,” said Jessica Brandt, a doctoral student in environmental health at Duke’s Nicholas School of…

  • New Scientific Approach Assesses Land Recovery Following Oil and Gas Drilling

    When developing oil and gas well pads, the vegetation and soil are removed to level the areas for drilling and operations. The new assessment approach, called the disturbance automated reference toolset, or DART, is used to examine recovery patterns after well pads are plugged and abandoned to help resource managers make informed decisions for future well…

  • What Happened to the Sun over 7,000 Years Ago?

    An international team led by researchers at Nagoya University, along with US and Swiss colleagues, has identified a new type of solar event and dated it to the year 5480 BC; they did this by measuring carbon-14 levels in tree rings, which reflect the effects of cosmic radiation on the atmosphere at the time. They…

  • Campus natural gas power plants pose no radon risks

    When Penn State decided to convert its two power plants from their historic use of coal as a source of energy to natural gas, there was concern about radon emissions. Although radon is known to exist in natural gas, now Penn State research indicates that it does not escape from these two power plants in…

  • Bern study rehabilitates climate models

    With new methods of reconstruction, climate researchers in Bern have been able to demonstrate that some 9,000 to 5,000 years ago, the Mediterranean climate was considerably warmer than previous studies had suggested. Among other things, previous concerns regarding the reliability of climate models could thus be dispelled.Climate reconstructions are necessary because reliable measurement data are…

  • Re-Purposing Air Pollution to make Air Inks

    Imagine if you could take pollution produced by diesel engines and turn it into a non-carcinogenic substance used in ink, reducing the need for burning fossil fuels.

  • Fiscal incentives may reduce emissions in developing countries

    A study has found that fiscal policies introduced by governments in developing countries can have a significant effect on lowering harmful carbon emissions and help countries with fulfilling their commitments under the UNFCCC Paris Agreement.

  • New doubts on whether early humans were forced to start farming

    The development of agriculture is universally believed to underpin some of the most significant advances made by humans worldwide. In New Guinea, where one of the earliest human experiments with tropical forest agriculture occurred, researchers have cast doubt on two views about the origins of agriculture.

  • Study Shows Planet's Oxygen Rose Through Glaciers

    A University of Wyoming researcher contributed to a paper that determined a “Snowball Earth” event actually took place 100 million years earlier than previously projected, and a rise in the planet’s oxidation resulted from a number of different continents — including what is now Wyoming — that were once connected.

  • NASA Highlights Science Launching on Next SpaceX Cargo Mission

    NASA will host a media teleconference at 3 p.m. EST Wednesday, Feb. 8, to discuss research investigations launching aboard the next SpaceX commercial resupply flight to the International Space Station. Among the investigations are experiments with potential to fight human disease and a new autonomous spacecraft docking technology for testing.