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Environmental News Network -- Know Your Environment
Imagine a scenario where a volcano is about to erupt and you are responsible for deciding what to do next. Who should be alerted and who needs to be evacuated? Where and when might lava start flowing? How dangerous will the gas and ash emissions be?
This is what Earth Sciences 421 students experienced during a five-hour volcano simulation exercise in early December.
An imbalance between the trends in two common air pollutants is unexpectedly triggering the creation of a class of airborne organic compounds not usually found in the atmosphere over urban areas of North America, according to a new study from Caltech.
HIV, dengue, papillomavirus, herpes and Ebola – these are just some of the many viruses that kill millions of people every year, mostly children in developing countries. While drugs can be used against some viruses, there is currently no broad-spectrum treatment that is effective against several at the same time, in the same way that broad-spectrum antibiotics fight a range of bacteria. But researchers at EPFL's Supramolecular Nano-Materials and Interfaces Laboratory – Constellium Chair (SUNMIL) have created gold nanoparticles for just this purpose, and their findings could lead to a broad-spectrum treatment. Once injected in the body, these nanoparticles imitate human cells and “trick” the viruses. When the viruses bind to them – in order to infect them – the nanoparticles use pressure produced locally by this link-up to “break” the viruses, rendering them innocuous. The results of this research have just been published in Nature Materials.
Un desequilibrio entre las tendencias en dos contaminantes atmosféricos comunes está desencadenando inesperadamente la creación de una clase de compuestos orgánicos transportados por el aire que generalmente no se encuentran en la atmósfera en áreas urbanas de América del Norte, según un nuevo estudio de Caltech.
Lakes suffering from harmful algal blooms may not respond to reduced, or even discontinued, artificial nitrogen loading.
Many blue-green algae responsible for algal blooms can fix atmospheric nitrogen dissolved in the water, and therefore water stewards should focus their efforts on removing phosphorus from lakes to combat algal blooms.
How would today’s weather patterns look in a warmer, wetter atmosphere – an expected shift portended by climate change?
Colorado State University researcher Kristen Rasmussen offers new insight into this question – specifically, how thunderstorms would be different in a warmer world.
