Washing clothes releases thousands of microplastic particles into environment

Posted 2016-10-03 14:36:51 by: David Paulus

More than 700,000 microscopic fibres could be released into waste water during each use of a domestic washing machine, with many of them likely to pass through sewage treatment and into the environment, according to new ...

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Desalinating (and drinking) seawater: Towards novel desalination membranes with enhanced performance

Posted 2016-10-03 13:24:30 by: David Paulus

An innovative way to improve the performance of desalination membranes has been revealed by researchers. In the future, membranes for reverse osmosis manufactured with these novel criteria could desalinate seawater with significantly reduced ...

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Research provides understanding about expansion and contraction of the tropical rain belt

Posted 2016-10-01 14:15:20 by: David Paulus

New research looks at the monsoon rains that fell in northern Australia over the past 3,000 years. The scientists explored the rainfall amounts by looking at the isotopes of oxygen in ...

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Lake brownification, eutrophication decrease the content of essential fatty acids in fish used in human diets

Posted 2016-09-30 16:02:44 by: David Paulus

Eutrophication and brownification change phytoplankton community structure and decrease the production of essential omega-3 fatty acids in lakes. Perch growing in oligotrophic clear-water lakes contain 1.5-1.9 times more essential omega-3 fatty acids than those grown in eutrophic and brown-water ...

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Controlled rogue wave created in realistic oceanic conditions

Posted 2016-09-30 12:06:08 by: David Paulus

Potentially extremely dangerous realistic rogue waves - also called as freak waves - can now be controlled and generated at will in laboratory environments, in similar conditions as they appear in the ocean. This will help us not only to predict oceanic extreme events, but also in the design of safer ships and offshore rigs. In fact, newly designed vessels and rig model prototypes can be tested to encounter in a small scale, before they are built, realistic extreme ocean ...

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Ocean conditions contributed to unprecedented 2015 toxic algal bloom

Posted 2016-09-29 18:48:00 by: David Paulus

A new paper is the first to connect the unprecedented West Coast toxic algal bloom of 2015 to the unusually warm ocean conditions - nicknamed "the blob" - in winter and spring of that ...

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Wind turbines killing more than just local birds

Posted 2016-09-29 18:38:08 by: David Paulus

Wind turbines are known to kill large birds, such as golden eagles, that live nearby. Now there is evidence that birds from up to hundreds of miles away make up a significant portion of the raptors that are killed at these wind energy ...

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Water crisis in Bangladesh

Posted 2016-09-28 19:35:50 by: David Paulus

Overpumping of groundwater to supply one of the planet's largest cities could be jeopardizing the future water supply for citizens living outside the city center, say researchers working in Dhaka, Bangladesh. With a population of over 15 million people, Dhaka is considered a mega-city and shares many of the water management problems common to other major ...

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Solution blooming for fracking spills?

Posted 2016-09-28 18:05:19 by: David Paulus

Wastewater from oil drilling and hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – is often laden with salts and can spill, contaminating soils. In a recent study, researchers tested a method that extracted a large percentage of the salt present in soils contaminated by brine ...

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Study of North Atlantic Ocean reveals decline of leaded petrol emissions

Posted 2016-09-28 14:16:47 by: David Paulus

A new study of lead pollution in the North Atlantic provides strong evidence that leaded petrol emissions have declined over the past few decades. For the first time in around 40 years, scientists have detected lead from natural sources in samples from this ocean. In the intervening period, the proportion of lead in the ocean from humanmade sources, most importantly leaded petrol emissions, had been so high that it was not possible to detect any lead from natural ...

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