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Categories: Biology: Marine, Geoscience: Environmental Issues

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Hunnic peoples migrated westward across Eurasia, switched between farming and herding, and became violent raiders in response to severe drought in the Danube frontier provinces of the Roman empire, a new study argues.

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Sea urchin larvae raised in high levels of plastic pollution die due to developmental abnormalities, new research shows.

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Seawater is known to contain a significant concentration of boric acid, which can be toxic and deadly to living systems. As such, fish living in marine habitats need to be able to excrete boric acid in order to maintain a healthy boron balance. Researchers have now identified the gene and mechanism of boric acid transport in seawater fish and contrasted it to freshwater species.

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Researchers calculated that 74 metric tons of microplastics are dropping out of the atmosphere onto the city annually, the equivalent of more than 3 million plastic bottles falling from the sky.

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Assuring that a growing global population has access to clean water will require new water treatment methods. One of these next-generation methods involves a form of iron called ferrate, which creates fewer toxic byproducts than chemicals like chlorine and is potentially cheaper and easier to deploy than complex ozone treatment systems. For ferrate to work best, however, it needs to be combined with other compounds or excited by light energy. Now, using a technique involving ultra-fast laser and X-ray pulses, a team of researchers has revealed new details about the chemical reaction that occurs when ferrate is exposed to visible and ultraviolet light.

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Electric cars -- and their continued sales growth -- are expected to have a greener, cleaner influence on air pollution and reduce early human mortality in most, if not all, U.S. metropolitan areas.

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A mouse study has found that dust collected at sites near the Salton Sea in Southern California triggered lung neutrophil inflammation in mice -- an important direct demonstration that chronic exposures to Salton Sea dust may have a role in the asthma in residents closest to the sea.

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When winter chill strikes, people stay indoors more often, giving airborne pathogens -- such as SARS-CoV-2 and influenza -- prime opportunities to spread. Germicidal ultraviolet (GUV) lamps can help disinfect circulating air, but their UVC wavelengths could also transform airborne compounds into potentially harmful substances. Now, researchers have modeled the reactions initiated by UVC sanitizing light and find that there's a trade-off between removing viruses and producing air pollutants.

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New research, based on two decades' worth of data, shows that in the ten years after its onset in 2000, the Southwestern North American (SWNA) megadrought caused a 30% change in gravity wave activity in Earth's upper atmosphere.

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Researchers have simulated how climate change will affect the distribution of two leading allergens -- oak and ragweed pollens -- across the contiguous United States. The results may make your eyes water. Using computer models, the team found that by 2050 climate change significantly will increase airborne pollen loads, with some of the largest surges occurring in areas where pollen is historically uncommon.

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The El Niño phenomenon influences the weather in distant regions, as far away as the USA, India or the Mediterranean region. But how exactly these so-called teleconnections actually work has not yet been clarified completely. Atmospheric researchers at have now succeeded in demonstrating that variations of the transport of air mass, heat, moisture and energy from the tropical Pacific are responsible for many of these climate anomalies. And: El Niño also warms up the Atlantic.

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A forest's resilience, or ability to absorb environmental disturbances, has long been thought to be a boost for its odds of survival against the looming threat of climate change. But a new study suggests that for some Western U.S. forests, it's quite the opposite. The results of one of the first large-scale studies of its kind show that while high ecosystem resilience correlates with low mortality in eastern forests, it is linked to high mortality in western regions.

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More and more trees are suffering the consequences of decades of human-made climate change. The growth of the European beech has so far suffered decline mainly in southern Europe. European beech is Germany's most important native forest tree species and it is most commonly found in Central Europe. A research team has now been able to show that the European beech is suffering from increasing drought stress in summer in northern Germany as well. This climate stress is particularly pronounced at warmer sites, when there is a higher density of these trees together, and on very sandy soils.

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A six-month study oncludes that the use of portable home air purifiers can improve some markers of cardiovascular health in people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD

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Scientists have a new way to demonstrate which neighborhoods are most affected by air pollution from vehicle emissions: analyzing wild grass for radiocarbon content, which is a proxy for fossil fuel emissions.

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A new study finds that the health benefits associated with wind power could more than quadruple if operators turned down output from the most polluting fossil-fuel-based power plants when energy from wind is available. However, compared to wealthier communities, disadvantaged communities would reap a smaller share of these benefits.

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Exposure to traffic related air pollution is associated with an increased likelihood of having multiple long-term physical and mental health conditions according to a new study of more than 364,000 people in England.

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A new analysis of more than 20,000 trees on five continents shows that old-growth trees are more drought tolerant than younger trees in the forest canopy and may be better able to withstand future climate extremes. The findings highlight the importance of preserving the world's remaining old-growth forests, which are biodiversity strongholds that store vast amounts of planet-warming carbon, according to forest ecologists.

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A new study shows how plants 'encode' specific chemistries of their lignin to grow tall and sustain climate changes: each plant cell uses different combinations of the enzymes LACCASEs to create specific lignin chemistries. These results can be used both in agriculture and in forestry for selecting plants with the best chemistry to resist climate challenges.

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Researchers have conducted the first spatiotemporal study of the effects of prolonged water stress on tomato fruits, identifying genes that could help plant breeders develop fruit crops that can adapt to drought conditions.