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Category: habitats

Homes in the fire zone: Why wildland-urban blazes create significantly more air pollution

A research team led by the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR) has published a foundational inventory of emissions produced by structures destroyed by fires in the wildland-urban interface (WUI). Previously, researchers suspected that fires in WUI areas—spaces where human development and undeveloped wildland meet—produce emissions that are likely more harmful than those produced by forest or grass fires. However, the amount of emissions had not been quantified.

This new study, published in Nature Communications, provides the first inventory of emissions from structure fires in WUI areas. The results definitively reveal structure fires as a major source of air pollution.

WUI fires are becoming increasingly more common in the U.S. and have destroyed more than 100,000 homes since 2005. Because these events are intensely concentrated both in time and space, they can produce exceptionally high local pollution, which has important implications for the air quality and public health of nearby urban areas.

Intense sunlight reduces plant diversity and biomass across global grasslands, study finds

The sun is the basis for photosynthesis, but not all plants thrive in strong sunlight. Strong sunlight constrains plant diversity and plant biomass in the world’s grasslands, a new study shows. Temperature, precipitation, and atmospheric nitrogen deposition have less impact on plant diversity. These results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by a research team led by Marie Spohn from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

The steppes of North America, the Serengeti savanna, the Svalbard tundra and natural pastures in the Alps are examples of habitats that are described as grasslands, with the common feature that there are no trees and the vegetation is dominated by grasses and other herbaceous plants. The diversity of plant species in these grasslands varies considerably, but the question of what controls plant diversity has challenged researchers for decades.

Last year, in a study on grasslands, Spohn from SLU and colleagues found that soil properties and climate factors, such as temperature, did not explain variations in plant diversity. “This finding surprised me,” says Spohn. “And that’s when I started wondering about the importance of sunlight for plant diversity in grasslands and decided to start a new project that would explore this relationship.”

Planetary microbiome structure and generalist-driven gene flow across disparate habitats

Now online! A planetary-scale analysis of over 85,000 metagenomes establishes a framework for exploring the structure and drivers of global microbial habitats, revealing that generalist species bridge ecological boundaries to mediate gene flow across disparate habitats, including the dissemination of antimicrobial resistance.

How Big Could a Space Habitat Get?

How big could space habitats really get? From O’Neill cylinders to Ringworlds and Topopolises, we explore the true limits of megastructure scale.

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Watch my exclusive video Chronoengineering: https://nebula.tv/videos/isaacarthur–… Join this channel to get access to perks: / @isaacarthursfia 🛒 SFIA Merchandise: https://isaac-arthur-shop.fourthwall… 🌐 Visit our Website: http://www.isaacarthur.net ❤️ Support us on Patreon: / isaacarthur ⭐ Support us on Subscribestar: https://www.subscribestar.com/isaac-a… 👥 Facebook Group: / 1,583,992,725,237,264 📣 Reddit Community: / isaacarthur 🐦 Follow on Twitter / X: / isaac_a_arthur 💬 SFIA Discord Server: / discord Credits: How Big Could a Space Habitat Get? Written, Produced & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur Editor: Tim Liusko Graphics from Fishy Tree, Jarred Eagley, Jeremy Jozwik, J. Dixon, Ken York, Udo Schroeter Music Courtesy of Chris Zabriskie & Stellardrone Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images Music by Epidemic Sound: http://nebula.tv/epidemic & Stellardrone Chapters 0:00 Intro 2:03 Basics of Habitat Scaling 9:30 Cylinder & Ring Habitats — Linear and Radial Extremes 11:00 Banks Orbitals 12:42 Ringworlds 16:24 Chrono-Engineering 17:24 The Topopolis 21:03 Planet-Wrapping Habitats 22:55 Matrioshka Shellworlds 26:17Alternative & Exotic Designs.

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Bacteria Form Stronger Mars Bricks Despite Toxic Soil

“When the effect of perchlorate on just the bacteria is studied in isolation, it is a stressful factor,” said Swati Dubey. “But in the bricks, with the right ingredients in the mixture, perchlorate is helping.”

How can engineers design bricks on Mars for future habitats despite the toxic Martian regolith, also called perchlorates? This is what a recent study published in PLOS One hopes to address as an international team of scientists investigated how bacteria can be used to construct strong bricks on Mars despite the presence of perchlorates. This study has the potential to help scientists, engineers, and future Mars astronauts develop novel methods for designing future Mars habitats.

For the study, the researchers tested perchlorates on Martians bricks built with regolith simulant and bacteria, also called biocementation, to ascertain how the perchlorates affected the integrity of the bricks, and specifically how the bacteria responded to the perchlorates. The goal of the study was to ascertain how perchlorates could influence Martian brick construction methods using bacteria, the latter of which has been explored in past studies using the soil bacterium Sporosarcina pasteurii. In the end, the researchers found that despite the perchlorates slowing the growth of the bacteria within the bricks, the process resulted in stronger bricks.

Epic Games & Google Reveal $800 Million Deal Amid Lawsuit

During a recent hearing in San Francisco, Epic’s CEO Tim Sweeney revealed that the agreement is related to Fortnite’s metaverse: “Epic’s technology is used by many companies in the space Google is operating in to train their products, so the ability for Google to use the Unreal Engine more fullsome… sorry, I’m blowing this confidentiality.”

In this partnership, Epic will spend $800 million to buy some unannounced services from Google. However, this is not a joint product made by the companies. “This is Google and Epic each separately building product lines,” Sweeney said.

Sweeney doesn’t see anything wrong with paying Google “to encourage much more robust competition than they’ve allowed in the past,” he said. “We view this as a significant transfer of value from Epic to Google.”

A “living fossil”: for the first time, divers from France capture rare images of an emblematic species in the waters of Indonesia

The encounter, deep beneath the surface of Indonesia’s Maluku Islands, did not just produce striking images. It opened a rare window on one of the ocean’s most mysterious creatures: the coelacanth, a fish once written off as extinct for millions of years.

In October 2024, French divers Alexis Chappuis and Julien Leblond descended to around 145 metres off the Maluku archipelago, in eastern Indonesia. They were using advanced rebreather systems and specialised suits designed for long, deep technical dives.

For two years, Chappuis had been poring over charts and sonar data, mapping underwater cliffs and cold upwellings that might harbour coelacanths. The terrain he targeted was steep, fragmented rock riddled with ledges and crevices, a layout similar to known coelacanth habitats in other parts of the Indian Ocean.

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