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Right now, a handful of motivated Fort Collins citizens are doing something a little out of the ordinary. They’re collecting cutting-edge scientific data from their backyards that may soon help NASA create maps of global air pollution.

The volunteers are part of a network of citizen scientists for a Colorado State University-led project called CEAMS: Citizen-Enabled Aerosol Measurements for Satellites.

The goal of CEAMS is to improve understanding of local air quality through dispersed, ground-based measurements. Data on this scale could eventually help NASA satellites provide higher-resolution air quality data than is possible today.

A new study linking higher levels of air pollution to increased teenage delinquency is a reminder of the importance of clean air and the need for more foliage in urban spaces, a Keck School of Medicine of USC researcher said.

The most effective way of preventing seasonal influenza is to be vaccinated each autumn. The reason that people are encouraged to get vaccinated annually is because flu virus can cause severe disease. One of the problems is that there are many different flu viruses circulating around the world and which ones circulate changes over time.

The oldest ice core ever drilled outside the polar regions may contain ice that formed during the Stone Age—more than 600,000 years ago, long before modern humans appeared.

Researchers from the United States and China are now studying the core—nearly as long as the Empire State Building is tall—to assemble one of the longest-ever records of Earth’s climate history.

What they’ve found so far provides dramatic evidence of a recent and rapid temperature rise at some of the highest, coldest mountain peaks in the world.

Imagine that instead of switching on a lamp when it gets dark, you could read by the light of a glowing plant on your desk.