Scienceblogtwo

It was thought that the Middle East's increased air pollution was mostly caused by desert dust. An international team of experts, including those from King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST), has now demonstrated how anthropogenic pollution affects the region's climate and poses a health concern. According to Sergey Osipov from the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Chemistry, "the prevalent thinking was that dust brought by storms over the Arabian Peninsula dominated air quality over the region." His team collaborated on the project alongside colleagues from King Saud University and The Cyprus Institute as well as Georgiy Stenchikov and Alexander Ukhov of KAUST. According to Osipov, "Our research has shown that dangerous fine particulate matter, which is different from the less damaging coarse desert dust particles, is mostly anthropogenic in origin and is a primary risk factor for health as well as a significant contributor to climate change....

In order to better foresee when the temperature of our world would tip over into dangerous zone, some scientists are becoming into clam "whisperers." It may seem strange for scholars to pay attention to a bivalve with a tight lip, but as we are learning, clams are great natural historians. The growth bands on their shells, like the rings on a tree, store important information about the environment and how it has evolved through time. These complex paragraphs can be dissected and examined by scientists centuries after they were first "written," much like the lines of a diary. In fact, more than five hundred million years ago—nearly three hundred million years before dinosaurs appeared—clams' ancestors began carving out tunnels in the stone calcite, providing an unrivaled insight into past temperatures. These antiquated records are currently issuing a grave warning. A potentially disastrous tipping point in the Earth's climate has been discovered by a fresh an...

Geographers frequently go to the past for the answers to what environmental challenges our planet's warming globe will bring about in the future. The pyramids of Giza, one of the most famous man-made structures in the world, were made possible by the environment of ancient Egypt, according to a new study that was published on August 29 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors of the study discovered that people need the waterway to move tools and other supplies like stones and limestones to the Giza Plateau for pyramid construction on a now-dry arm of the Nile River known as the Khufu branch. Sheisha Hader, a physical geographer at the University of Aix-Marseille in France and the study's principal author, adds that the Nile was an essential resource for ancient Egypt's transportation, food, land for farming, and water supplies.                                      ...

The astonishing uniformity of this microbial ecosystem around the planet—similar in all species, including sociable bumblebees—indicates that the bacteria are essential to honeybee survival in some way. Since bees with healthy microbial partners develop into adults with more complicated social ties and even different brain chemistry than bees with sterile guts, research earlier this week in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution may help to partially explain why. In many animals, the community of bacteria, fungi, and other microbes known as the gut biome has a potentially significant but mysterious function. Human cognition may even be shaped by it. According to Joanito Liberti, the paper's principal author and an evolutionary biologist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, "the gut-brain axis is particularly interesting from an evolutionary standpoint, because gut symbionts were probably there when the first neuronal systems formed." There are some indications ...

According to Reuters, the American-made bomb was found on July 25 by fishermen in the town of Borgo Virgilio in northern Italy, close to the city of Mantua. The bomb appears to have spent more than 70 years there underwater. However, as a result of several heat waves that slammed various areas of Europe (including Italy) with record high temperatures, the water levels in the River Po, which runs east-west across northern Italy, have dramatically decreased this summer. Military specialists estimate that the bomb weighed close to 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms). Military specialists broke the bomb's fuse and relocated the weapon to a quarry about 30 miles (45 kilometers) away after evacuating the roughly 3,000 residents who reside nearby. There, the bomb detonated safely, disabling it. The controlled explosion was said to have caused no injuries or damage. Extreme heat waves have affected a large portion of the Northern Hemisphere this summer, and as a result of ongoing climate change, ...

By successfully creating creatures that can generate the sperm of several species, biologists have moved one step closer to creating animals that can reproduce solely through their DNA. And although it may be possible to revive extinct species or even reestablish endangered species populations, don't worry—Jurassic Park will probably remain a work of fiction. In infertile hybrid mice, rat sperm can be produced, according to recent study that was just published in Stem Cell Reports. Blastocyst complementation, the research authors' method of incorporating synthetic stem cells from one species into embryos of another species, offers the potential to save endangered species, albeit the method still needs to be refined. Creating at-risk species' eggs and sperm in a lab might be a new way to increase population size if they are unable to sustain healthy levels. Pluripotent stem cells, in particular, were utilised in the team's technique. All types of cells can be created fro...

The earth is being overrun by humans, yet not all of our garbage is readily apparent. While it is simple to see plastic waste on the beach, microplastics and "forever chemicals" have spread far without our knowledge. These days, these types of pollution are so pervasive in the environment that they fall with the rain. While the threat posed by microplastics is frequently discussed, some experts contend that the proliferation of other persistent manmade chemicals is generally underappreciated. Scientists in Europe are increasingly concerned that we have crossed a crucial threshold. They contend that we have reached a dangerous operating area from which there is almost no return due to the presence of pollutants that are present permanently in our hydrosphere at levels that surpass important criteria. Following another cautionary report that claimed the globe had beyond the acceptable planetary limit for synthetic chemicals, this one comes as a warning. Long-lasting per- and po...