Ozone is a problematic air pollutant that causes serious health problems. A newly developed material not only quickly and selectively indicates the presence of ozone, but also simultaneously renders the gas harmless. As reported by Chinese researchers in Angewandte Chemie, the porous “two-in-one systems” also function reliably in very humid air.
Ozone (O3) can cause health problems, such as difficulty breathing, lung damage, and asthma attacks. Relevant occupational safety regulations therefore limit the concentrations of ozone allowable in the workplace. Previous methods for the detection of ozone, such as those based on semiconductors, have a variety of disadvantages, including high power consumption, low selectivity, and malfunction due to humid air. Techniques aimed at reducing the concentration of ozone have thus far been based mainly on activated charcoal, chemical absorption, or catalytic degradation.
A team led by Zhenjie Zhang at Nankai University (Tianjin, China) set themselves the goal of developing a material that can both rapidly detect and efficiently remove ozone. Their approach uses materials known as covalent organic frameworks (COFs). COFs are two- or three-dimensional organic solids with extended porous crystalline structures; their components are bound together by strong covalent bonds. COFs can be tailored to many applications through the selection of different components.
Ingestion of degrading ocean plastics likely poses a substantial risk to the survival of post-hatchling sea turtles because the particles can lead to blockages and nutritional deficiencies, according to new research from Loggerhead Marinelife Center and the University of Georgia. This puts the survival of all sea turtle populations at risk, because sea turtles may take decades to become sexually mature. The study also suggests that micronizing plastics could have tremendous negative implications for the ocean’s food web.
“We may be in the early phases of the first micronized plastic waste-associated species population decline or extinction event,” said co-author Branson W. Ritchie, a veterinarian with more than 30 years of experience in exotic and wildlife medicine and the director of technology development and implementation for the UGA New Materials Institute. “But, an even bigger issue is what micronizing plastics are doing to the ocean’s ecosystem. As ocean plastics continue to micronize, smaller and smaller particles are being consumed by the smallest creatures in our oceans, which compromises the entire food chain, because the plastic in these animals inhibits their ability to uptake the nutrients they need to survive. If the level of mortality we have observed in post-hatchling sea turtles also occurs for zoo plankton, baby fish and crustaceans, then we will witness a complete disruption in our ocean life cycle.”
and why we should all be concerned about prison time for peaceful protestors.
By Ceri jones
Fracking splits opinions, but even more so today. It’s true that, for the time being at least, we need hydrocarbons. Regardless of partial or ‘some day’ alternatives in the energy mix, right now we’re dependent on affordable sources of dirty energy.
But today marks the first time since 1932 that an environmental protester has been sentenced to jail .
Anti-fracking protestors held red roses in support of the men.
Fracking in the UK
Energy company Cuadrilla was granted a licence to drill for shale gas near Preston New Road in the north of England in October 2016. Operations kicked off to construct a fracking pad at the site near Blackpool in January 2017, then on 25 July a convoy of lorries moved in to deliver drilling equipment.
While many members of the local community were up in arms over the decision, four protestors took direct action by climbing on top of lorries – Simon Roscoe Blevins from Sheffield, Richard Roberts from London, Richard Loizou from Devon and Julian Brock from Torquay.
Unable to proceed, the lorries came to standstill and the men sat tight, supplied with food, drinks and blankets by other protestors. Of course, this couldn’t last forever and eventually Loizou descended, closely followed by Blevins and Roberts, and Brock the following day. All were arrested.
Sentencing protestors
Today in Preston Crown Court, Judge Robert Altham sentenced Blevins and Roberts to 16 months in prison, Loizou to 15 months in prison, and Brock to a 12-month suspended sentence, a hefty price for a combined 276 hours sitting atop lorries.
Altham said that, despite their serious concerns for the environment, the defendants saw the public as “necessary and justified collateral damage”. This collateral damage was reported by prosecutor Craig MacGregor as travel disruption, disruption to local residents and loss of trade for businesses over a period of less than four days. However, this translated to police costs and loss of money for Cuadrilla – the biggest factors – totalling £12,000 and £50,000 respectively.
Reminding the court of citizens’ rights to peaceful protests, and that no persons or equipment were damaged, Kirsty Brimelow QC, representing Roberts, pushed the men’s good intentions and said, ‘It is relevant that there is a huge amount of scientific study that points to the damage of increasing climate emissions,’ and she indicated intergovernmental climate panel findings that climate change would displace 75 million people by 2035 and lead to the extinction of one in four species by 2050.
Your opinion on fracking
Whatever your opinion on fracking, an open dialogue cannot be had unless all factors are taken into account, including our urgent and growing need for energy security and that studies have proven that fracking produces radioactive waste.
