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Mammals On The Ground Before The Dinosaurs Were Gone

For decades, natural history books have taught that when a catastrophic asteroid struck Earth...

Learning Through Student Feedback And The Role Of Digital Engagement

In this article I'm going to examine how student feedback plays a pivotal role in enhancing learning...

The Earth Beneath Our Feet: How The Zagros Mountains Are Shaping The Middle East

The Zagros Mountains are nestled in Iran, northern Iraq, and southeastern Turkey, and are the scene...

How QbD Can Drive Innovation And Quality In Pharmaceuticals

Quality by Design (QbD) is  a decade-long approach that was first introduced by quality expert...

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Mark PierceRSS Feed of this column.

Retired geologist and earth scientist, specialising in ore deposits and isotope geochemistry. Before retirement, I led the Australian government's pre-competitive geoscience programs for minerals... Read More »

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Diapers are not what you'd think about first when you consider recycling. The CBC estimates the number at billions of disposable diapers entering landfills in North America. With this much waste, recycling these absorbent plastics might seem like a good idea. The super-absorbent material inside diapers is made up of long-chain polymers. Unfortunately, they don't get put into recycling bins because the composition of these materials is too complex to break down and recycle traditionally. The problem with diapers is that we haven't found a way to recycle them into something useful. At least, until now.

Do we have a nitrogen emergency? Most people aren't aware of the role nitrogen plays in our atmosphere. According to NASA, Nitrogen makes up about 78% of our atmosphere. Despite being so prevalent, we give it relatively little thought. We've spent years worrying about carbon dioxide and its impact on the environment that nitrogen has slipped by relatively unbothered. Yet nitrogen pollution is a significant enough problem to demand attention from the United Nations.

One of the things that scientists rely on to accurately predict climate change is the amount of carbon sequestered underground. Carbon dioxide in the air leads to increased global warming, exacerbating climate change. When plants have a lot of access to carbon dioxide, they photosynthesize more. Scientists have assumed for a long time that this led to a high concentration of carbon sequestered under the ground. As plants took in this carbon dioxide, they transformed it into compounds and organic structures such as roots and leaves, which would add to the amount of carbon stored underground.

Climate change is one of the most pressing concerns our civilization has. Time Magazine paints a grim picture of what the role is likely to look like in less than thirty years if we don't address the issue. However, it's not as simple as changing one thing. Several inputs and outputs affect climate change. There's no question that leaving it unattended could spell disaster for some communities, however. One by one, these communities will see an evident difference in their climate and weather. The American West is one of those areas that is seeing a definite shift in the environment.

When one thinks about chemistry, one doesn't usually consider quantum mechanics to play a part. Yet it does. When it boils down to it, all matter is a combination of a handful of subatomic particles and the forces holding them together. Chemistry, is in essence, applied physics. For decades, scientists have been trying to determine how to follow a chemical reaction from its initial state through all of its quantum states to its products. The hope was that, by doing so, researchers could understand the quantum dynamics that drive these reactions. Until now, it has mostly been speculation. However, a recent paper published in Nature by Liu et al. suggests that this may be possible.

With climate change a constant hot button issue, the rise of any new industry to a massive and global scale always attracts interested parties. The same has also been true for the CBD industry, which was globally valued over $500 million USD in 2020 and expected to top $4 billion USD by 2027.