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Crystalline Nets Harvest Water From Desert Air, Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Liquid Fuel

/in , /by /Science Magazineby Robert F. Service

When Omar Yaghi was growing up in Jordan, outside of Amman, his neighborhood received water for only about 5 hours once every 2 weeks. If Yaghi wasn’t up at dawn to turn on the spigots to store water, his family, their cow, and their garden had to go without. At a meeting last week here, in an-other area thirsting for freshwater, Yaghi, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, reported that he and his colleagues have created a solar-powered device that could provide water for millions in water-stressed regions.

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Drought Is Not Just About Water. It Affects Air Pollution, Too

/in , /by /Science Magazine (Washington D.C.)by Jason Plautz

The severe drought that struck California from 2011 to 2015 had an obvious impact on rivers, forests, and wildlife. Now, a new study shows it also had some surprising effects on the state’s notorious air pollution, adding new wrinkles to the state’s efforts to clear the skies. Researchers have long known that plants can both help create and cleanse one dangerous air pollutant: ground-level ozone, which causes breathing problems and exacerbates lung damage. Plants can scrub ozone from the air by absorbing the pollutant through their stomata, or pores. But certain plants also emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that react with other atmospheric chemicals to create ozone.

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