global briefs Green Surfing
Search Engine Company Plants Trees Internet users can help fight global deforestation even while surfing. Ger- man online search engine Ecosia, now used in 183 countries, diverts its advertising revenue from click-throughs to plant- ing trees worldwide to
the tune of more than 52 million since 2009. With each search, the company says, it removes around two-and- a-half pounds of carbon dioxide from the air. Christian Kroll, Ecosia’s founder, wrote, “Climate change is a very real threat, and if we’re to stop the world heat- ing above the 1.5 degrees warned about in the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report, we need to plant trees at scale.” Kroll suggests that if Ecosia were to get as big as Google, they could absorb 15 percent of all global carbon dioxide emissions. Users can find it at
Ecosia.org.
Baby Balking Climate Change
Discourages Childbearing USA Today has reported that concerns about climate change are giving women pause about bear- ing children. The U.S. birthrate has been falling for years, and in 2017, it was 60.3 births per 1,000 women, the lowest fertility rate since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began keeping such records in 1909. Related causes such as women marrying later, worries about the economy and the difficulty of finding affordable child care have all been suggested. But prospective parents are also think- ing about the increased frequency and intensity of storms and other natural disasters such as drought and wildfires. Further, geopolitical unrest and scarcity of water and other resources are convincing some to at least postpone their decision to increase the population.
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Aqua Breakthrough
Clean Water Solution in the Pipeline With the world facing a future of climate change and water scarcity, finding an environmental way to cleanse drinking water is paramount. Researchers in China contend they are working on a method to remove bacteria from water that’s both highly efficient and environmentally sound. By shining ultraviolet light onto a two-dimensional sheet of graphitic carbon nitride, the team’s prototype can purify two-and-a-half gallons of water in one hour, killing virtually all the harmful bacteria present. This technique of photocatalytic disinfection is an alternative to current eco-unfriendly water filtration systems such as chlorination or ozone disinfection.
Far Out
Earth’s Atmosphere Extends Past Moon The scientific boundary between Earth’s atmo- sphere and space is the Kármán line, 62 miles high. But a team of astronomers have published evidence in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics that the geocorona, a tenuous cloud of neutral hydrogen in the outermost
region of the Earth’s atmosphere that glows in far-ultraviolet light, extends much farther than the moon. The discovery means that tele- scopes positioned in the geocorona will need to have some of their settings adjusted for deep-space observations.
3-D Meat Printer Produces Plant-Based Substitute
Researcher Giuseppe Scionti, owner of Nova Meat, in Barcelona, Spain, has developed a synthetic meat substitute using vegetable pro- teins that imitate protein complexes found in real meat. Produced using a 3-D printer, it can mimic the texture of beef or chicken. The specialist in biomedicine and tissue engineering has been work- ing for 10 years on bioprinting different synthetic tissues such as artificial corneas, skin and ears.
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