SCIENCE ALERT - One of the driest regions in the world is being transformed into a carbon sink through a long-term, large-scale tree planting program, absorbing more greenhouse gases than it emits. It's the result of almost five decades of work around the edges of the Taklamakan Desert in northwestern China, and evidence that with...
FUTURA - These substances are known as plasticisers. They are chemical compounds added to materials to make them softer, more flexible and easier to use. While that might sound harmless, their widespread presence in everyday objects means our exposure is constant. You can find plasticisers in many common household items. Food storage containers, shower curtains...
IFLSCIENCE - China has a new Great Wall, but this one isn't built of stone and mortar to repel marauding invaders from the north. Instead, the “Great Green Wall” is a vast belt of trees and shrubs lining the bottom of its northern deserts, designed to halt the steady creep of desertification. New research suggests...
SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE - As the world shuttered in 2020 amid Covid-19 lockdowns, scientists expected to see one silver lining to the pandemic: a decrease in air pollution. With fewer cars on the roads and a drop in industrial activity, researchers did notice a dip in daily carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants. But methane, the...
NEWSWEEK - Breathing in lingering, secondhand e-cigarette vapors has the potential to damage lung tissues. This is the warning of a new study by researchers from the University of California Riverside, who found that aged vape aerosols contain fine particles bearing metals and highly reactive compounds that can combine to produce harmful radical particles. "Our...
AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY - Electronic cigarettes — or vapes — can release puffs of vapor in aromatic clouds. The health risks of breathing in this secondhand or passive vapor aren’t fully understood. So, researchers reporting in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology conducted a preliminary study on lingering vape plumes in indoor environments. They found that...
THE COOL DOWN - Rising global temperatures are still a major concern for scientists, but new research found that warmer and drier conditions might actually lower the amount of pollution released into the atmosphere in certain forests. What's happening? Researchers from the University of California, Riverside, found that rising global temperatures may be reducing nitrogen...
EARTH.COM - Forest soils are constantly talking – not in words but through quiet chemical exchanges between microbes, roots, and the air above them. For years, scientists had assumed that warming temperatures would speed up this underground chatter and release more nitrogen gases into the atmosphere. But long-term fieldwork is now revealing something different. Heat...
LOS ANGELES TIMES - For anyone wondering whether intense dust storms, such as the haboob that enveloped Phoenix this week, are possible in Southern California, the answer is yes. They’ve hit in the recent past and are a growing issue over much of Southern California and the Central Valley, thanks to the drying associated with...
EOS - Gale Sinatra and her husband fled their Altadena, Calif., home on 7 January with little more than overnight bags, taking just one of their two cars. “We thought we were going to be gone overnight,” Sinatra said. “We thought they’d get the fire under control and we’d get back in.” When the couple...