• A new Portland State University study shows that even though water quality has improved in South Korea's Han River basin since the 1990s, there are still higher-than-acceptable levels of pollutants in some of the more urbanized regions in and around the capital Seoul.

  • As Tropical Storm Chris was strengthening into a short-lived hurricane, the Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite investigated the storm's rainfall and cloud heights. By July 12, Chris weakened to a tropical storm and was passing by Nova Scotia, Canada.

  • Former Tropical Storm Beryl doesn't seem to want to dissipate into hurricane history. Visible data from NASA's Terra satellite captured the the remnants of Beryl lingering north of the Bahamas.

  • Washington State University researchers have created a sustainable alternative to traditional concrete using coal fly ash, a waste product of coal-based electricity generation.

    The advance tackles two major environmental problems at once by making use of coal production waste and by significantly reducing the environmental impact of concrete production.

    Xianming Shi, associate professor in WSU’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and graduate student Gang Xu, have developed a strong, durable concrete that uses fly ash as a binder and eliminates the use of environmentally intensive cement. They report on their work in the August issue of the journal, Fuel.

  • Study is the first to examine social disparities in location of emissions

    California law requires 25 percent of the revenue from the state’s cap-and-trade program, designed to limit emissions of greenhouses gases like carbon dioxide, to be invested in measures that benefit disadvantaged communities. But a newly published study by San Francisco State University, the University of California, Berkeley and others comparing emissions before and after the program began in 2013 found that disadvantaged communities are not yet benefitting — and have actually seen an increase in pollutants.

  • Take a trip down into the soil beneath a field of crops. You won’t find just dirt, water, and creepy-crawlies. You’ll also find reactions that remind you of high school chemistry lab.

  • On Sept. 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria barreled across Puerto Rico with winds of up to 155 miles per hour and battering rain that flooded towns, knocked out communications networks and destroyed the power grid. In the rugged central mountains and the lush northeast, Maria unleashed its fury as fierce winds completely defoliated the tropical forests and broke and uprooted trees. Heavy rainfall triggered thousands of landslides that mowed over swaths of steep mountainsides.

  • In collaboration with a nature reserve in Namibia, researchers funded by the SNSF are developing a new approach to counting animals: combining drone flights and automated image analysis.

  • When NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over the U.S. Eastern seaboard, it captured an infrared image of Hurricane Chris that showed an eye staring back at the satellite. Chris is expected to continue generating heavy ocean swells along the U.S. East Coast and bring heavy rainfall to Newfoundland, Canada.

  • Researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have found a nanobody that holds promise to advance targeted therapies for a number of neurological diseases and cancer.