Added to this, local authority Lancashire County Council opposed the drilling and more than 300 protestors have been arrested since operations started. So it seems that those most likely to be affected by the fracking are the ones not being allowed to exercise their freedom of speech, or had their concerns fall on deaf ears.
Whereas, the government and Cuadrilla stand to earn a great deal of money in their determination to tap that gas.
Industry, economy, business - when is it ever simple? However, it’s essential to keep the conversation open to find a better way to power the country without compromising the people prepared to protect it.
Professor of Chemistry Craig Teague and his students have discovered that the by-products of soft drinks could help reduce global warming.
A Cornell College team of researchers worked with other experts at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee on the idea starting in 2016, and their final conclusions were published in the journal article “Microporous and hollow carbon spheres derived from soft drinks: Promising CO2separation materials” in April of 2019. Their new research shows that the by-products of some soft drinks actually remove carbon dioxide, a gas known to warm the planet, from gas streams.
“In this research, we are looking at turning one waste material into something of value,” Teague said. “We looked at waste soft drinks–asking could we possibly find a way to make that waste useful by doing a simple process in the lab and taking the carbon out? That carbon, by the way we synthesized it, has tiny pores, which are able to capture carbon dioxide.”
The all-white clothes range for Wimbledon, designed by Stella McCartney, is also going green by using recycled materials.
In this new range of tennis-wear Adidas and McCartney are taking steps towards sustainability by creating the clothes out of recycled polyester, a synthetic fibre created using waste materials like plastic bottles and previously used clothing items that have been cleaned and processed again to turn them into new fibres ready for a new purpose.
As well as using recycled polyester, the collection is also made by using parley ocean plastic, which is a material developed from upcycled plastic waste which was picked up and hindered from entering the oceans at beaches and coastal areas before being turned into yarn, according to a press release.
Not only is the clothes made from recycled materials, with a better environmental footprint, but the technology used to create the range – dope dye technology – is also greening the line. The method wastes less water by incorporating colour directly into the material mix at the beginning stage in the production process.
‘Therefore, when the fibre is formed, it is already the desired colour and as a result, reduces wastewater by at least 10 litres per garment,’ the release stated.
The range, sold by Adidas, is available to purchase online now and the range can be seen on Wimbledon players such as Angelique Kerber, Caroline Wozniacki and Alexander Zverev.
Often, the findings of fundamental scientific research are many steps away from a product that can be immediately brought to the public. But every once in a while, opportunity makes an early appearance.
Such was the case for a team from the Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), whose outside-the-box thinking when investigating microbe-based biomanufacturing led straight to an eco-friendly production platform for a blue pigment called indigoidine. With a similar vividly saturated hue as synthetic indigo, a dye used around the world to color denim and many other items, the team’s fungi-produced indigoidine could provide an alternative to a largely environmentally unfriendly process.
“Originally extracted from plants, most indigo used today is synthesized,” said lead researcher Aindrila Mukhopadhyay, who directs the Host Engineering team at JBEI. “These processes are efficient and inexpensive, but they often require toxic chemicals and generate a lot of dangerous waste. With our work we now have a way to efficiently produce a blue pigment that uses inexpensive, sustainable carbon sources instead of harsh precursors. And so far, the platform checks many of the boxes in its promise to be scaled-up for commercial markets.”
The research team of Dr. Jae-woo Choi and Dr. Kyung-won Jung of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology’s (KIST, president: Byung-gwon Lee) Water Cycle Research Center announced that it has developed a wastewater treatment process that uses a common agricultural byproduct to effectively remove pollutants and environmental hormones, which are known to be endocrine disruptors.
The sewage and wastewater that are inevitably produced at any industrial worksite often contain large quantities of pollutants and environmental hormones (endocrine disruptors). Because environmental hormones do not break down easily, they can have a significant negative effect on not only the environment but also the human body. To prevent this, a means of removing environmental hormones is required.
The performance of the catalyst that is currently being used to process sewage and wastewater drops significantly with time. Because high efficiency is difficult to achieve given the conditions, the biggest disadvantage of the existing process is the high cost involved. Furthermore, the research done thus far has mostly focused on the development of single-substance catalysts and the enhancement of their performance. Little research has been done on the development of eco-friendly nanocomposite catalysts that are capable of removing environmental hormones from sewage and wastewater.
