• Experts: German nuclear exit offers economic, environmental benefits

    Following the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in 2011, the German government took the nation’s eight oldest reactors offline immediately and passed legislation which will close the last nuclear power plant by 2022; this nuclear phase-out had overwhelming political support in Germany; elsewhere, many saw it as “panic politics”; a new collection of studies shows that the nuclear shutdown and an accompanying move toward renewable energy are already yielding measurable economic and environmental benefits

  • Rising sea levels make NYC vulnerable to more frequent, more intense floods

    Scientists say that Hurricane Sandy has forced a recognition on New York City and on other coastal communities: the steady rise in sea levels means not only more floods, but more frequent and more devastating floods; three of the top 10 highest floods at the Battery since 1900 happened in the last two and a half years; after rising roughly an inch per decade in the last century, coastal waters in New York are expected to climb as fast as six inches per decade, or two feet by midcentury; the city is exploring a $10 billion system of surge barriers and huge sea gates

  • Study connects burning fossil fuels to sea level rise

    A study has found that burning all the Earth’s reserves of fossil fuels could cause sea levels to rise by as much as five meters — with levels continuing to rise for typically 500 years after carbon dioxide emissions ceased

  • Leading U.S., U.K. scientists condemn conviction of Italian earthquake scientists

    A judge in Italy last week sentenced six Italian seismologists and a former government official to six years in prison over the deadly 6 April 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila. The seven defendants were found guilty of manslaughter; Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and Sir Paul Nurse, president of the U.K. Royal Society, issued the following statement

  • Researchers invent safe wireless vehicle charging technology

    Researchers have invented a safe, efficient technology wirelessly to charge electric vehicles using “remote magnetic gears” — a rotating base magnet driven by electricity from the grid, and a second located within the car — and successfully tested it on campus service vehicles

  • A coal economy has multiple health, social risks, says major review

    A major review of evidence on the impact of coal mining has highlighted serious, ongoing health and social problems, and an urgent need for improvements in government coal mining policy

  • USGS: Sandy will erode many Atlantic Coast beaches

    Nearly three quarters of the coast along the Delmarva Peninsula is very likely to experience beach and dune erosion as Hurricane Sandy makes landfall, while overwash is expected along nearly half of the shoreline; the predictions of coastal change for the Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia peninsula is part of a larger assessment of probable coastal change released by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)

  • Hurricanes will test Florida buildings, built under new, post-Wilma building codes

    In 2005 Hurricane Wilma was responsible for five deaths and millions of dollars worth of damage in Florida; building codes in the state were updated, and experts predict that these new buildings, most of which were designed with wind-tunnel testing, should perform well in all but the most severe conditions

  • Human activity can trigger an earthquake

    Earthquakes occur when tectonic plates try to move past each other, and the friction between them holds them in place; the friction creates energy which builds up, and when the plates move past each other, the energy is released, triggering an earthquake; fracturing increases the fluid pressure inside faults; this increased pressure, in turn, lowers the stress threshold for triggering an earthquake enough for one to take place

  • Thawing permafrost to release nitrogen, carbon – doubling the amount of carbon in the atmosphere today

    As much as forty-four billion tons of nitrogen and 850 billion tons of carbon stored in arctic permafrost, or frozen ground, could be released into the environment as the region begins to thaw over the next century as a result of a warmer planet; for context, this is roughly the amount of carbon stored in the atmosphere today

  • U.S. East Coast braces for Sandy

    Residents along the U.S. Atlantic coast, from North Carolina to Maine, were bracing form Hurricane Sandy landfall; people began to evacuate certain areas, while in many other places school closures were announced and supplies were quickly disappearing from stores’ shelves; public transit services were suspended Sunday evening, and more than 3,000 flights canceled; the hurricane may be especially ferocious because it was on its path to meet a winter storm and a cold front, together with high tides from a full moon

  • Asteroid DA14 will be whizzing by Earth on 15 February -- the closest asteroid fly by in history

    On 15 February 2013, asteroid 2012 DA14, the size of a city block, will be whizzing within 14,000 miles of Earth, squeezing between Earth’s atmosphere and the geostationary satellites orbiting the planet; it will be the closest asteroid fly by in history; experts say there is no chance the asteroid will hit Earth — this time; with more than 4,700 asteroids NASA has identified as potential threats to Earth, however, some as big as sixteen football fields, these objects are getting a lot of attention

  • Paintballs may deflect an incoming asteroid

    With twenty years’ notice, paint pellets could cause an asteroid to veer off course; researchers say that, if timed just right, pellets full of paint powder, launched in two rounds from a spacecraft at relatively close distance, would cover the front and back of an asteroid, more than doubling its reflectivity, or albedo; the initial force from the pellets would bump an asteroid off course; over time, the sun’s photons would deflect the asteroid even more

  • U.S. shale gas drives up coal exports – and CO2 emissions

    U.S. CO2 emissions from domestic energy have declined by 8.6 percent since a peak in 2005, the equivalent of 1.4 percent per year; researchers warn, however, that more than half of the recent emissions reductions in the power sector may be displaced overseas by the trade in coal

  • Making toilets out of waste plastic

    Washington Open Object Fabricators (WOOF) has won the 3D4D Challenge, and awarded a prize of $100,000 to help toward implementing the winning project – which will enable waste plastic to be used as filament for 3D printing machines, to create new products; the winning team plans to use the winning technology to address local issues in water and sanitation in Oaxaca, Mexico