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74 news posts in Sustainability

Sustainability

07 Apr 2016

Study shows best way to reduce energy consumption

By Fernando Bolaños, Science Writer We know adjusting the thermostat, using blinds, opening windows or using electronics such as a heater or air conditioning unit has an impact on the amount of energy consumed in homes. But a new study looks at which of these is the most efficient when it comes to saving power. “I was interested to find the trends of energy use in typical households and to understand the consumer behavior and the reasons behind high and low energy consumption. I have a strong belief that, if society boosts energy conservation (as well as other resources), we will have less of a challenge meeting future demands,” explained Dr. Gabriel Kamiel. Kamiel and Wei Yang and Yaolin Lin, associate professors at the Wuhan University of Technology in China developed a holistic and integrated model which considered the building enclosure, the mechanical systems, the external environment, the proportion of window opening and the shading factor based on data collected from 270 households including single and multiple units, as well as different heating methods. All houses were located in the city of Oshawa, Ontario, which is located 55 km east of Toronto, Canada. To calculate the building energy consumption, the […]

Sustainability

05 Apr 2016

Networked solutions needed for climate change adaptation

By Michelle Ponto, Science Writer The 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21) led to a shift in focus in climate change research towards finding solutions. The hope is that these solutions will prepare society to adapt and mitigate the consequences of a warming planet, but the research shift to finding solutions is not easy. “An important aspect that has made climate change difficult is that energy is an intrinsic component of our lives and our activities – from food production systems to transit systems, to adaptation systems,” said Carlos M. Duarte, Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Marine Science and Tarek Ahmed Juffali Research Chair in Red Sea Ecology at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Because energy affects so many aspects of our lives, Duarte says it’s difficult to address the issues on how to build systems that are both efficient and don’t contribute to the problem of climate change without encompassing a whole array of disciplines. An example he gives is LED technology. While these lights are saving cities money and use less energy, they create light pollution that is drastically greater than traditional light bulbs. According to research, this could disrupt the behavior patterns of nocturnal animals, the […]

Sustainability

20 Mar 2016

Triage in Conservation: Interview with Ralf Buckley

By Kirsten Martin In conservation, there is an ongoing debate over triage. Advocates of triage argue that some extinctions are unavoidable, and that fixed, limited and fully fungible resources are therefore best allocated where they are most likely to yield the largest conservation benefit. That is, they perceive conservation essentially as an economic optimisation problem. But the opponents of triage believe the opposite. They argue that species recovery is possible no matter how few individuals remain, that small peripheral subpopulations may contain genetic diversity not available in larger core populations, and that funds and resources are neither fixed nor fully fungible.  They think that conservation resources are at least partly tied to particular sites and species, and can be increased. Needless to say, both sides have strong opinions and more research and case studies are needed to gain a further understanding.  The Frontiers Research Topic “Triage in Conversation” hopes to shed a brighter light on the debate. Professor Ralf Buckley, Specialty Chief Editor of the section Frontiers in Conservation, recently wrote an article entitled “Grand challenges in conservation research.” We asked him about the debate and the importance of this research. Tell me about the Research Topic (the research area […]

Sustainability

13 Jan 2016

VIDEO: Analyzing ozone breakdown through molecular evolution

  Ever since he was a child, Prof. Martin Klotz simply wanted to know. “My favorite game was in my father’s study. I was laying on the carpet with the Brockhaus encyclopedia and I would just open a random page and read until I was tired. I was interested in all sorts of things. I was a Physics undergraduate student, I then moved into Biophysics and then Biology, simply because I wanted to know. I was curious and still am and that is what motivates me,” he said. Klotz is the Dean of Faculty, Division of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, and a Professor in the Department of Biology and the School of Earth & Environmental Sciences at Queens College, The City University of New York (CUNY), in Flushing/Queens, New York. He is the Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Microbiology. In addition to being a professor he remains a scientist at heart and focuses now more on the theoretical aspects of the work that he has done in the past. “I have switched along my career but have mostly focused on Microbiology, and in particular on the capability of bacteria to modify their microenvironments. I have been interested in how […]

