It's tough to catch the eye of a potential mate when you’re dressed all in black with no fancy feathers to jiggle around. But a tiny bird called the Blue-black Grassquit has found a way. Learn about this fascinating species during the 2023 Paul C. Mundinger Distinguished Lectureship presented by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Ateam from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the USDA Agricultural Research Service has used SIF to measure the effects of elevated ozone (O3) on soybean plants.
Smaller, fluorinated compounds are becoming replacements for PFAS, though research suggests these versions could also be harmful. A study in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology reports that levels of these substances indoor and human samples are similar to or higher than those of legacy PFAS.
Killer whales are some of the oceans’ top predators, but even they can be exposed to environmental pollution. In the largest study to date on North Atlantic killer whales, researchers in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology report the levels of pollutants in 162 individuals’ blubber.
Hurricanes, floods, heat waves and other disasters are striking the United States with increased severity and frequency, and since 2000 the Federal Disaster Mitigation Act has required states and local jurisdictions to have plans in place to reduce damages from such events.
The Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) developed a group of platforms called TerraForms to provide users with an avenue for investigating hydrobiogeochemical processes.
Research teams from 11 projects will use resources at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) and the Joint Genome Institute (JGI). Several of the projects also were awarded access to the Bio-SANS beamline through the Center for Structural Molecular Biology (CSMB) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory.
The need for “real-time” forecasting of tropical cyclones is more necessary than ever given the impact of climate change on rainfall amounts. Two climate scientists suggest Hurricane Ian can be used as a blueprint for rapid operational climate change attribution statements about extreme storms, in a paper published in the journal Environmental Research: Climate.
Recent conservation efforts have proven effective at controlling wild pig populations in the Southeastern United States, according to new research from the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. Within 24 months of the start of control efforts in the study area located around the Savannah River Site in Aiken, South Carolina, researchers found a reduction of about 70% in relative abundance of pigs and a corresponding decline in environmental rooting damage of about 99%.
Scientists using natural tracers off Queensland’s coast have discovered the source of previously unquantified nitrogen and phosphorous having a profound environmental impact on the Great Barrier Reef.
Using micro-engineered soil models, researchers at Lund University in Sweden have investigated the effect of tiny polystyrene particles on bacteria and fungi.
Biologists have analyzed about 200 articles dedicated to composition of connective tissue (Extracellular Matrix) of echinoderms. That has enabled them for the first time to compare the composition of extracellular matrix of echinoderms and vertebrates.
If global temperatures increase by 1 degree Celsius (C) or more than current levels, each year billions of people will be exposed to heat and humidity so extreme they will be unable to naturally cool themselves.
A team of researchers from Queen Mary University of London and the University of Campinas in Brazil has found that tropical forest ecosystems are more reliant on aquatic insects than temperate forest ecosystems and are therefore more vulnerable to disruptions to the links between land and water.
University of Illinois anthropology professor Lisa Lucero argues in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that ancient Maya reservoirs, which used aquatic plants to filter and clean the water, “can serve as archetypes for natural, sustainable water systems to address future water needs.” The Maya built and maintained reservoirs that were in use for more than 1,000 years, providing potable water for thousands to tens of thousands of people in cities during the annual, five-month dry season and in periods of prolonged drought.
Research from Washington University in St. Louis and the Georgia Institute of Technology provides a more complete explanation of how evolution plays out among species that live side-by-side.
Mercouri Kanatzidis, an Argonne and Northwestern University materials scientist, has studied sulfur-containing materials called chalcogenides for more than 30 years. A new chalcogenide mineral has just been named for him.
The Gulf Stream is intrinsic to the global climate system, bringing warm waters from the Caribbean up the East Coast of the United States. As it flows along the coast and then across the Atlantic Ocean, this powerful ocean current influences weather patterns and storms, and it carries heat from the tropics to higher latitudes as part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.
A new study published today in Nature Climate Change now documents that over the past 20 years, the Gulf Stream has warmed faster than the global ocean as a whole and has shifted towards the coast. The study, led by Robert Todd, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), relies on over 25,000 temperature and salinity profiles collected between 2001 and 2023.