New tests can detect tiny but toxic particles of coal ash in soil
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Duke University scientists have developed tests sensitive enough to detect and measure microscopic particles of coal ash in soil, even at concentrations so low and sizes so small that other tests would likely miss them. The four new tests complement tests previously developed at Duke to detect coal ash contamination in water and larger particles of coal ash in soil.
The chequered history of the Cambro-Ordovician Alum Shale in northern Europe offers insights into oil and gas formation and traces of life on Mars.
Scientists from Goethe University Frankfurt, University of Warsaw, State Authority for Mining, Energy and Geology in Hanover, and from other institutions have found in Salzgitter-Salder what researchers have been searching for for more than 20 years: A geological formation that perfectly represents the transition from the Cretaceous Turonian to the Coniacian Age. The former limestone quarry is now considered a global reference point (GSSP) for the turn of the ages 89.4 million years ago.
Restoration of degraded drylands is urgently needed to mitigate climate change, reverse desertification and secure livelihoods for the two billion people who live there, experts warn in a major new paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution. Scientists leading the Global Arid Zone Project examined restoration seeding outcomes at 174 sites on six continents, encompassing 594,065 observations of 671 plant species - with the lessons learned important to meeting ambitious future restoration targets.
The remains of microscopic plankton blooms in near-shore ocean environments slowly sink to the seafloor, setting off processes that forever alter an important record of Earth's history, according to research from geoscientists, including David Fike at Washington University in St. Louis.
By uprooting carbon trapped in soil, wild pigs are releasing around 4.9 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide annually across the globe, the equivalent of 1.1 million cars.
In a new study, published in the journal Nature, researchers looked at samples from rocks spanning the last three billion years and found evidence of a dramatic change in how the carbon cycle functioned about 400 million years ago, when plants started to colonise land.
Two fossil teeth from a distant relative of North American gophers have scientists rethinking how some mammals reached the Caribbean Islands.
An international research team that includes scientists and engineers from The University of Texas at Austin has devised a new method for making urea that is more environmentally friendly than today's process and produces enough to be competitive with energy-intensive industrial methods.
A new method for seeing through ice sheets using radio signals from the sun could enable cheap, low-power and widespread monitoring of ice sheet evolution and contribution to sea-level rise.