Sustainability

11 Jan 2016

Dire predictions and global updates at AGU 2015

Dire predictions and global updates dominated the course of two AGU 2015 press conferences on December 15 and 16. While the last year has seen increasing tension develop between Republican members of the US Congress and the NASA Earth Sciences Program over budget cuts, conferences on the polar ice sheets pulled no punches in laying out the effects of climate change in these areas. The first of these conferences was the presentation of the year’s Arctic Report Card, a now-annual event at the AGU Fall Meeting.   Arctic Record Card 2015 Tuesday, 15 December Rick Spinrad, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Chief Scientist, Washington, D.C., U.S.A. Martin Jeffries, Arctic Science Advisor and Program Officer for Arctic and Global Prediction, U.S. Office of Naval Research, Arlington, Virginia, U.S.A. Jacqueline A. Richter-Menge, Research Civil Engineer, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, Hanover, New Hampshire, U.S.A. Kit M. Kovacs, Biodiversity Research Program Leader, Norwegian Polar Institute, Tromsø, Norway The Arctic is warming at an alarming rate – twice as fast as lower latitudes, according to a broad consensus in the scientific consensus of that community. In the words of Rick Spinrad, “we know this is due to climate […]

Sustainability

18 Dec 2015

News from #AGU15: Heat stress in dense populations and impacts of the 2015-16 El Niño

Gearóid Ó Faoleán, Journal Manager of Frontiers in Earth Science, is representing Frontiers at the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco, the world’s largest earth and space science meeting. Here, in the 1st of a series of posts, he reports on some of the exciting press conferences he attended at the conference.  The impacts of heat stress on densely populated regions in the 21st century  Monday, 14 December 2015 Ethan Coffel, PhD candidate, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, New York, New York, U.S.A Radley Horton, Associate Research Scientist, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, New York, New York, U.S.A. Noah Diffenbaugh, Associate Professor, Stanford University, and Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford, California, U.S.A. The participants spoke of global exposure to heat stress for this coming century and the effects it will have on our health and, linking to that, economic performance; as well as global infrastructure. Ethan Coffel first gave an overview of his research on global wet-bulb temperature, a combined measure of temperature and humidity. It was noted that while recent global heatwaves, in this context, were in the range of 29-31 °C, human tolerance is estimated to be 35 °C maximum. Thus, a global temperature rise could have serious repercussions for humankind. Dr Radley Horton […]

Sustainability

08 Oct 2015

Smart physics models for designing new glass compositions

Frontiers Science Hero: John Mauro from Frontiers on Vimeo. Frontiers Science Hero, John Mauro is Frontiers’ Chief Editor of Glass Science. He is also Senior Research Manager in Glass Research at industrial glass company Corning Inc. in Corning, NY, USA. A Fellow of the American Ceramic Society, Mauro is also the co-inventor of several new glass compositions. “If it’s glass, I’m interested,” says Mauro, in an interview with Frontiers where he shares how his passion for glass initially started. “I first fell in love with glass when I was 6 years old,” he says. Better understanding the structure and the properties of matter, makes it possible to produce glass with better characteristics for industrial applications. “Glass is well known as one of the most difficult problems in condensed matter physics,” he says. As part of his job, John Mauro builds new glass models, together with colleagues, to understand the material’s behaviour. These models can, in turn, be used to efficiently design new glass compositions. But John Mauro is not only interested in the scientific aspect of the material. He also loves the artistic side of glass applications. In this interview, he tells us about Corning’s work with artists to help him “learn […]

