Top Stories

'Excess Emissions' Make Significant Contribution to Air Pollution

When Hurricane Harvey struck Texas in August, industrial facilities in the state shut down, then reopened a few days later. In doing so, they produced nearly 2,000 tons of "excess emissions" -- air pollutants in addition to what was allowed as part of their normal operation.

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Projecting the Impacts of Climate Change

How might climate change affect the acidification of the world’s oceans or air quality in China and India in the coming decades, and what climate policies could be effective in minimizing such impacts?

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Genetic Limits Threaten Chickpeas, a Globally Critical Food

Perhaps you missed the news that the price of hummus has spiked in Great Britain. The cause, as the New York Times reported on February 8: drought in India, resulting in a poor harvest of chickpeas. Far beyond making dips for pita bread, chickpeas are a legume of life-and-death importance—especially in India, Pakistan, and Ethiopia where 1 in 5 of the world’s people depend on them as their primary source of protein.

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Post-eruption sunsets shed light on historical wind patterns

Recent research by climate modelers Kevin Hamilton and Takatoshi Sakazaki at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) investigated the possibility of using historical observations after large equatorial volcanic eruptions to learn about the properties of the winds in the stratosphere, the layer of the atmosphere 10–30 miles above Earth’s surface.

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NASA Eyes Powerful Tropical Cyclone Gita in the South Pacific

NASA's Terra satellite provided a visible image of Category 3 Tropical Cyclone Gita as it continues to bring heavy rainfall, powerful winds and storm surge to Fiji Islands after pounding the island of Tonga.

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Cancer-Killing Virus Acts by Alerting Immune System

A new UC San Francisco study has shown that a cancer-killing (“oncolytic”) virus currently in clinical trials may function as a cancer vaccine – in addition to killing some cancer cells directly, the virus alerts the immune system to the presence of a tumor, triggering a powerful, widespread immune response that kills cancer cells far outside the virus-infected region.

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Ocean Winds Influence Seal Pup Migration

Scientists have confirmed what native Alaskans have observed for centuries – maritime winds influence the travel patterns of northern fur seal pups. New research presented at the Ocean Sciences Meeting here today shows strong winds can potentially displace seal pups by hundreds of kilometers during their first winter migration.

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Chemical Cluster Could Transform Energy Storage for Large Electrical Grids

To power entire communities with clean energy, such as solar and wind power, a reliable backup storage system is needed to provide energy when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t out.

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SMU Study Finds Earthquakes Continue for Years After Gas Field Wastewater Injection Stops

Efforts to stop human-caused earthquakes by shutting down wastewater injection wells that serve adjacent oil and gas fields may oversimplify the challenge, according to a new study from seismologists at Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

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Trash in America

Natural resources are continually extracted to produce goods that are used in the U.S. – often only briefly – before they are thrown into landfills, incinerators or the natural environment. This system of consumption and disposal results in the waste of precious resources and pollution that threatens our health, environment and global climate.

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