• The historical probability of drought

    Droughts can severely limit crop growth, causing yearly losses of around $8 billion in the United States. It may be possible, however, to minimize those losses if farmers can synchronize the growth of crops with periods of time when drought is less likely to occur. Researchers are working to create a reliable “calendar” of seasonal drought patterns that could help farmers optimize crop production by avoiding days prone to drought.

  • Americans’ health worst among high-income countries

    On average, Americans die sooner and experience higher rates of disease and injury than people in other high-income countries. This health disadvantage exists even though the United States spends more per capita on health care than any other nation. A new study offers a comprehensive comparison of the United States with sixteen peer nations — affluent democracies that include Australia, Canada, Japan, and many Western European countries.  Among these countries, the United States is at or near the bottom in the nine key areas of health to study examined.

  • Improving cities by using the notion of “urban metabolism”

    As is the case with organisms, cities need energy, water, and nutrients, and they need to dispose of wastes and byproducts in ways which are viable and sustainable over the long run. This concept of “urban metabolism” is a model for looking systematically at the resources that flow into cities and the wastes and emissions that flow out from them in order better to understand the environmental impacts of cities and to highlight opportunities for efficiencies, improvements, and transformation.

  • Better predictions of Asian summer monsoons, tropical storms

    The amount of rainfall and number of tropical storms during the summer monsoon season greatly impact the agriculture, economy, and people in Asia. Though meteorologists and climate scientists have worked for years to develop helpful prediction systems, seasonal predictions of these two types of weather phenomena are still poor. Scientists have now made a promising breakthrough for predicting in spring both the summer monsoon rainfall over East Asia and the number of tropical storms affecting East Asian coastal areas.

  • South African study highlights African fuelwood crisis

    Researchers have found that at current consumption levels in the communal areas of Lowveld, South Africa, reserves of fuelwood could be totally exhausted within thirteen years. The consequences are significant, with around half of the 2.4 million rural households in the country using wood as their primary fuel source, burning between four and seven million tons per year.

  • Fracking generates less wastewater per unit of gas, but more overall

    Hydraulically fractured natural gas wells are producing less wastewater per unit of gas recovered than conventional wells would. The scale of fracking operations in the Marcellus shale region – which stretches from New York to Virginia and accounts for about 10 percent of all natural gas produced in the United States today — is so vast, however, that the wastewater it produces threatens to overwhelm the region’s wastewater disposal capacity.

  • Large amounts of antibacterial agent used in soaps found in freshwater lakes

    When people wash their hands with antibacterial soap, most do not think about where the chemicals contained in that soap end up. A new study determined that the common antibacterial agent, called triclosan, used in soaps and many other products, is found in increasing amounts in several Minnesota freshwater lakes.

  • CDC: Severe flu strain spreading across U.S.

    According to the Center for Disease Control(CDC), thirty states  are reporting high levels of flu-like illnesses. The flu  going around this year is called HN32, and this strain is likely to keep people ill for longer periods than other strains.

  • Designer bacteria show way for better vaccines

    Researchers have developed a menu of sixty-one new strains of genetically engineered bacteria that may improve the efficacy of vaccines for diseases such as flu, pertussis, cholera, and HPV. The strains are part of a new class of biological “adjuvants” that is poised to transform vaccine design. Adjuvants are substances added to vaccines to boost the human immune response.

  • Personal genetic information vulnerable to hacking

    Using only a computer, an Internet connection, and publicly accessible online resources, a team of researchers has been able to identify nearly fifty individuals who had submitted personal genetic material as participants in genomic studies.

  • Flu virus can tell time

    The flu knows how much time it has to multiply, infect other cells, and spread to another human being before the immune system kills it. The discovery of the flu virus’s timing mechanism gives scientists the ability to reset the virus’s clock and combat it in more effective ways.

  • Tires shipped from Arizona to a U.K. contained black widow spiders

    Two shipments of tires from an Arizona company to a U.K.-based client contained dozens of deadly Black Widow spiders; it appears that the spiders nested in the tires in Arizona, and hatched a brood of young spiders while the shipment was on its 5,000-mile journey to England.

  • Better screening for bacteria for safer food

    There are around 5.4 million cases of food-borne gastroenteritis in Australia every year. Of these cases, it is estimated that around 200,000 are associated with the bacteria Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli. Chicken meat and other foods will be able to be screened for bacteria even faster and more effectively than ever, thanks to breakthrough nanobiotechnology research.

  • Global warming threatens U.K. diet

    The number of days with temperatures over 32 degrees C has more than doubled in some parts of France over the last fifty years. Many other land areas show similar increases. By the 2020s, temperatures over 32 degrees C could occur over large areas of France where previously they were uncommon. Maize yields are reduced significantly for each day with temperatures over around 32 degrees Celsius. The United Kingdom imports more maize from France than anywhere else in the world, and declining crop yields in France mean that U.K. consumers will have to pay more for maize-based foods, or change their diets.

  • Drought, heat turn hundreds of U.S. counties into disaster areas

    The U.S. Agriculture Department (USDA) last week said that drought conditions and heat necessitated designating 597 counties in fourteen states as primary natural disaster areas. The affected counties have suffered severe drought for eight consecutive weeks, which qualified them for the automatic designation. 2012 had been the hottest year on record for the continental United States: the year’s average temperature of 55.3 degrees Fahrenheit across the Lower 48, which was more than 3.2 degrees warmer than the average for the twentieth century.