New approach to energy savings for supermarkets

The capacity to deliver continuous electricity for refrigeration is one of the central planks of the modern-day food distribution system.

Using fossil fuel-generated energy to refrigerate and freeze foods around the clock produces a lot of pollution – carbon and greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the global climate, as well as emissions of a range of potentially toxic chemicals that deplete the ozone layer and wind up in our waterways and soil.

How soon after the big bang did water form in the early universe?

How soon after the Big Bang could water have existed? Not right away, because water molecules contain oxygen and oxygen had to be formed in the first stars. Then that oxygen had to disperse and unite with hydrogen in significant amounts. New theoretical work finds that despite these complications, water vapor could have been just as abundant in pockets of space a billion years after the Big Bang as it is today.

“We looked at the chemistry within young molecular clouds containing a thousand times less oxygen than our Sun. To our surprise, we found we can get as much water vapor as we see in our own galaxy,” says astrophysicist Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

Parrotfish play critical role in building coral reefs

As well as being a beautiful species capable of changing its colour, shape and even gender, new research published today shows that parrotfish, commonly found on healthy coral reefs, can also play a pivotal role in providing the sands necessary to build and maintain coral reef islands.

Climate warming leads to earlier tick season

The month of May brings many things, among them Mother’s Day, tulips, and Lyme Disease Awareness campaigns. But according to Dr. Richard S. Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY, if we want to get a leg up on tick-borne illness we need to become vigilant earlier in the season.

A Global perspective on hazardous chemicals in the workplace

Hazardous chemicals are a vital part of many industries, but lax and inconsistent safety standards put workers' health and lives at risk all over the world, writes Christian Friis Bach. 

Christian Friis Bach is Under Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.

Millions of workers are exposed every day to hazardous chemicals around the globe, in developing and developed countries. These chemicals are purchased and shipped from all over the world and differences in language and labelling could make them even more dangerous. However, thanks to a true success story of international cooperation, the danger is abating every day. This is worth celebrating on the World Day for Safety and Health at Work

Why Bees Can't Avoid Pesticides

Pesticides such as as neonicotinoids are already under close scrutiny because research appears to show that, certainly for honey bees at least, they may interrupt the insect’s normal behaviors and they are suspected to play a part in colony collapse disorder.

How Desalination Technology Is Helping Solve California's Drought

Four years of devastating droughts in California have pushed cities and counties in the Golden State to seriously consider turning to the one drinking source that is not depleting anytime soon – seawater. With the Pacific Ocean abutting their shores, water desalination may be the much-needed solution for Californians. But desalination has its disadvantages, the chief ones being the high costs and the potential environmental damage.

Aluminum-ion battery technology advances

A new high-performance 'aluminum-ion' battery could be the technical breakthrough needed to boost the renewable energy takeover. It's safe, uses abundant low-cost materials, recharges in one minute and withstands many thousands of recharge cycles.

If this new battery lives up to expectations, it could propel a whole new chapter in the renewable takeover of the world's energy supply.

Stanford University scientists have invented the first high-performance aluminum battery that's fast-charging, long-lasting, inexpensive - and safe.

Nepal earthquake causes extensive damage and kills thousands

Powerful aftershocks rocked Nepal on Sunday, panicking survivors of a quake that killed more than 2,300 and triggering fresh avalanches at Everest base camp, as rescuers dug through rubble in the devastated capital Kathmandu.

A string of earthquakes have been occurring in Chile and Southern California. 

How to help your brain age more slowly

Brains age, just like the rest of the body, even for those don't get neurological disease, according to an Institute of Medicine.

"Some of the changes that one observes doesn't mean that it's all over, gloom and doom," the committee’s vice chair, Kristine Yaffe, MD, told the Washington Post.

​While aging does more damage to some than others, most people can take steps to improve their health, according to Yaffe, the Roy and Marie Scola Endowed Chair and professor of psychiatry, neurology, and epidemiology at UCSF and chief of geriatric psychiatry and director of the Memory Disorders Clinic at the San Francisco VA Medical Center.