In September 2015, the German automaker Volkswagen was found to have illegally cheated federal emissions tests in the United States, by intentionally programming emissions control devices to turn on only during laboratory testing. The devices enabled more than 11 million passenger vehicles to meet U.S. emissions standards in the laboratory ...
Read More »Oxygen levels on early Earth rose, fell several times before great oxidation even
Earth’s oxygen levels rose and fell more than once hundreds of millions of years before the planetwide success of the Great Oxidation Event about 2.4 billion years ago, new research from the University of Washington shows. The evidence comes from a new study that indicates a second and much earlier ...
Read More »An Astronomer Explains Black Holes at 5 Levels of Difficulty
You probably know the basics when it comes to black holes: A lot of mass squished into not a lot of volume makes for an entity so prodigiously dense, not even light can escape its gravity. Perhaps you even know about things like event horizons, the boundary outside of which ...
Read More »High levels of microplastics found in Northwest Atlantic fish
A new study sheds light on the magnitude of microplastic pollution in our oceans. The study, published today in open-access journal Frontiers in Marine Science, found microplastics in the stomachs of nearly three out of every four mesopelagic fish caught in the Northwest Atlantic — one of the highest levels ...
Read More »In wine, there’s health: Low levels of alcohol good for the brain
While a couple of glasses of wine can help clear the mind after a busy day, new research shows that it may actually help clean the mind as well. The new study, which appears in the journal Scientific Reports, shows that low levels of alcohol consumption tamp down inflammation and ...
Read More »Pain-free skin patch responds to sugar levels for management of type 2 diabetes
For millions of people with type 2 diabetes, ongoing vigilance over the amount of sugar, or glucose, in their blood is the key to health. A finger prick before mealtimes and maybe an insulin injection is an uncomfortable but necessary routine. Researchers with NIH’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and ...
Read More »PTSD risk can be predicted by hormone levels prior to deployment, study says
Up to 20 percent of U.S. veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan developed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder from trauma experienced during wartime, but new neuroscience research from The University of Texas at Austin suggests some soldiers might have a hormonal predisposition to experience such stress-related disorders. Cortisol — ...
Read More »Acidity in atmosphere minimized to preindustrial levels
New research shows that human pollution of the atmosphere with acid is now almost back to the level that it was before the pollution started with industrialisation in the 1930s. The results come from studies of the Greenland ice sheet and are published in the scientific journal, Environmental Science and ...
Read More »Flint’s High Lead Levels Have Doctors Struggling for Answers
It didn’t take long for Mona Hanna-Attisha to realize that something was wrong with the water in Flint, Michigan. In April 2014 the city switched its water source, from Lake Huron to the Flint River, in order to save money during the construction of a new Huron pipeline. “Patients’ families ...
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