Tech

New research from the University of Cincinnati shows how some things you do to make your lawn green might not be conducive to "going green."

Amy Townsend-Small, a UC assistant professor of geology and geography, will present her research, "Carbon Sequestration and Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Urban Ecosystems," at the Association of American Geographers annual meeting to be held April 9-13 in Los Angeles. The interdisciplinary forum is attended by more than 7,000 scientists from around the world and features an array of geography-related presentations, workshops and field trips.

University of Cincinnati student Shujie Wang has discovered that a good way to monitor the environmental health of Antarctica is to go with the flow – the ice flow, that is.

It's an important parameter to track because as Antarctica's health goes, so goes the world's.

"The ice sheet in Antarctica is the largest fresh water reservoir on Earth, and if it were totally melted, the sea level would rise by more than 60 meters. So it is quite important to measure the ice mass loss there," says Wang, a doctoral student in geography in UC's McMicken College of Arts & Sciences.

NEW ORLEANS, April 9, 2013 — The most serious ongoing water pollution problem in the Gulf of Mexico originates not from oil rigs, as many people believe, but rainstorms and fields of corn and soybeans a thousand miles away in the Midwest. An expert on that problem — the infamous Gulf of Mexico "Dead Zone" — today called for greater awareness of the connections between rainfall and agriculture in the Midwest and the increasingly severe water quality problems in the gulf.

San Diego, CA, April 9, 2013 – A new study published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine finds that Google searches for information across all major mental illnesses and problems followed seasonal patterns, suggesting mental illness may be more strongly linked with seasonal patterns than previously thought.

NEW ORLEANS, April 8, 2013 — Cuts in federal funding of nanotechnology research threaten to slow progress toward some of the field's greatest promises, including commercialization of sustainable new energy sources that do not contribute to global warming, an international authority in the field cautioned here today.

NEW ORLEANS, April 8, 2013 — The search for ways to use megatons of carbon dioxide that may be removed from industrial smokestacks during efforts to curb global warming has led to a process for converting that major greenhouse gas back into the fuel that released it in the first place. Research on the project was a topic here today at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society.

NEW ORLEANS, April 8, 2013 — The Gulf of Mexico may have a much greater natural ability to self-clean oil spills than previously believed, an expert in bioremediation said here today at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society.

The Gulf of Mexico may have a much greater natural ability to self-clean oil spills than previously believed, according to Terry Hazen, University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge National Laboratory Governor's Chair for Environmental Biotechnology.

The bioremediation expert presented his Deepwater Horizon disaster research findings at the 245th National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society.

The rapid growth of the solar power industry over the past decade may have exacerbated the global warming situation it was meant to soothe, simply because most of the energy used to manufacture the millions of solar panels came from burning fossil fuels. That irony, according to Stanford University researchers, is coming to an end.

Franz, graduate students Megan Danielewicz, Diana Wong and Lisa Anderson, and undergraduate student Jordan Boothe screened 83 compounds for their effects on growth and oil production in four strains of microalgae. They identified several that could boost oil production by up to 85 percent, without decreasing growth.

Among the promising compounds were common antioxidants such as epigallocatechin gallate, found in green tea, and butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), a common food preservative.

The study analyzes the potential of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to coordinate people. In recent years there have been a number of examples of how social networks have served to mobilize volunteers during natural disasters, political campaigns, health emergencies, etc. But can we really depend on the use of social networks to carry out these tasks? And if it is possible, what is the risk that this strategy will fail?

Alexandria, VA – For decades, scientists have used sophisticated instruments and computer models to predict the nature of droughts. With the threat of climate change looming large, the majority of these models have steadily predicted an increasingly frequent and severe global drought cycle. But a recent study from a team of researchers at Princeton University and the Australian National University suggests that one of these widely used tools — the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) — may be incorrect.

NEW ORLEANS, April 8, 2013 — Technology that enlists natural soil bacteria as 21st century roughnecks now is commercially available and poised to recover precious oil remaining in thousands of exhausted oil wells, according to a scientist who spoke here today. His report on a process termed microbially enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) was part of the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.