Just One High-Fat Meal Sets the Perfect Stage for Heart Disease

A single high-fat milkshake, with a fat and calorie content similar to some enticing restaurant fare, can quickly transform our healthy red blood cells into small, spiky cells that wreak havoc inside our blood vessels and help set the perfect stage for cardiovascular disease, scientists report.

Rapid Emissions Reductions Would Keep CO2 Removal and Costs in Check

Rapid greenhouse-gas emissions reductions are needed if governments want to keep in check both the costs of the transition towards climate stabilization and the amount of removing already emitted CO2 from the atmosphere. To this end, emissions in 2030 would need to be at least 20 percent below what countries have pledged under the Paris climate agreement, a new study finds – an insight that is directly relevant for the global stock-take scheduled for the UN climate summit in Poland later this year. Removing CO2 from the atmosphere through technical methods including carbon capture and underground storage (CCS) or increased use of plants to suck up CO2 comes with a number of risks and uncertainties, and hence the interest of limiting them.

Norfolk’s Iconic Swallowtail Butterfly at Risk from Climate Change

Norfolk’s butterflies, bees, bugs, birds, trees and mammals are at major risk from climate change as temperatures rise – according to new research from the University of East Anglia.

Anthropogenic lead still present in European Shelf Seas

Lead (PB) is one of few elements for which the impact of human activity on the marine environment is clearly evident. It has no biological function and is toxic to humans and marine organisms. The anthropogenic perturbation dates back to the middle of the 19th century, with coal and leaded gasoline combustion serving as major Pb sources to the atmosphere. Anthropogenic Pb is transported in the atmosphere over long distances and deposited in remote areas resulting in enhanced Pb concentrations in surface oceans of >190 pmol kg-1 during the peak of the Pb emissions in 1970-80. These are about 100 times higher than natural background levels.

Dining Out Associated with Increased Exposure to Harmful Chemicals Called Phthalates

Dining out more at restaurants, cafeterias and fast-food outlets may boost total levels of potentially health-harming chemicals called phthalates in the body, according to a study out today. Phthalates, a group of chemicals used in food packaging and processing materials, are known to disrupt hormones in humans and are linked to a long list of health problems.

Cancer ‘vaccine’ eliminates tumors in mice

Injecting minute amounts of two immune-stimulating agents directly into solid tumors in mice can eliminate all traces of cancer in the animals, including distant, untreated metastases, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The approach works for many different types of cancers, including those that arise spontaneously, the study found.

China Has Met Its 2020 Carbon Target Three Years Early

China met its 2020 carbon intensity target — the amount of carbon dioxide it produces per unit of economic growth — three years ahead of schedule, according to the country’s top climate official, Xie Zhenhua. In 2017, China cut its carbon intensity by 46 percent from 2005 levels, a drop of 5.1 percent from the previous year, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

Xie announced the milestone at the country’s Green Carbon Summit on Monday.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s an electric airship!

A proposal for an electric cargo airship has made it to the second round of a national contest to come up with “the next big thing” that will transform Canada. The brainchild of Dr. Barry Prentice, the proposal pitches the development of a cargo airship transport network that would do for the Canadian North what the railway did for Western Canada 140 years ago.

Tapping into the next generation of groundwater scientists

As many of Hawaiʻi‘s leading water professionals near retirement, there’s an urgent need to train a new local workforce of scientists. That’s happening at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa thanks to ʻIke Wai, a large five-year project funded by the National Science Foundation that aims to understand how water moves and is captured and stored underground in Hawaiʻi. Its main study sites include the Kona and Pearl Harbor aquifer systems.

Satellite Finds Southerly Wind Shear Affecting Tropical Depression Jelawat

Satellite imagery showed that Tropical Depression Jelawat was still dealing with southerly vertical wind shear that was pushing the bulk of its clouds north of its center.

On March 27, Jelawat was centered over 100 miles from Yap State in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. Yap State is one of four states in the Federated States of Micronesia. The other states are Chuuk State, Kosrae State and Pohnpei State.