articles

Drivers who drop off their kids at school should turn off their engines

We think of schools as safe places for children but an invisible hazard is lurking right outside the front door,  says a new study from the University of Toronto.

Faced with a lawsuit by 15 states, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced this week it would no longer delay the implementation of a rule requiring states to reduce emissions of smog-creating air pollution. 

Crafted by the Obama administration in 2015, the regulation calls for states to begin meeting stricter ozone standards as of October 1, 2017, lowering the air pollution limit from 0.075 parts per million to 0.070 ppm.  Ground-level ozone, or smog, is created when pollutants from cars, power plants, and other common industrial activities react with sunlight.  It can cause respiratory and other health problems.  In June, U.S. EPA head Scott Pruitt announced the agency would delay implementation of the new standards by one year.

If ocean temperatures continue to climb, you’re going to need a bigger boat.

Great white sharks could one day be swimming in British Columbia waters, according to William Cheung, associate professor at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at UBC who studies the impact of climate change on marine ecosystems.

According to a prediction made by the U.S. Department of Energy, wind energy could provide 20 percent of electricity in the U.S. by the year 2030. This has motivated researchers from the University of Utah’s Department of Mechanical Engineering to investigate the performance capabilities and financial benefits of vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) in urban and suburban areas. 

A VAWT is a wind turbine design where the generator is vertically oriented in the tower, rather than sitting horizontally on top. While there are many VAWT designs, the one used in this study is called the straight-blade Darrieus type or H-rotor turbine.

According to the researchers, small VAWTs possess the ability to effectively operate in the presence of high turbulent flow, which makes them ideal energy harvesting devices in urban and suburban environments. In an article in this week’s Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, from AIP Publishing, the authors present results indicating that an optimally designed VAWT system can financially compete with fossil-fuel based power plants in urban and suburban areas, and even spearhead the development of a net-zero energy building or city. 

A recent study from North Carolina State University finds that advanced wood-burning stoves designed for use in the developing world can reduce air pollution more than anticipated, because gaseous emissions from traditional wood stoves form more particulate matter in the atmosphere than researchers previously thought.