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Environmental News Network -- Know Your Environment
Within a single cell, thousands of molecules, such as proteins, ions, and other signaling molecules, work together to perform all kinds of functions — absorbing nutrients, storing memories, and differentiating into specific tissues, among many others.
Plastic pollution is ubiquitous today, with microplastic particles from disposable goods found in natural environments throughout the globe, including Antarctica.
Researchers examining subglacial waters both from Antarctica and Greenland found that these waters have higher concentrations of important, life-sustaining elements than previously thought, answering a big unknown for scientists seeking to understand the Earth’s geochemical processes.
“The data from an Antarctic lake is particularly exciting,” said Florida State University postdoctoral fellow Jon Hawkings. “Most people tend to think of Antarctica as just ice, but we’ve known about these lakes underneath the glaciers in Antarctica for 40 years and over 400 of them have currently been identified. Some scientists refer to the subglacial environment in Antarctic as the world’s largest wetland. The challenge for scientists is it’s just extremely difficult to sample them.”
Hawkings, along with colleagues at Florida State and Montana State University, has published a new study this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences exploring these subglacial waters.
Read more: Florida State University
Pictured is a glacial meltwater river that has drained from the Greenland Ice Sheet. These rivers contain high amounts of suspended glacial flour as the ice sheet acts like a natural bulldozer and gives the rivers a grey milky color. (Photo Credit: Jon Hawkings)
New technology can quickly and accurately monitor glucose levels in people with diabetes without painful finger pricks to draw blood.
A class of materials called metal organic frameworks, or MOFs, has attracted considerable interest over the last several years for a variety of potential energy-related applications — especially since researchers discovered that these typically insulating materials could also be made electrically conductive.
Scientists have created the first global distribution map for bees, analyzing nearly 6 million public records of where individual species have appeared around the world.
