• If you install solar panels on your roof and avoid dousing your lawn with chemicals and pesticides, your online peers may consider you to be environmentally friendly. But this street cred can all be erased if you let your cat roam around outdoors.

     

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  • CU Boulder engineers have received a $2.45 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to develop a scalable, cost-effective greenhouse material that splits sunlight into photosynthetically efficient light and repurposes inefficient infrared light to aid in water purification.

    The four-year research program could yield next-gen technology capable of solving food, energy and water security challenges posed by global population growth and climate change.

  • Shale gas is one of least sustainable options for producing electricity, according to new research from The University of Manchester.

    The major study, which is the first of its kind, considered environmental, economic and social sustainability of shale gas in the UK and compared it to other electricity generating options. These were coal, nuclear, natural gas, liquefied natural gas (LNG), solar photovoltaics (PV), wind, hydro and biomass.

  • When grocery stores tout sustainable products, consumers may take their claims at face value. Yet few studies have analyzed whether or not companies who claim to improve the sustainability of their products are actually changing practices in their supply chains.

  • It’s simple math, says a University of Alberta conservation biologist. More roads equals fewer grizzly bears.

    In a recent study examining a non-invasive DNA (hair collection) dataset of grizzly bear activity in British Columbia, Clayton Lamb and his colleagues determined what scientists have long suspected: higher road density leads to lower grizzly bear density—a critical problem for a species still rebounding from a long period of human persecution.

  • Cultural evolution has made humans enormously potent ecosystem engineers and has enabled us to survive and flourish under a variety environmental conditions.

  • Short-term exposures to fine particulate air pollution and ozone—even at levels well below current national safety standards—were linked to higher risk of premature death among the elderly in the U.S. according to a new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

    The risk was even higher among elderly who were low-income, female, or Black.

    The study was published December 26, 2017 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

  • Unconventional spaces could be put to use generating renewable energy while sparing lands that could be better used to grow food, sequester carbon and protect wildlife and watersheds, says a study led by the University of California, Davis.

  • An imbalance between the trends in two common air pollutants is unexpectedly triggering the creation of a class of airborne organic compounds not usually found in the atmosphere over urban areas of North America, according to a new study from Caltech.