Canada has already had its share of wildfires this season, and the smoke from these wildfires is slowly drifting south over the United States' Midwest.  The drifting smoke can be seen in this Terra satellite image over Lake Michigan, as well as parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio. 

The smoke released by any type of fire (forest, brush, crop, structure, tires, waste or wood burning) is a mixture of particles and chemicals produced by incomplete burning of carbon-containing materials. All smoke contains carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and particulate matter (PM or soot). Smoke can contain many different chemicals, including aldehydes, acid gases, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), benzene, toluene, styrene, metals and dioxins.

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Most Americans are aware that food waste is a problem, are concerned about it, and say they work to reduce their own waste, but nearly three-quarters believe that they waste less food than the national average, new research suggests. The findings, from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, are significant given that 31 to 40 percent of the American food supply goes to waste, primarily in homes, stores and restaurants. The top foods wasted, by weight, are fruits and vegetables, due in part to their perishability and bulk. Food waste costs Americans $161.6 billion annually.

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Having a hierarchical social structure with just a few well-connected leaders enables pigeon flocks to navigate more accurately on the wing, new research shows.

Hierarchical organisation also enables flocks to cope better with navigation errors made by individual birds.

Researchers from Oxford University and the Zoological Society of London created 'virtual flocks' of homing pigeons to test how different social networks affect the navigation performance of these groups. The team's simulations looked at everything from no networks (all connections between individuals were of equal strength) to random networks (some connections were stronger than others but randomly distributed) to hierarchical networks with just a few well-connected individuals leading the way.

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Una nueva investigación ha sugerido una revisión a la forma en que los dispositivos móviles se fabrican y se contratan, con el fin de detener los efectos nocivos sobre el medio ambiente causados ​​por los actuales modelos de negocio.

Investigadores de la Universidad de Surrey, Inglaterra, analizaron la vida útil de los dispositivos móviles, desde su producción y uso hasta su disposición, para ver qué impacto tiene cada etapa de... 

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Este estudio, realizado por ingenieros de la Universidad de Sheffield, es el primero en demostrar, de manera concluyente, que los contaminantes pueden entrar en las tuberías a través de filtraciones y ser transportado a través de la red de tuberías.

La presión en las tuberías de agua generalmente obliga al agua a salir través de las fugas, previniendo que cualquier otra cosa entre al sistema. Pero cuando hay una caída de presión... 

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A study on ash blasted from volcanoes is a first step towards accurately assessing where it is safe to fly during eruptions, according to the authors. The researchers found that the ash grains ejected into the atmosphere have diverse shapes and properties. They also learned that big grains can travel further than was previously estimated. All this could improve existing models of ash concentrations, which governments and airlines use to make flight decisions during eruptions, they say. Ash can cause aircraft engines to fail.

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