Study defines thunderstorm asthma epidemic conditions

As allergy sufferers can attest, thunderstorm activity can exacerbate asthma and respiratory ailments.

In fall 2016, when strong storms moved across southeastern Australia, a major thunderstorm asthma epidemic struck Melbourne and the surrounding area. High grass pollen concentrations dispersed by strong, gusty winds led to multiple deaths and a flood of residents seeking medical attention for respiratory problems.

Which patients face highest risk for ending up in emergency rooms?

Biostatistician Colin Weaver takes the same kind of algorithms and machine learning techniques that land a certain blender on your Amazon page or a suggested movie in your Netflix account, and he applies them to something slightly more consequential: health care.

Molecules May Be Driving Fluctuations in Atmospheric Methane Concentrations

During the early 2000s, environmental scientists studying methane emissions noticed something unexpected: the global concentrations of atmospheric methane (CH4)—which had increased for decades, driven by methane emissions from fossil fuels and agriculture—inexplicably leveled off.

UNH Helps Lead the Way for Campuses to Measure Their Nitrogen Footprints

Sustainability leadership efforts at the University of New Hampshire have contributed to a groundbreaking initiative to measure and reduce the nitrogen footprint left behind by campus activities like food waste and energy consumption. The new research is highlighted in the April 2017 special issue of Sustainability: The Journal of Record. The publication outlines research being done at UNH, and seven other institutions, to reduce emissions of reactive nitrogen (all forms of nitrogen except unreactive N2 gas) and prevent negative impacts on such things as water quality, air pollution, and climate change.

Prescribed Forest Fire Frequency Should Be Based on Land Management Goals

In recent decades, scientists and land managers have realized the importance of controlled forest fires for reaching specific forest management objectives. However, questions remain about how often forests should be burned. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have studied forests subjected to different frequencies of fires to determine what effects fire can have on oak forests over long periods of time. They found that the frequency of prescribed forest fires should be determined based on the long-term goals of land managers.

Track down water pollution through DNA of algae

Diatoms are a group of unicellular algae particularly sensitive to changes that affect their aquatic environment. This is why they are used as bioindicators for the biological monitoring of water quality. However, their microscopic identification in river samples requires a lot of time and skills. Biologists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, have succeeded in establishing a water quality index based solely on the DNA sequences of the diatoms present in the samples, without needing to identify each species visually. This study, published in the journal Molecular Ecology Resources, presents a revolutionary tool to process a very large number of samples in parallel, allowing wide coverage of the monitored sites in a reduced time and at a lower cost.

Landslides on Ceres Reflect Hidden Ice

Massive landslides, similar to those found on Earth, are occurring on the asteroid Ceres. That’s according to a new study led by the Georgia Institute of Technology, adding to the growing evidence that Ceres retains a significant amount of water ice.

NREL Establishes World Record for Solar Hydrogen Production

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) recaptured the record for highest efficiency in solar hydrogen production via a photoelectrochemical (PEC) water-splitting process.

Mechanism behind the electric charges generated by photosynthesis -A step towards artificial photosynthesis

Photosynthesis requires a mechanism to produce large amounts of chemical energy without losing the oxidative power needed to break down water. A Japanese research team has clarified part of this mechanism, marking another step towards the potential development of artificial photosynthesis. The findings were published on February 27 in the online edition of The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.

Busy city living makes some house finches more savvy than others

House finches that frequent North American cities and towns are better at solving new problems than their rural counterparts. They are able to solve new problems even when humans are around, says Meghan Cook of Arizona State University in the US, lead author of a study in Springer’s journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. The study investigated how increased urbanization and human presence affects the behavior and foraging habits of wildlife, and how birds, in particular, cope.