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Lakes Environmental Research announced today the issuance of patent number 9,605,212 B2 by the US Patent Office that covers a revolutionary oil sands recovery process.  The “Novel Ultra-Low Water Oil-Sands Recovery Process” (NUWORP) significantly reduces, with the potential to eliminate, three of the greatest barriers to wider adoption of oil sands production.  

A new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill estimates that future climate change, if left unaddressed, is expected to cause roughly 60,000 deaths globally in the year 2030 and 260,000 deaths in 2100 due to climate change’s effect on global air pollution.

The study, to appear in the July 31 advance online issue of Nature Climate Change, adds to growing evidence that the overall health effects of a changing climate are likely to be overwhelmingly negative. It is also the most comprehensive study yet on how climate change will affect health via air pollution, since it makes use of results from several of the world’s top climate change modeling groups.

The DST-NRF Centre of Excellence for Palaeoscience funded researchers based in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies and in the Evolutionary Studies Institute of the University of the Witwatersrand have used fossil pollen records to solve an on-going debate regarding invasive plant species in eastern Lesotho.

The aardvark, a highlight for anyone on a game-viewing African safari, will become increasingly rare as the world warms and dries, and the consequences go well beyond a decline in aardvark safari encounters.

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has been shown, for the first time, to play a role in increased rainfall and storms along the Red Sea and surrounding regions.