Carbon Sampling Takes Flight

Last month, aerial photographer and biologist Matevž Lenarčič flew a single-seat airplane across 2000 kilometers of airspace between Easter Island and Totegegie Airport in French Polynesia (right). That lonesome leg was one hop on a …

Birds’ Eye “Movie” Might Help Venice Marshland

Researchers are taking the long view, combined with a birds’-eye view, of Venice’s salt marshes to try to preserve them from rising seawater. They are relying on aerial photographs that reveal the wetlands’ changing shape

The …

Sunken Shipping Containers Form Artificial Reefs

It seemed like as good a place as any to brood, so whelks covered it with their eggs. Then crabs crawled onto the scene in a slow-motion seafloor pursuit. Octopi floated in from the murky …

Greening Mortar With Olive Waste

My latest Concentrate for Chemical & Engineering News [html] [pdf]:
The cement industry is one of the world’s largest producers of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The reason is that cement’s calcium carbonate releases the greenhouse …

Sewer Sampling Reveals Patterns Of Drug Use

While high school graduates in Oslo, Norway, partied hard for two weeks last spring during the so-called Russ graduation festivities, levels of the drug ecstasy spiked about 10-fold in the city’s sewer …

When being colourful doesn’t pay

Nuclear accidents can have devastating consequences for the people and animals living in the vicinity of the damaged power plants, but they also give researchers a unique opportunity to study the effects of …

Solar incentives cut

Spain is the latest European government to reduce state incentives for solar power, after its industry ministry on 1 August confirmed cuts to feed-in tariffs — the price an electricity utility must …

Plants Gone Alpine

These days it seems like everyone is into fast-and-light alpine climbing, even plants. Now, according to researchers in Germany, valley plants are racing up the flanks of the Bernina Alps, Switzerland. The range is home …

Country Cooking

A wood-burning stove that uses sound to generate electricity and refrigeration could one day make waves in developing countries. The appliance would rely on external combustion, such as a wood fire, to heat one end of a tube of compressed gas, inducing sound waves that can be harnessed to generate enough electricity to power a light bulb and a small refrigeration unit.