ENN
Environmental News Network -- Know Your Environment
For all the promise they have shown in the lab, polymer solar cells still need to "get on a roll" like the ones employed in printing newspapers so that large sheets of acceptably efficient photovoltaic devices can be manufactured continuously and economically. Polymer solar cells offer advantages over their traditional silicon-based counterparts in numerous ways, including lower cost, potentially smaller carbon footprint and a greater variety of uses.
Batches of sand from a beach on the Delaware Bay are yielding insights into the powerful impact of temperature rise and evaporation along the shore that are in turn challenging long-held assumptions about what causes beach salinity to fluctuate in coastal zones that support a rich network of sea creatures and plants.
The findings have implications for the migration and survival of invertebrates such as mussels and crabs as global warming drives temperatures higher.
A first major study of the effects of evaporation on the flow of subsurface water and salinity, or salt content, in the beach intertidal zone -- the section of the beach between the low and high tide marks -- is being published today in Scientific Reports, an online affiliate of Nature.
El ruido oceánico causado por el transporte, puede hacer que las ballenas jorobadas naden más lentamente y coman con menor frecuencia, según un nuevo estudio en la revista Biology Letters. Un equipo de investigadores de EE.UU. y Reino Unido estudió 10 ballenas jorobadas en el banco de Stellwagen Santuario Marino Nacional, frente a la costa de Massachusetts, con dispositivos que rastrearon simultáneamente los movimientos de las ballenas y el ruido subacuático.
Lead problems with the water in Flint, Mich., have prompted people across the country to ask whether they or their families have been exposed to the toxic metal in their drinking water, too.
When it comes to assessing the risk, it's important to look in the right places.
Even when municipal water systems' lead levels are considered perfectly fine by federal standards, the metal can leach into tap water from lead plumbing.
NASA's RapidScat instrument provided measurements of sustained wind speeds as Tropical Storm Conson continued tracking north through the northwestern Pacific Ocean.
When RapidScat passed over Conson on Aug. 10, it was near peak intensity. RapidScat measured maximum sustained winds around the center of circulation as fast as 49 mph (22 meters per second/79 kph) on Aug. 10. The RapidScat instrument that flies aboard the International Space Station measures Earth's ocean surface wind speed and direction over open waters.
An international team of scientists led by the University of Copenhagen and including the University of Oxford has found that the Greenland shark has a life expectancy of at least 272 years. This discovery shows it is the longest living vertebrate known to science, exceeding even bowhead whales, turtles and tortoises. The findings are published in latest issue of the journal, Science.
