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Categories: Biology: Marine, Geoscience: Environmental Issues
Published Scientists engineer a 'self-charging' electrostatic face mask for prolonged air filtration, reducing the environmental burden
(via sciencedaily.com) 
Researchers have engineered an electrostatic face mask that can 'self-charge' through the user's breathing and continuously replenish its electrostatic charge as the user wears and breathes through the mask. This significantly increase the filtering performance in prolonged use of the mask for up to 60 hours, compared to four hours for a conventional surgical mask. This also benefits the environment.
Published Keeping drivers safe with a road that can melt snow, ice on its own
(via sciencedaily.com) 
Slipping and sliding on snowy or icy roads is dangerous. Salt and sand help melt ice or provide traction, but excessive use is bad for the environment. And sometimes, a surprise storm can blow through before these materials can be applied. Now, researchers ave filled microcapsules with a chloride-free salt mixture that's added into asphalt before roads are paved, providing long-term snow melting capabilities in a real-world test.
Published From plastic waste to valuable nanomaterials
(via sciencedaily.com) 
Scientists create carbon nanotubes and other hybrid nanomaterials out of plastic waste using an energy-efficient, low-cost, low-emissions process that could also be profitable.
Published Add-on device makes home furnaces cleaner, safer and longer-lasting
(via sciencedaily.com) 
Natural gas furnaces not only heat your home, they also produce a lot of pollution. Even modern high-efficiency condensing furnaces produce significant amounts of corrosive acidic condensation and unhealthy levels of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and methane. These emissions are typically vented into the atmosphere and end up polluting our soil, water and air. Scientists have developed an affordable add-on technology that removes more than 99.9% of acidic gases and other emissions to produce an ultraclean natural gas furnace. This acidic gas reduction, or AGR, technology can also be added to other natural gas-driven equipment such as water heaters, commercial boilers and industrial furnaces.
Published Amazon mammals threatened by climate change
(via sciencedaily.com) 
Most land-based mammals in the Brazilian Amazon are threatened by climate change and the savannization of the region.
Published Before global warming, was the Earth cooling down or heating up?
(via sciencedaily.com) 
A review article addresses a conflict between models and evidence, known as the Holocene global temperature conundrum.
Published Microbes play a key role in unleashing 'forever chemicals' from recycled-waste fertilizer
(via sciencedaily.com) 
'Forever chemicals' are everywhere -- water, soil, crops, animals, the blood of 97% of Americans -- researchers are trying to figure out how they got there. Their recent findings suggest that the microbes that help break down biodegradable materials and other waste are likely complicit in the release of the notorious per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) into the environment.
Published How the fastest fish hunts its prey
(via sciencedaily.com) 
Scientists have designed a novel electronic tag package incorporating high-tech sensors and a video camera in order to document a detailed view of exactly how sailfish behave and hunt once they are on their own and out of view of the surface.
Published How to make hydrogen straight from seawater -- no desalination required
(via sciencedaily.com) 
Researchers have developed a cheaper and more energy-efficient way to make hydrogen directly from seawater, in a critical step towards a truly viable green hydrogen industry. The new method splits the seawater directly into hydrogen and oxygen -- skipping the need for desalination and its associated cost, energy consumption and carbon emissions.
Published Whale warning as clock ticks towards deep-sea mining
(via sciencedaily.com) 
Seabed mining could soon begin in the deep ocean -- but the potential impact on animals including whales is unknown, researchers have warned.
Published Upsurge in rocket launches could impact the ozone layer
(via sciencedaily.com) 
Researchers have summarized the threats that future rocket launches would pose to Earth's protective ozone layer.
Published New technique maps large-scale impacts of fire-induced permafrost thaw in Alaska
(via sciencedaily.com) 
Researchers have developed a machine learning-based ensemble approach to quantify fire-induced thaw settlement across the entire Tanana Flats in Alaska, which encompasses more than 3 million acres. They linked airborne repeat lidar data to time-series Landsat products (satellite images) to delineate thaw settlement patterns across six large fires that have occurred since 2000. The six fires resulted in a loss of nearly 99,000 acres of evergreen forest from 2000 to 2014 among nearly 155,000 acres of fire-influenced forests with varying degrees of burn severity. This novel approach helped to explain about 65 percent of the variance in lidar-detected elevation change.
Published Acceleration of global sea level rise imminent past 1.8 degrees planetary warming
(via sciencedaily.com) 
A study shows that an irreversible loss of the ice sheets, and a corresponding acceleration of sea level rise, may be imminent if global temperature cannot be stabilized below 1.8 degrees Celsius.
Published Moisture the key to soils' ability to sequester carbon, research shows
(via sciencedaily.com) 
Soil is the Earth's second-biggest carbon storage locker after the ocean, and a research collaboration has shown that it's moisture, not temperature or mineral content, that's the key to how well the soil carbon warehouse works.
Published Coral reefs in the Eastern Pacific could survive into the 2060s
(via sciencedaily.com) 
Scientists found that some reefs in the tropical Pacific Ocean could maintain high coral cover into the second half of this century by shuffling the symbiotic algae they host. The findings offer a ray of hope in an often-dire picture of the future of coral reefs worldwide.
Published Biodiversity engine for fishes: Shifting water depth
(via sciencedaily.com) 
Fish, the most biodiverse vertebrates in the animal kingdom, present evolutionary biologists a conundrum: The greatest species richness is found in the world's tropical waters, yet the fish groups that generate new species most rapidly inhabit colder climates at higher latitudes. A new study helps to explain this paradox. The researchers discovered that the ability of fish in temperate and polar ecosystems to transition back and forth from shallow to deep water triggers species diversification. Their findings suggest that as climate change warms the oceans at higher latitudes, it will impede the evolution of fish species.
Published Due to their feed, chicken and farmed salmon have remarkably similar environmental footprints
(via sciencedaily.com) 
We love our chicken. We love our salmon. Thanks to how we farm these two popular proteins, their environmental footprints are surprisingly similar.
Published Microbes that co-operate contribute more carbon emissions
(via sciencedaily.com) 
Communities of microbes that work together release more carbon dioxide than competitive communities, contributing more to climate change.
Published New funding proposal aims to reduce bottlenecks on Upper Mississippi River
(via sciencedaily.com) 
New research proposes a funding model for a major rehabilitation of the 27 locks and dams on the Upper Mississippi. It relies on a collective investment from all -- or at least most -- of the shippers, along with government funding. The researcher's model shows the public-private partnership would pay off in the long run.
Published Record low sea ice cover in the Antarctic
(via sciencedaily.com)
Original source 
There is currently less sea ice in the Antarctic than at any time in the forty years since the beginning of satellite observation: in early February 2023, only 2.20 million square kilometers of the Southern Ocean were covered with sea ice.