Category: Environment

When Erin Brockovich sued a major utility company in the 1990s for contaminating drinking water with hexavalent chromium, a toxic and carcinogenic metal, national attention turned to California. Now researchers have determined that natural sources of the element may be geographically more important when it comes to the state’s groundwater management. In a study that […]

Researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology have honed in on an enzyme belonging to the glycerol-3-phosphate acyltransferase (GPAT) family as a promising target for increasing biofuel production from the red alga Cyanidioschyzon merolae. Algae are known to store up large amounts of oils called triacylglycerols (TAGs) under adverse conditions such as nitrogen deprivation. Understanding precisely […]

A concentrating photovoltaic system with embedded microtracking can produce over 50 percent more energy per day than standard silicon solar cells in a head-to-head competition, according to a team of engineers who field tested a prototype unit over two sunny days last fall. “Solar cells used to be expensive, but now they’re getting really cheap,” […]

The coal industry may have declined in the last decade because of the rise of cheap natural gas, but a coal mining method called mountaintop removal is still taking place, particularly in central Appalachia.   A new web-based mapping tool shows, in more detail than ever before, the land laid bare by mountaintop coal mining […]

Though you might read about deep, dark woods in fairy tales, the prevailing story today is that very little European old-growth forest remains. But now a new study—and map—shows that a surprising number of these primary forests still stand. “What we’ve shown in this study is that, even though the total area of forest is […]

The Sahara Desert has expanded by about 10 percent since 1920, according to a new study by National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded scientists at the University of Maryland (UMD). The research is the first to assess century-scale changes to the boundaries of the world’s largest desert. It suggests that other deserts could be expanding as well. […]

When it comes to the special sauce of batteries, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have discovered it’s all about the salt concentration. By getting the right amount of salt, right where they want it, they’ve demonstrated a small lithium-metal battery can re-charge about seven times more than batteries with conventional […]

The idea of using energy from the sun to evaporate and purify water is ancient. The Greek philosopher Aristotle reportedly described such a process more than 2,000 years ago. Now, researchers are bringing this technology into the modern age, using it to sanitize water at what they report to be record-breaking rates. By draping black, […]

What goes into making plants taste good? For scientists in MIT’s Media Lab, it takes a combination of botany, machine-learning algorithms, and some good old-fashioned chemistry. Using all of the above, researchers in the Media Lab’s Open Agriculture Initiative report that they have created basil plants that are likely more delicious than any you have ever tasted. […]

The absence of a single dominant bumblebee species from an ecosystem disrupts foraging patterns among a broad range of remaining pollinators in the system — from other bees to butterflies, beetles and more, field experiments show. Biology Letters published the research, which may have implications for the survival of both rare wild plants and major food […]