environment

A research project based at Heidelberg University and Heidelberg University Hospital targets plastic particles and climate change as driving factors for the spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the environment. The participating researchers will investigate socio-ecological interactions within aquatic habitats affected by plastic pollution, contamination with antibiotics and climatic influences, and explore environmental and health-related impacts in the context of Planetary Health. The project is led by Prof. Dr Joacim Rocklöv, Humboldt Professor at the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing and the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health, and comprises eleven international partners, including the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine in the Philippine Department of Health. The European Union is funding the four and a half-year international collaboration project with more than six million euros. “Scientific research is needed to show...

Esnart Chongani boils five small pumpkins over firewood outside her home in Makoka, a village in Zambia’s Chongwe District, not far from the capital, Lusaka. She tests to make sure they’re tender, drains the water, which she will save for later, and then carefully divides them into 12 portions as her family sits down for lunch. It’s a healthy dish, but there’s scarcely enough to go around, and this is the only meal any of them will eat today. Chongani, 76, isn’t used to rationing. She’s the proud owner of a seven-acre farm that she has worked on for decades. Ordinarily, her family harvests more than two tons of maize in April. But this year, southern Africa was hit by its worst mid-season dry spell in over a century, and for the first time in her life, they have harvested nothing. “I cannot remember anything like this,” says Chongani. “People are so hungry they are stealing food. The generosity o...

Europe’s car-producing regions know that decarbonisation will hit the traditional car industry hard and result in thousands of job losses. For them, the name of the game now is how to limit the damage, and how the EU can help. A Committee of the Regions conference held in Brussels on 22 May brought together experts and industry players from the 36 regions of the ‘Automotive Regions Alliance’ – a group that focuses on how car manufacturing regions can navigate Europe’s decarbonisation journey. For these regions, the future of European car-making is critical. “The automotive industry … generates over 7% of EU’s GDP and around 13.8 million people work in it, creating important multiplier effects in supplier industries” explained Emil Boc, chair of the CoR’s commission for territorial cohesion policy and EU budget, and mayor of the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoc. A just transition for car manufacturing...

They call it “The Blob.” A vast expanse of ocean stretching from Alaska to California periodically warms by up to 4 degrees Celsius (7 degrees F), decimating fish stocks, starving seabirds, creating blooms of toxic algae, preventing salmon returns to rivers, displacing sea lions, and forcing whales into shipping lanes to find food. The Blob first formed in 2013 and spread across an area of the northeast Pacific the size of Canada. It lasted for three years and keeps coming back — most recently last summer. Until now, scientists have been unable to explain this abrupt ocean heating. Climate change, even combined with natural cycles such as El Niño, is not enough. But new analysis suggests an unexpected cause. Xiaotong Zheng, a meteorologist at the Ocean University of China, and international colleagues argue that this extraordinary heating is the result of a dramatic cleanup of Chinese air pollution. The decline in s...

A costly step in the process of taking carbon dioxide emissions and converting them into useful products such as biofuels and pharmaceuticals may not be necessary, according to University of Michigan researchers. Carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is a key driver of climate change, with the burning of fossil-fuels accounting for 90% of all CO2 emissions. New EPA regulations introduced in April call for fossil fuel plants to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2039. Many researchers argue that storing that CO2 would be a waste when carbon is needed to make many products we depend on daily, such as clothing, perfume, jet fuel, concrete and plastic. But recycling CO2 typically requires that it be separated from other gasses—a process with a price tag that can be prohibitive. Now, new kinds of electrodes, enhanced with a coating of bacteria, can skip that step. While conventional metal electrodes react with sulfur, oxygen and other co...