ScienceDaily for May 1, 2007 reported that
According to a study in the May/June 2007 issue of the journal Ground Water, pharmaceuticals are being found in septic tanks and, consequentially, ground water due to incomplete human metabolism and excretion into the waste stream or by disposal of unused medications in the toilet or down the sink.
LiveScience for March 5, 2008 reported that
The ocean's "deserts," where it is difficult for marine organisms to survive, are expanding faster than predicted and have been linked to warming ocean waters, a new study shows.
The scientists describe development of a new solid adsorbent coined a hyperbranched aminosilica (HAS) that avoids those problems. When compared to traditional solid adsorbents under simulated emissions from industrial smokestacks, the new material captured up to seven times more carbon dioxide than conventional solid materials, including some of the best carbon dioxide adsorbents currently available, the researchers say. The material also shows greater stability under different temperature extremes, allowing it to be recycled numerous times.
On January 26, 1700, at about 9 p.m. local time, the Juan de Fuca plate beneath the ocean in the Pacific Northwest suddenly moved, slipping some 60 feet eastward beneath the North American plate in a monster quake of approximately magnitude 9, setting in motion large tsunamis that struck the coast of North America and traveled to the shores of Japan.
The fault line that spawned the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami has ruptured nearly 20 times this month, causing three strong earthquakes.
LiveScience for February 27, 2008 reported that
A sweeping, six-year federal study released Tuesday found evidence of 70 contaminants in 20 national parks and monuments — from Denali in Alaska and Glacier in Montana, to Big Bend in Texas and Yosemite in California.
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that it is very unlikely that the North Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC) will collapse in the 21st century. They predict a probability of less then 10 percent," says Klaus Keller, assistant professor of geosciences. "However, this should not be interpreted as an all clear signal. There can be a considerable delay between the triggering of an MOC collapse and the actual collapse. In a similar way, a person that has just jumped from a cliff may take comfort that pain in the next few seconds is very unlikely, but the outlook over the long term is less rosy."
The shimmering ice crystals spread across the Arctic landscape may look beautiful, but new research reveals that they carry an ugly secret: They contain surprisingly high concentrations of mercury, even when mercury is almost totally absent in the atmosphere. The researchers who made the discovery hope their findings will encourage stricter standards on mercury emissions that drift north.
ScienceDaily for April 9, 2007 discussed abrupt climate changes and gave as an example a drought in West Africa in the 1960s that killed a million people.
Dramatic as this single event was, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have now uncovered 29 other regions worldwide that endured similarly precipitous climatic changes during the 20th century - far more than scientists previously thought. Their study publishes March 30 in the online edition of Geophysical Research Letters.
During the 1930s the Midwest became a large dust bowl. As reported by Live Science for April 5, 2007, some scientists are predicting a return of the dust bowl.
Human-induced change in Earth's atmosphere will leave the American Southwest in perpetual drought for the next 90 years, a new study finds.
Unfortunately, severe droughts are not just the stuff of classic literature. A research team, led by a group at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) in Palisades, N.Y., reveal in this week's Science that southwestern North America will likely be saddled with increasingly arid conditions during the next century. This drying effect, the researchers say, is directly related to man-made climate change and will demand new methods for managing water resources in the region. They based their findings on 19 climate models, all of which contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report released in Paris in early February
