We've all heard of ways to reduce our carbon footprint: biking to work, eating less meat, recycling.But there's another way to help the climate. A recent study from Lund University in Sweden shows that the biggest way to reduce climate change is to have fewer children."I knew this was a sensitive topic to bring up," says study…

In recent years, the best-performing artificial-intelligence systems — in areas such as autonomous driving, speech recognition, computer vision, and automatic translation — have come courtesy of software systems known as neural networks.But neural networks take up a lot of memory and consume a lot of power, so they usually run on servers in the cloud, which…

The advanced batteries that will power tomorrow's electric vehicles are closer to being a reality thanks to more than $5.7 million in funding awarded to 15 different projects through the Department of Energy's Battery500 consortium.The new projects are the first to be funded through the consortium, which is led by DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and involves multiple…

There is considerable uncertainty surrounding emerging contaminants in aquatic ecosystems and groundwater, and a recent Penn State study of compounds from pharmaceuticals and personal care products didn't add much clarity. But it did provide insight into the transport of the chemicals, according to researchers in the College of Agricultural Sciences.

Examining conditions within the Earth’s interior is crucial not only to give us a window back to Earth’s history but also to understand the current environment and its future. This study offers an explanation of carbon’s descent into the deep Earth. “The stability regions of carbonates are key to understanding the deep carbon cycle and…

Tropical Storm Don didn't live long before it weakened to a remnant low pressure area in the North Atlantic Ocean. Before it weakened NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured a visible image of the storm on its approach to the Windward Islands. The GPM satellite analyzed the storm's rainfall as it developed and moderate to heavy…

The hunting of pangolins, the world’s most illegally traded mammal, has increased by 150 percent in Central African forests from 1970s to 2014, according to a new study led by the University of Sussex.

A tabletop water filter demo designed to remove phosphorus from waste water has in five-years grown into a fully functional water treatment system capable of filtering more than 100-thousand gallons per day.Designed by a small U.S. Geological Survey team, this cost-effective and environmentally friendly water filter system uses discarded mining byproducts, called mine drainage ochre,…

PhD chemistry student Leila Dehabadi has developed a new way to separate water from ethanol, the key component in alcoholic beverages and biofuel, using starch-based materials such as corn. The method could reduce costs because it doesn’t involve using additional energy to isolate the ethanol.“Compared to distillation, this new approach based on green chemistry and engineering…

Access to clean, safe water is one of the world’s pressing needs, yet today’s water distribution systems lose an average of 20 percent of their supply because of leaks. These leaks not only make shortages worse but also can cause serious structural damage to buildings and roads by undermining foundations.Unfortunately, leak detection systems are expensive…