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Category Archives: Climate Change

Rainwater everywhere on Earth unsafe to drink due to ‘forever chemicals’, study finds

Earth Green News: “Rainwater almost everywhere on Earth has unsafe levels of ‘forever chemicals’, according to new research. Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a large family of human-made chemicals that don’t occur in nature. They are known as ‘forever chemicals’ because they don’t break down in the environment. They have non-stick or stain repellent… Continue Reading

Over half of known human pathogenic diseases can be aggravated by climate change

Mora, C., McKenzie, T., Gaw, I.M. et al. Over half of known human pathogenic diseases can be aggravated by climate change. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01426-1 – “It is relatively well accepted that climate change can affect human pathogenic diseases; however, the full extent of this risk remains poorly quantified. Here we carried out a… Continue Reading

LLRX July 2022 Issue

Articles and Columns for July 2022 – LLRX.com – the free web journal on law, technology, knowledge discovery and research for Librarians, Lawyers, Researchers, Academics, and Journalists. Founded in 1996. Policing Reimagined – The thesis of Albert Chang’s paper is the metaverse presents a unique opportunity for effective police reforms. Confidence in the Supreme Court… Continue Reading

Research: We Make More Virtuous Choices When Using Pen and Paper

Harvard Business Review: “From ordering food to buying a new book to making a charitable donation, more and more decisions that used to be made on paper are now being made on digital devices like tablets, phones, and computers. And this trend toward digitalization has many advantages, in particular when it comes to efficiency and… Continue Reading

How the US Gave Away a Breakthrough Battery Technology To China

NPR: ” When a group of engineers and researchers gathered in a warehouse in Mukilteo, Wash., 10 years ago, they knew they were onto something big. They scrounged up tables and chairs, cleared out space in the parking lot for experiments and got to work. They were building a battery — a vanadium redox flow… Continue Reading

More than half of data deficient species predicted to be threatened by extinction

Borgelt, J., Dorber, M., Høiberg, M.A. et al. More than half of data deficient species predicted to be threatened by extinction. Commun Biol 5, 679 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-022-03638-9 “The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is essential for practical and theoretical efforts to protect biodiversity. However, species classified as “Data Deficient” (DD) regularly mislead practitioners due… Continue Reading

Mapping the Coolest Spots Inside the World’s Sweltering Cities

Bloomberg: “The cement, glass and steel that give shape to urban life have also turned modern cities into dangerous heat sinks. Scorching sunlight gets absorbed, stored and slowly emitted in a bubble of warmth that can push city temperatures as much as 3°C (5.4°F) above the surrounding countryside. This dynamic, combined with the increasingly extreme… Continue Reading

Open-source flight trackers have been repeatedly used to break news over the last few weeks

Vice: “More than 700,000 people were tracking the flight path of the U.S. military plane believed to be carrying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi this morning. She touched down in Taiwan at 10:50 pm local time, making Pelosi the first high-ranking American official to visit the self-governing island in 25 years, amid threats of a military… Continue Reading

How flood maps can illuminate the risk from toxic waste sites

Fast Company: Climate science is clear: “Floodwaters are a growing risk for many American cities, threatening to displace not only people and housing but also the land-based pollution left behind by earlier industrial activities. In 2019, researchers at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigated climate-related risks at the 1,571 most polluted properties in the… Continue Reading

The uneven energy costs of working from home

The Verge: “The COVID-19 pandemic has given us a sneak peek into how working from home changes electricity demand and what that might mean for Americans’ utility bills. The picture it’s painted so far isn’t very pretty, particularly for anyone who’s already struggling to meet their needs. The transition to remote work is changing our… Continue Reading