Cleaning up or replacing coal-fired power plants that lack sulfur pollution controls could help Texans breathe cleaner, healthier air, according to researchers at Rice University.

With a growing world population and climate challenges that are causing agricultural areas to shrink, many are wondering where sustainable food will come from in the future. A professor of gastrophysics from the Department of Food Science at the University of Copenhagen and a chef offer a suggestion in a new research article: The cephalopod population (including squid, octopus and cuttlefish) in the oceans is growing and growing – let’s get better at cooking them so that many more people will want to eat them!

Ambient air quality monitoring data are the most important source for public awareness regarding air quality and are widely used in many research fields, such as improving air quality forecasting and the analysis of haze episodes. However, there are outliers among such monitoring data, due to instrument malfunctions, the influence of harsh environments, and the limitation of measuring methods.

On paper, carbon capture is a simple proposition: Take carbon that we’ve pulled out of the Earth in the form of coal and oil and put into the atmosphere, and pull it out of the atmosphere and put it back in the Earth. It’s like hitting undo on the Industrial Revolution. And scientists can indeed yank CO2 out of thin air, except that the process is expensive, not very efficient, and morally complicated.

Exposure to wood smoke can have different effects on the respiratory immune systems of men and women – effects that may be obscured when data from men and women are lumped together, according to a study published today in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine by scientists at the UNC School of Medicine and the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.

The compound, carbon tetrachloride, contributes to the destruction of the Earth’s ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation.

Air pollution and transportation noise are both associated with an increased risk of heart attacks. Studies on air pollution, which do not take into account traffic noise, tend to overestimate the long-term effect of air pollution on heart attacks. These are the results of a study conducted by the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and published today in the European Heart Journal.

An annual model-based report on “dead-zone” conditions in the Chesapeake Bay during 2018 indicates that the total volume of low-oxygen, “hypoxic” waters was very similar to the previous year, but a sharp drop in hypoxia during late July shows the critical role of wind mixing in short-term variations in the oxygen content of Bay waters. The duration of hypoxia in 2018 was greater than in recent years.

Manchester-based Volcanologists have developed a method and camera that could help reduce the dangers, health risks and travel impacts of ash plumes during a volcanic eruption.

In the Canadian Arctic, a mystery has troubled scientists and local communities for decades: Why do marine animals in the western Arctic have higher mercury levels than those in the east?