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As Dalhousie’s Industry Chair in Wild Blueberry Physiology, David Percival had just one challenge: to put more berries in the box.

That was 20 years ago. Today, wild blueberry production in Nova Scotia has quadrupled to over 400 million pounds annually. And it’s a story that begins with Mr. Blueberry himself, John Bragg.

If you live in the developed world, safe water is usually just a faucet-turn away. And yet, global warming, drought conditions, and population growth in coming decades could change that, ushering in an era of uncertain access to water.

Now an MIT-based research team has evaluated those potential problems and, based on a case study in Australia, suggested an alternate approach to water planning. In a new paper, the researchers find there is often a strong case for building relatively modest, incremental additions to water infrastructure in advanced countries, rather than expensive larger-scale projects that may be needed only rarely.

Satellite imagery from NOAA's GOES-West satellite showed vertical wind shear was already tearing Tropical Storm Jova apart just two days after it formed. By August 14, the storm weakened into a post-tropical cyclone.

Tropical Storm Jova formed around 11 p.m. EDT on Friday, August 11. Now, wind shear it tearing the storm apart.

At 12:45 p.m. EDT (1500 UTC) on Sunday, August 13, NOAA's GOES-West satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Depression Jova that showed wind shear was pushing most of the clouds southwest of the center of circulation. That wind shear is causing the demise of the depression.

NOAA manages the GOES series of satellites. NASA/NOAA's GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland uses the satellite data to create imagery.

Exposure to high levels of air pollution increased stress hormone levels and negative metabolic changes in otherwise healthy, young adults in a recent study conducted in China. Air purifiers appeared to lessen the negative effects, according to new research published in the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation.

Researchers focused on fine particulate matter (PM2.5) – a component of air pollution emitted from vehicles, factories, power plants, fires and smoking – because many studies have suggested this type of major air pollutant might lead to cardiovascular and metabolic health consequences, according to Haidong Kan, M.D., Ph.D., study author and professor of environmental health sciences at Fudan University in Shanghai, China.

As global temperatures continue to rise, droughts are expected to become more frequent and severe in many regions during this century. A new study with NASA participation finds that land ecosystems took progressively longer to recover from droughts in the 20th century, and incomplete drought recovery may become the new normal in some areas, possibly leading to tree death and increased emissions of greenhouse gases.

In results published Aug. 10 in the journal Nature, a research team led by Christopher Schwalm of Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, Massachusetts, and including a scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, measured recovery time following droughts in various regions of the world. They used projections from climate models verified by observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite and ground measurements. The researchers found that drought recovery was taking longer in all land areas. In two particularly vulnerable regions -- the tropics and northern high latitudes -- recovery took ever longer than in other regions.