Sustainability

22 Sep 2015

A new perspective on the deep sea world

Frontiers Science Here: Jon Copley – A new perspective on the deep sea world from Frontiers on Vimeo. Jon Copley is the first British person to dive further down than 5 km deep in the ocean.  He is one of Frontiers’ Science Heroes.  As a marine biologist, he dives and explores life in the depth of the oceans, across the world. Specifically, he studies colonies of animals in island-like habitats on the ocean floor, near hydrothermal vents.  His goal is to investigate the distribution, dispersal and evolution of these species. He is a bit like a 19th century discoverer. “That’s an analogy I often like to use because these deep-sea vents are island-like colonies of marine life on the ocean floor,” he said. “It’s like going to a new continent.” Ultimately, learning from deep-sea species can lead to applications though potential new treatements from marine microbes and new design for wings and fan blades inspired from whales flippers, among others. Copley currently works at the University of Southampton, in the UK, as an associate Professor of Marine Ecology. He also is the principal investigator of the Chemosynthetic Environments Research Team. In a Skype interview, he shares his passion for discovering […]

Sustainability

17 Sep 2015

Preservation of the Ozone Layer: Years later and so much more to do

by Ben Stockton​, Journal Operations Assistant ​In an interview with a former student, the late Frank Sherwood Rowland recalled the moment when, after returning home from the lab, his wife asked him how his work was going. He replied, “The work is going well, but it looks like the end of the world”. The frivolity of the prophesy in the early 1970s of Rowland, a former atmospheric chemist at the University of California, Irvine, is clear. Naturally it didn’t come to fruition, but there was the element of truth behind it. The research with his colleague Mario Molina (pictured below) created a new field of science and sparked major international intervention. Signing of the Montreal Protocol It is considered the most successful international agreement in history – by Kofi Annan, nonetheless. The signing of the Montreal Protocol on this day—September 16, 1987— showcased a worldwide unity of science, government and industry, the holy trinity of environmental lobbying. It instilled change that would transcend a generation of signatories. As if like a pebble dropped into calm waters, the surface has only just been disturbed. After almost 20 years, the benefits of that lie in the wake this agreement will continue to ripple outwards […]

Sustainability

09 Jun 2015

Healthy Oceans, Healthy Planet -World Oceans Day with Paul Rose

  By Nina Rothe Former Vice President of the Royal Geographical Society and Chair of the Expeditions and Fieldwork Division, polar expert Paul Rose is currently Expedition Leader for the National Geographic Pristine Seas Expeditions. He was the Base Commander of Rothera Research Station , Antarctica, for the British Antarctic Survey for 10 years and was awarded HM The Queen’s Polar Medal. For his work with NASA and the Mars Lander project on Mt Erebus, Antarctica, (which he climbed, of course!) he received the US Polar Medal. And he has a mountain named after himself in Antarctica. Happy World Oceans Day, Paul! When you think about the sea, what’s the first image, smell and sound that comes to your mind? Freedom, simplicity, adventure, promise! What has been the most important achievement in terms of ocean conservation in the past year and what do you consider the 3 most pressing problem(s) facing the world’s oceans right now? Raising the level of awareness to the extent that this is now a genuine sweet-spot for ocean conservation is a real success. For the first time in history, people understand that human activities directly affect the ocean’s health. The there most rousing problems are: overfishing, […]

Sustainability

18 Feb 2015

Staff Pick: Scientists’ perspectives on global ocean research priorities

This is Nina Rothe, Journal Manager at Frontiers. Nina’s from Berlin and has a PhD in marine biology from the University of Southampton. We’ve invited her to highlight her personal favorite paper from Frontiers. Read the paper (OA): http://fron.tiers.in/go/eMyoEc Rudd MA (2014) Scientists’ perspectives on global ocean research priorities Frontiers in Marine Science 1:36 … Nina writes: “In this paper, Dr Murray Rudd, from the University of York Environment Department, presents a survey that asked 2,197 scientists from 94 countries, who ranged in background from marine geologists to anthropologists, to state what research was needed most urgently to help sustain global ocean health. Among the most pressing issues, declines in ocean productivity, increases in ocean acidification, and the cumulative effects of multiple stressors on ocean health ranked in the top five ocean research priorities by oceanographers and marine ecologists from around the globe. Social scientists thought that better communication between scientists, policy-makers and the public was the most important research priority.”