Many of the particles in the atmosphere are produced by the natural world, and it is possible that plants have in recent decades reduced the effects of the greenhouse gases to which human activity has given rise.
When one tiny circuit within an integrated chip cracks or fails, the whole chip – or even the whole device – is a loss. But what if it could fix itself, and fix itself so fast that the user never knew there was a problem?
Researchers at Aalto University in Finland have developed a new and significantly cheaper method of manufacturing fuel cells.
Researchers from the University of Southampton have contributed to a major international United Nation's (UN) report into the current status of the world's land and water resources for food and agriculture.
A little water is needed to make wine, but how do you know when enough is enough? A new service by ESA GrapeLook aims to help solve the watering dilemma.
Using statistical analysis methods to examine rainfall extremes in India, a team of researchers has made a discovery that resolves an ongoing debate in published findings and offers new insights; research that will appear in the February 2012 journal Nature Climate Change.
Rice consumers worldwide can now look forward to eating "green" rice with the launch of an initiative that will set environmentally sustainable and socially responsible rice production management standards.
Intensive agriculture practices developed during the past century have helped improve food security for many people but have also added to nitrate pollution in surface and groundwaters.
A number of health and environmental issues and related risks need to be addressed when considering whether to lift the almost 30-year moratorium on uranium mining in Virginia, says a new report from the National Research Council, the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering.
The amount of air pollutants in the atmospheric plume generated by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was similar to a large city according to a new NOAA-led study published today in a special issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Grapevines and native plants are a fine blend for the environment, suggests a team of researchers led by a plant ecologist at the University of California, Davis.
For the first time, the chemical "fingerprints" of the element mercury have been used by University of Michigan researchers to directly link environmental pollution to a specific coal-burning power plant.
Intensive agriculture practices developed during the past century have helped improve food security for many people but have also added to nitrate pollution in surface and groundwaters. New research has looked at water quality measurement over the last 140 years to track this problem in the Thames River basin.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently approved the 8-hour ozone air quality plans for the two California areas with the worst air quality in the nation.
University of Queensland scientists have discovered that an ancient relative of rice contains genes that could potentially save food crops from the devastating effects of global warming.
Fossil fuel combustion, and with it the release of heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2), is still growing globally. Beyond climate change, this is also causing the world’s “other CO2 problem,” ocean acidification, i.e., the formation of carbonic acid when CO2 from the atmosphere enters seawater.
Large forest regions in Canada are apparently about to experience rapid change. Based on models, scientists can now show that there are threshold values for wildfires just like there are for epidemics. Large areas of Canada are apparently approaching this threshold value and may in future exceed it due to climate change.
The burning of sugarcane fields prior to harvest for ethanol production can create air pollution that detracts from the biofuel's overall sustainability, according to research published recently by a team of researchers led by scientists at the University of California, Merced.
Lead pipes once used routinely in municipal water distribution systems are a well-recognized source of dangerous lead contamination, but new research from Washington University in St. Louis suggests that the partial replacement of these pipes can make the problem worse.
Despite having an eight-year head start on Marcellus Shale natural gas extraction, Pennsylvania residents are just as uncertain about the effects of horizontal hydraulic drilling as New Yorkers, researchers at Cornell and Penn State have found.