The Taklamakan Desert, one of the major sources of background Asian dust, is situated in the Tarim Basin, with the Tianshan Mountains in the north, Pamir Plateau in the west, and Kunlun Mountains in the south. Dunhuang (40°00？N, 94°30？E; 1146 m above sea level) is located in the east of the Taklamakan Desert, China. The area is significant for studying the initial state of Asian dust particle transportation, which is mainly influenced by westerly winds.

Scientists at Indiana University found high levels of a previously unsuspected pollutant in homes, in an electronic waste recycling facility and in the natural environment. People are likely to be exposed to this pollutant by breathing contaminated dust or through skin contact.

Every day around 93% of the world’s children under the age of 15 years (1.8 billion children) breathe air that is so polluted it puts their health and development at serious risk. Tragically, many of them die: WHO estimates that in 2016, 600,000 children died from acute lower respiratory infections caused by polluted air.

Three Mount Allison University professors and several students will be taking a closer look at microplastics in the Saint John River watershed.

Removing the troublesome impurities of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and carbon dioxide (CO2) from natural gas could become simpler and more effective using a metal-organic framework (MOF) developed at KAUST.

Cleaning up or replacing coal-fired power plants that lack sulfur pollution controls could help Texans breathe cleaner, healthier air, according to researchers at Rice University.

With a growing world population and climate challenges that are causing agricultural areas to shrink, many are wondering where sustainable food will come from in the future. A professor of gastrophysics from the Department of Food Science at the University of Copenhagen and a chef offer a suggestion in a new research article: The cephalopod population (including squid, octopus and cuttlefish) in the oceans is growing and growing – let’s get better at cooking them so that many more people will want to eat them!

Ambient air quality monitoring data are the most important source for public awareness regarding air quality and are widely used in many research fields, such as improving air quality forecasting and the analysis of haze episodes. However, there are outliers among such monitoring data, due to instrument malfunctions, the influence of harsh environments, and the limitation of measuring methods.

On paper, carbon capture is a simple proposition: Take carbon that we’ve pulled out of the Earth in the form of coal and oil and put into the atmosphere, and pull it out of the atmosphere and put it back in the Earth. It’s like hitting undo on the Industrial Revolution. And scientists can indeed yank CO2 out of thin air, except that the process is expensive, not very efficient, and morally complicated.

Exposure to wood smoke can have different effects on the respiratory immune systems of men and women – effects that may be obscured when data from men and women are lumped together, according to a study published today in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine by scientists at the UNC School of Medicine and the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.