A ballooning world population, projected to hit 10 billion around 2060, is raising public concerns, according to a new study by the University of Southampton.
The research into public perceptions of population growth shows people are worried the increase will create moderate-to-high risks, with concerns focussing on food and water shortages, species extinctions and other catastrophic consequences.
Fossil fuels propelled the Industrial Revolution and subsequent technological advances. However, our future cannot be based on them, if only because they are a finite resource; and we are very close to exhausting them.
Renewable hydropower generated from desalination plants and other existing infrastructure would bring economic and environmental benefits to our biggest cities, according to new research from Griffith University.
Based on studies focused on Warragamba Dam -- the main water reservoir for Australia's biggest city, Sydney -- scientists say their findings offer new options for government, industry and city planners on urban water and energy management.
The findings are published in the esteemed journal, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.
Scientists have harnessed static electricity to control chemical reactions for the first time, in a breakthrough that could bring cleaner industry and cheaper nanotechnology.
The team used an electric field as a catalyst for a common reaction, the Diels-Alder reaction, improving its reaction rate by a factor of five.
Unlike conventional energy sources, like coal or oil, the supply and demand of renewable energy are, to a large extent, unpredictable because they are affected by the natural fluctuations in the power source itself. This poses a number of difficulties in calculating how much renewable energy will be available for consumer needs at any given time.
Children and adolescents who take medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) show decreased bone density, according to a large cross-sectional study presented today at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS).
"This is an important step in understanding a medication class, that is used with increasing frequency, and its effect on children who are at a critical time for building their bones," said senior study author Jessica Rivera, MD, an orthopaedic surgeon with the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research.
Neil Sturchio, professor and chair of the University of Delaware's Department of Geological Sciences, is exploring how the thawing of permafrost, a subsurface layer of soil that remains mostly frozen throughout the year, affects vegetation and the carbon cycle in the Toolik Lake area of the Alaska's North Slope.
"There is a lot of carbon frozen in the Arctic soil's permafrost layer. If this all thaws out, prevailing thought is that the carbon in the soil could be released to the atmosphere and potentially accelerate global warming," said Sturchio.
If you buy a hybrid SUV rather than a conventional SUV of equal size, you naturally think you have chosen the "green" option. But that hybrid vehicle is not greener than a conventional compact car that gets poorer mileage than the hybrid.
Irvine, Calif., March 2, 2016 -- With findings that could have been taken from the pages of a spy novel, researchers at the University of California, Irvine have demonstrated that they can purloin intellectual property by recording and processing sounds emitted by a 3-D printer.
For Pennsylvania dairy farmers, producing feed grain on-farm requires significantly less energy than importing it from the Midwest, according to Penn State researchers whose findings may help dairy farmers save energy and money in the face of rising feed costs.
The Syrian civil war, which began in 2011, continues to result in death, destruction and displacement. The country's higher education system has suffered dramatically, too. An article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, explores some of the struggles that academics in Syria face today.
Inspired by nature, University of Huddersfield scientist Dr Jason Camp is pioneering the use of simple sugars to power chemical reactions. It means that industries such as pharmaceuticals and agro-chemicals will have a renewable, inexpensive and non-toxic method of catalysis. The project has received financial backing from several leading firms.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a main component of smokestack emissions and the most important greenhouse gas implicated in climate change. This week in ACS Central Science, researchers show that they can turn this pollutant into something useful--a material in high demand for high- tech batteries that are needed to store "green" energy such as solar power, while limiting the environmental impact of current power plants.
An interdisciplinary team of scientists has worked out a way to make electric vehicles that are not only carbon neutral, but carbon negative, capable of actually reducing the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide as they operate.
They have done so by demonstrating how the graphite electrodes used in the lithium-ion batteries that power electric automobiles can be replaced with carbon material recovered from the atmosphere.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (http://www.ucr.edu) -- A team of researchers, led by a group at the University of California, Riverside, have demonstrated for the first time the transmission of electrical signals through insulators in a sandwich-like structure, a development that could help create more energy efficient electronic devices.