ScienceDaily: Top Environment News |
- Engineers point the way to more affordable, sustainable urban neighborhoods
- Treated plastic waste good at grabbing carbon dioxide
- The pleasant smell of wet soil indicates danger to bacteria-eating worms, researchers find
- How to track a shark
- The relationship between active areas and boundaries with energy input in snapping shells
- Solar cell keeps working long after sun sets
- Local motion detectors in fruit flies sense complex patterns generated by their own motion
- Botany: Fitness needs the right timing
- Tiny jumping genes fingered as culprit in rise of antibiotic resistance
- Carbs, sugary foods may influence poor oral health
- Bees win in survival wars
- Global team of scientists determine 'fingerprint' for how much heat, drought is too much for forests
- Squid recorded color-matching substrate for the first time
- New non-destructive DNA method opens opportunities
- DNA discovery reveals a critical 'accordion effect' for switching off genes
- ‘Freeze-thaw battery’ is adept at preserving its energy
- The global 'plastic flood' reaches the Arctic
- Protected tropical forest sees major bird declines over 40 years
- Delicate balance of coral reef processes creates management challenges
| Engineers point the way to more affordable, sustainable urban neighborhoods Posted: 05 Apr 2022 11:35 AM PDT Analysis presents a first-of-its-kind framework to design the most efficient mix of urban buildings along with integrated systems to supply power and water services. The approach could significantly reduce costs and pollution compared to traditional systems.  |
| Treated plastic waste good at grabbing carbon dioxide Posted: 05 Apr 2022 11:35 AM PDT Rice University chemists treat waste plastic to absorb carbon dioxide from flue gas streams more efficiently than current processes. |
| The pleasant smell of wet soil indicates danger to bacteria-eating worms, researchers find Posted: 05 Apr 2022 11:35 AM PDT Researchers have found that geosmin is made by certain kinds of bacteria that are known toxin producers. This acts as a warning to C. elegans, a common type of worm, that the bacteria they are about to graze on is poisonous. The chemical is an aposematic signal that triggers the blind worm's sense of taste just like a caterpillar's bright colors or a pufferfish's spines tell a sighted predator to stay away. |
| Posted: 05 Apr 2022 09:39 AM PDT An international team of researchers has compiled a massive dataset that overlays years' worth of information on the position, migration and interaction of sharks and game fish. This research has immediate relevance for anglers, who have been reporting increased contact with sharks over the years. The research gives us the clearest window yet into complex ecological relationships and promises to be a useful tool in ongoing conservation efforts. |
| The relationship between active areas and boundaries with energy input in snapping shells Posted: 05 Apr 2022 08:52 AM PDT New research looks at how the geometry of shells relates to the energy input required to actuate snap-through instability. |
| Solar cell keeps working long after sun sets Posted: 05 Apr 2022 08:52 AM PDT Researchers have constructed a photovoltaic cell that harvests energy from the environment during the day and night, making use of the heat leaking from Earth back into space. At night, solar cells radiate and lose heat to the sky, reaching temperatures a few degrees below the ambient air. The device under development uses a thermoelectric module to generate voltage and current from the temperature gradient between the cell and the air. The setup is inexpensive and, in principle, could be incorporated within existing solar cells. |
| Local motion detectors in fruit flies sense complex patterns generated by their own motion Posted: 05 Apr 2022 07:28 AM PDT Scientists have gained new insights into how the eye of Drosophila processes motion patterns that are generated by self-motion through space. They have discovered that direction-selective cells can distinguish six types of global motion patterns. |
| Botany: Fitness needs the right timing Posted: 05 Apr 2022 07:28 AM PDT Life on Earth runs in 24-hour cycles. From tiny bacteria to human beings, organisms adapt to alterations of day and night. External factors, such as changes in light and temperature, are needed to entrain the clock. Many metabolic processes are controlled by the endogenous clock. Scientists have now studied the molecular rhythms of the endogenous clock in the 'green lineage.' |
| Tiny jumping genes fingered as culprit in rise of antibiotic resistance Posted: 05 Apr 2022 07:28 AM PDT Biomedical engineers believe they have discovered the physical mechanism that causes high doses of antibiotics to promote the spread of antibiotic resistance between bacteria. The culprit, they say, is an overabundance of 'jumping genes,' called transposons, that carry the genetic instructions for resistance from the cell's source code to plasmids that shuttle between cells. |
| Carbs, sugary foods may influence poor oral health Posted: 05 Apr 2022 07:28 AM PDT New research on postmenopausal women identifies associations between commonly eaten foods and the diversity and composition of oral bacteria. |
| Posted: 05 Apr 2022 06:27 AM PDT Like diseases affecting humans, parasites can wage a deadly evolutionary 'arms race' against their hosts. But can hosts and parasites upgrade their weapons at the same rate? |
| Global team of scientists determine 'fingerprint' for how much heat, drought is too much for forests Posted: 05 Apr 2022 05:46 AM PDT A new study has compiled a global database of climate-induced forest die-off events, from 1970-2018, across 675 locations. After analyzing the climate conditions at each location during each event, researchers found a common 'hotter-drought fingerprint' for Earth's forests, a term that describes the combination of higher temperatures and more frequent droughts for a lethal set of climate conditions. Under further warming, this hotter-drought fingerprint will appear more frequently -- the authors conclude that limiting Earth's warming will determine survivability for many of Earth's forests. |
| Squid recorded color-matching substrate for the first time Posted: 05 Apr 2022 05:45 AM PDT A new study has found that squid will camouflage against coral reef and other substrate as a way of avoiding predation. |
| New non-destructive DNA method opens opportunities Posted: 05 Apr 2022 05:45 AM PDT A new method of obtaining ancient genomic data without damaging source material has been developed, creating new opportunities for museum and archaeological collections worldwide. |
| DNA discovery reveals a critical 'accordion effect' for switching off genes Posted: 05 Apr 2022 05:45 AM PDT Researchers have revealed how an 'accordion effect' is critical to switching off genes, in a study that transforms the fundamentals of what we know about gene silencing. The finding expands our understanding of how we switch genes on and off to make the different cell types in our bodies, as we develop in the womb. |
| ‘Freeze-thaw battery’ is adept at preserving its energy Posted: 05 Apr 2022 05:45 AM PDT Scientists have created a battery designed for the electric grid that locks in energy for months without losing much storage capacity. It's a step toward batteries that can be used for seasonal storage: saving renewable energy in one season, such as the spring, and spending it in another, like autumn. |
| The global 'plastic flood' reaches the Arctic Posted: 05 Apr 2022 05:45 AM PDT Even the High North can't escape the global threat of plastic pollution. An international review study shows, the flood of plastic has reached all spheres of the Arctic: large quantities of plastic - transported by rivers, the air and shipping- can now be found in the Arctic Ocean. |
| Protected tropical forest sees major bird declines over 40 years Posted: 04 Apr 2022 12:27 PM PDT Deep in a Panamanian rain forest, bird populations have been quietly declining for 44 years. A new study shows a whopping 70% of understory bird species declined in the forest between 1977 and 2020. And the vast majority of those are down by half or more. |
| Delicate balance of coral reef processes creates management challenges Posted: 04 Apr 2022 09:04 AM PDT An international team of researchers has quantified five critical ecological processes on more than 500 coral reefs worldwide to understand how these processes relate to each other, what may distinguish the most functional reefs, and what that means for our management of reef functioning. |
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