Technology

"By learning the secrets of 2,000-year-old cement, researchers are trying to devise greener, more durable modern options."

"Distributed solar and batteries are helping North Carolina communities that were cut off from grid power by flooding. Should utilities build them into resilience plans?"

"Entanglements are a leading cause of death for endangered North Atlantic right whales. Removing fishing lines from the ocean could help minimize this risk—but only if lobstermen get on board, experts say."

"As Three Mile Island and a Michigan reactor aim to restart, critics question whether the cost of nuclear power makes sense."

"Every year, navel orangeworms eat through roughly 2% of California’s almonds before they can make it to grocery store shelves. With climate change threatening to make the situation worse, researchers are hoping to sterilize millions of moths a day with radiation and drop them from airplanes."

"Even greater efforts to strip carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will fail to avert climate change catastrophe as rising global temperatures threaten to cross a key threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), scientists said on Wednesday."

"When he was just 18 years old, Emmanuel Akatire traveled about 500 miles from his home in Zorko, Ghana, to Accra, the nation’s capital, to find the only work he could — sifting through vast piles of discarded electronics to find valuable scrap metal. A week’s worth of painstaking, often dangerous work, earns him the equivalent of about 60 U.S. dollars."

"President Biden on Wednesday signed legislation exempting semiconductor manufacturing facilities from environmental reviews — despite objections from some Democrats and green activists who have expressed concerns about the potential for toxic waste."