The KIST research team, led by Dr. Jae-woo Choi and Dr. Kyung-won Jung, utilized biochar, which is eco-friendly and made from agricultural byproducts, to develop a wastewater treatment process that effectively removes pollutants and environmental hormones. The team used rice hulls, which are discarded during rice harvesting, to create a biochar** that is both eco-friendly and economical. The surface of the biochar was coated with nano-sized manganese dioxide to create a nanocomposite. The high efficiency and low cost of the biochar-nanocomposite catalyst is based on the combination of the advantages of the biochar and manganese dioxide.
A new material that mimics coral could help remove toxic heavy metals like mercury from the ocean, according to a new study published in the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science. The researchers, from Anhui Jianzhu University in China, say their new material could provide inspiration for other approaches to removing pollutants.
Dr. Xianbiao Wang and colleagues have made coral-like nanoplates using aluminium oxide, with the aim of adsorbing mercury from water. Aluminium oxide has previously been used to remove pollutants, but the structure of the material has not been optimal, so they have not performed very well. The new nanoplates curl themselves up into a coral-like structure, which behaves in a similar way to real coral, making the material more effective.
More information:Journal of Colloid and Interface ScienceVolume 453, 1 September 2015, Pages 244–251. DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2015.03.065
Graphical abstract of synthetic coral. Credit: Elsevier
definitely made a lot of “happy mistakes” since environments are not my strong suit, but this was definitely a fun exercise and i hope i can make more of these in the future!!
Loss of wild flowers across Britain matches pollinator decline
The first ever Britain-wide assessment of the value of wild flowers as food for pollinators shows that decreasing floral resources mirror the decline of pollinating insects, providing new evidence to support the link between plant and pollinator decline.
In recent years, there have been considerable concerns over threats to wild bees and other insect pollinators which are vital to the success of important food crops and wild flowers.
Amongst the many pressures facing pollinators, a key factor is likely to be decreasing floral resources in Britain.
The study, published in Nature combines vegetation survey data recorded over the last 80 years with modern day measurements of nectar to provide the most comprehensive assessment ever published.
Healthy plants, including crops and trees, are vital for our future. They are fundamental to our food, environment, economy and social wellbeing.
Plant scientists are finding new ways to solve some of our biggest challenges, such as protecting our forests, finding new fuel sources and ensuring that we have enough food for a growing population.
Did you know that ¼ of all medicines contain materials taken from plants?
And now the consequences are indeed here, and they’re getting worse. Are they really irreversible yet? I honestly don’t know. Would it be irresponsible to gamble on not trying to reverse, or at least mitigate them? I think yes.
“… “I’m taking action because I feel desperate,” said U.S. climate scientist Peter Kalmus, who along with several others locked himself to the front door of a JPMorgan Chase building in Los Angeles. A recent report found that the financial giant is the biggest private funder of oil and gas initiatives in the world.
“It’s the 11th hour in terms of Earth breakdown, and I feel terrified for my kids, and terrified for humanity,” Kalmus continued. “World leaders are still expanding the fossil fuel industry as fast as they can, but this is insane. The science clearly indicates that everything we hold dear is at risk, including even civilization itself and the wonderful, beautiful, cosmically precious life on this planet. I actually don’t get how any scientist who understands this could possibly stay on the sidelines at this point.” …”
Every single denialist depends on the idea that big brother government and climate scientists are on the same side so how do they even begin to fit this into their delusion?
natgeo Photo by @cristinamittermeier // Can you guess what is wrong with this penguin? We spent a month in Antarctica on assignment for @natgeo and it was not until the second week that I realized we had not seen snow once. Every day, however, we experienced several hours of incessant rain. As temperatures warm in Antarctica, the weather regime is changing from snow to rain. In the past, the penguin colony would be covered in snow but now, it is a large, muddy mess. Baby penguins are covered in fluffy down and they can easily preen themselves when it snows. When they get muddy and wet, their down loses its insulation ability and as temperatures drop at night, they become hypothermic and die. As the debate on weather or not to protect the Antarctic Peninsula starts to play out, I hope that the members of the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), who will be voting on this issue are inspired to protect it for all humanity. #Followmeat@cristinamittermeier and follow the conversation at @Sea_legacy
These beautiful photos will make you want to save the Everglades.
“I still see the world through the eyes of a child,” says Mac Stone. “I try to incorporate that sense of wonderment and curiosity into my photography as often as I can.” His photos make the endangered swamplands look utterly enchanting – an effort to inspire people to save them.
“My job is to use photography as a communication tool, to help bridge the gap between the science and the aesthetics,” says Stone. “To get people talking, thinking, and to hopefully, get them caring.”
Hey guys, my sister is currently doing her psychology dissertation on the individuals decision making regarding environmental choices. It would be a HUGE help if you could participant in the questionnaire linked below. All personal information will be recorded as anonymous from those participating and the researchers. (See link below)
