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Fue hace 30 años que una crisis en la central eléctrica nuclear de V. I. Lenin en la antigua Unión Soviética lanzó contaminantes radiactivos en el entorno en el norte de Ucrania. La contaminación en el aire de lo que ahora se denomina genéricamente como la catástrofe de Chernobyl, se extendió mucho más allá de las inmediaciones de la planta de energía, y una región de aproximadamente 2,600 Km2 en Ucrania, Bielorrusia y Rusia permanece acordonada, una zona de exclusión, donde la presencia humana está prohibida.

Con sólo unos días por delante antes de la fecha límite, Volkswagen AG (VW) y el gobierno de EE.UU. llegaron a un acuerdo parcial sobre cómo hacer frente a las emisiones de escándalo "dieselgate" de la automotriz.

Volkswagen acordó arreglar o volver a comprar unos 500,000 vehículos involucrados en la crisis. 

Most of us think of that sweet smell after a storm as the aftereffect of rain that has rinsed the air of pollutants and dust. But it turns out that rain also triggers the release of a mist of particles from wet soils into the air, a finding with consequences of its own for how scientists model our planet's climate and future.

The evidence comes in the form of tiny glassy spheres, less than one-hundredth the width of a human hair, discovered at the Great Plains of Oklahoma after a rainstorm and put under scrutiny by scientists at several U.S. Department of Energy facilities. The study appears May 2 in Nature Geoscience.

According to the authors, scientists have largely assumed that organic particles from the soil enter the air through erosion by wind or through agricultural work. The effects of rain splash haven't been part of the discussion.

But the team's field observations indicate that up to 60 percent of particles that are airborne after a rainstorm in certain areas, such as grasslands and tilled fields, come from the soil. These organic particles are carbon-based and come from decaying vegetation and organisms. The tiny bits of organic matter can hold tremendous sway over our climate, playing a role in the fate of sunlight as it hits Earth.

Authors of the study are from two DOE Office of Science user facilities — EMSL, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory — as well as the Berkeley Lab and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Chemist Alexander Laskin led the team at PNNL and chemical scientist Mary Gilles led the group at the Berkeley Lab.

A small mammal has sabotaged the world's most powerful scientific instrument.

The Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile superconducting machine designed to smash protons together at close to the speed of light, went offline overnight. Engineers investigating the mishap found the charred remains of a furry creature near a gnawed-through power cable.

"We had electrical problems, and we are pretty sure this was caused by a small animal," says Arnaud Marsollier, head of press for CERN, the organization that runs the $7 billion particle collider in Switzerland. Although they had not conducted a thorough analysis of the remains, Marsollier says they believe the creature was "a weasel, probably." (Update: An official briefing document from CERN indicates the creature may have been a marten.)

The shutdown comes as the LHC was preparing to collect new data on the Higgs Boson, a fundamental particle it discovered in 2012. The Higgs is believed to endow other particles with mass, and it is considered to be a cornerstone of the modern theory of particle physics.

La Asociación Americana del Pulmón ha publicado su informe anual "Estado del Aire" y sus conclusiones son preocupantes. La mayoría de los estadounidenses viven en condados donde la contaminación del aire es tan mala que es un grave riesgo para su salud. De acuerdo con el informe, eso significa que 166 millones de personas están en riesgo de una muerte prematura y con problemas de salud significativos, incluyendo asma, cáncer y daños en el desarrollo.