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Over-prescribing has long been thought to increase antibiotic resistance in bacteria. But could much bigger environmental pressures be at play?

While studying the role of climate on the distribution of antibiotic resistance across the geography of the U.S., a multidisciplinary team of epidemiologists from Boston Children’s Hospital found that higher local temperatures and population densities correlate with higher antibiotic resistance in common bacterial strains. Their findings were published today in Nature Climate Change.

The U.S. should take bold steps to improve measurement, monitoring, and inventories of methane emissions caused by human activities, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.  Better data on methane—a greenhouse gas that contributes to air pollution and threatens public and worker safety—would help inform decisions related to climate, economics, and human health.

Global lake evaporation will increase 16 percent by the end of the century as a consequence of climate change, a new Yale study finds. But the specific mechanisms that will drive that phenomenon are not quite what scientists expected.
 
While it is commonly believed that lake evaporation is controlled primarily by incoming solar radiation, the researchers used modeling tools to show that other factors — from shorter ice periods to a “reallocation” of heat energy at lake surfaces — are accelerating the loss of lake water into the atmosphere.

A new lightweight, low-cost agricultural robot could transform data collection and field scouting for agronomists, seed companies and farmers.

The TerraSentia crop phenotyping robot, developed by a team of scientists at the University of Illinois, will be featured at the 2018 Energy Innovation Summit Technology Showcase in National Harbor, Maryland, on March 14.

A new automated text messaging service may curb opioid abuse and reduce the likelihood of relapse while also decreasing treatment costs, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine and Epharmix, a St. Louis-based digital health company.