Tag: environment

New plastic recycling technology can reduce greenhouse gases equivalent to 3 million cars

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Researchers have developed an advanced recycling process that could help convert polyethylene (PE) – the world’s most widely used plastic – into polypropylene, one of the world’s 5 most common plastics. “Today, unfortunately, much of the polyethylene is not recycled and accumulates in landfills. The part that is collected as energy is recycled through combustion. This recycling approach is not truly sustainable.” Geronent is Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and co-lead author of Research article published in Journal of the American Chemical…

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How researchers monitor biodiversity from afar by ‘listening to the forest’

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Researchers have developed a new laissez-faire approach to biodiversity monitoring, using a network of recording devices to record an audio scene of an area. The SAFE (Stability of Changing Forest Ecosystems) acoustics project uses these acoustics and machine learning models to monitor changes in this acoustic landscape over time and get early warnings about the health of different ecosystems. SAFE Acoustics enables researchers to monitor biodiversity at different sites with minimal human interaction. The technology itself is open source, and the researchers provide a step-by-step guide to building audio recording…

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‘The Sacrifice Zone’: Myanmar bears cost of green energy

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The birds no longer sing, and the herbs no longer grow. The fish no longer swim in rivers that have turned a murky brown. The animals do not roam, and the cows are sometimes found dead. The people in this northern Myanmar forest have lost a way of life that goes back generations. But if they complain, they, too, face the threat of death. This forest is the source of several key metallic elements known as rare earths, often called the vitamins of the modern world. Rare earths now reach…

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Hot summers mean that Florida turtles are mostly born female

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Florida sea turtles are grappling with a gender imbalance exacerbated by climate change. Recent heat waves have warmed the sand on some beaches to the point that nearly every turtle born has been a female. said Pete Zerkelbach, director of the Turtle Hospital in Marathon, a city in the Florida Keys, a chain of tropical islands extending from the state’s southern tip. “Scientists studying sea turtle hatchlings and eggs have not found any sea turtle boys, so only female sea turtles for the past four years,” said Zirkelbach, whose turtle…

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Wildfires are getting worse globally and governments aren’t prepared

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Billings, Mont. Global warming and changes in land-use patterns mean that more wildfires will ignite large parts of the world in the coming decades, causing high rates of unhealthy smog and other problems that governments are not prepared to confront, according to a United Nations report. Wednesday. The Western United States. , North SiberiaCentral India and eastern australia We are already seeing more fires, and the probability of a catastrophic wildfire outbreak globally could increase by a third by 2050 and more than 50% by the end of the century,…

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UK orders urgent evacuations amid dozens of severe flood warnings

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A major accident has been declared and emergency evacuations are underway amid severe flood warnings. Heavy, raucous rain will continue to flood Britain for at least the next two days in the wake of Storm Franklin. There are two severe flood warnings, 116 warnings and 118 alerts in England as wild weather breaks in. There are six warnings and 14 other alerts covering Wales, while Scotland has two warnings and one alert. The Severn River will bear the brunt of the flogging, as rising waters pose a “great danger to…

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New study explains why whales don’t suffocate

A humpback whale

To catch prey, humpback, minke, and other whales use a tactic called rush feeding. They are accelerating – their mouths open to nearly 90 degrees – and they swallow a volume of water large enough to fill their entire body. “This is crazy. Imagine putting a whole human inside your mouth,” said Kelsey Gill, a zoologist who studies whale physiology at the University of British Columbia. When the water flows into the whale’s mouth, its throat sac expands, making the whale look like a swollen tadpole. After about a minute,…

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Scientists say the volcanic eruption in Tonga could harm the environment for years

Tonga Volcano Eruption

Scientists who study satellite images and look back to the remote region’s future say Tonga’s massive underwater volcanic eruption could do long-term damage to coral reefs, undermine coastlines and disrupt fisheries. acid rain Since the initial eruption, the volcano has released sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide – two gases that cause acid rain when they interact with water and oxygen in the atmosphere. With Tonga’s tropical climate, “it’s likely that acid rain will fall around Tonga for a while,” volcanologist Shane Cronin of the University of Auckland said. Acid rain…

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Sometimes, life stinks. So he invented the nasal ranger

Chuck McGinley with his Nasal Ranger in South St. Paul, Minn., Aug. 3, 2021. (Caroline Yang/The New York Times)

Chuck McGinley, a chemical engineer, stepped out of his car, eyed the smokestack of an animal processing plant rising above the treetops, and inhaled deeply. At first he smelled nothing except the faint, sweet fragrance of the nearby trees. Suddenly, the wind picked up. “We have an oh-my-God smell!” McGinley exclaimed. Immediately one of his colleagues pressed a Nasal Ranger to his nose. The 14-inch-long smell-measuring device, which looks like a cross between a radar gun and a bugle, is one of McGinley’s most significant inventions. Using terms from one…

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Big Discovery Under Antarctic Seas: Giant Ice Fish Breeding Colony

A thousand feet below the surface of the Weddell Sea off Antarctica, a breeding colony of icefish, 60 million active nests across 92 square miles, has been observed during a series of deep dives. (PS118, AWI OFOBS Team via The New York Times)

Once the remote-operated camera glimpsed the bottom of the Weddell Sea, more than 1,000 feet below the roof’s ice cap, Lilian Boehringer, a student researcher at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, watched the ice fish’s nests. Sand craters scattered to the sea floor, each the size of a collar and collar and less than a foot long. Each crater has solid ice fish, dark pectoral fins spread like bat wings over a cluster of eggs. The aptly named ice fish thrives in waters above freezing with just a few…

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