Climate Change Scenarios in Germany

A constantly changing climate connects to a changing hydro logical cycle. These changes imply extreme flood and drought that occur in areas suffering from dry spells. With the majority of destructive events being located in central Europe, they've lost billions of dollars worth of damages. In order to prepare for the next disaster to come, Europeans investigated the past 50 years of floods in the five different river basins using simulations. They decided to use the basins because each one had different hydrological and climatic regimes. Results from this test explains that drought will increase in severity for three of the five basins but all basins will gradually have increasingly worse droughts as the years past. These tests and results advance environmental sustainability by being able to show past experiences and what had to happen to cause these floods and droughts to help Europeans prepare for the future. With that being said, being prepared for these disasters will help Europeans with not loosing as much money in damages.  Its interesting how they used many different simulations and all five basins to collect these results.

Huang, Shaochun, Fred F. Hattermann, Valentina Krysanova, and Axel Bronstert. "Projections of Climate Change Impacts on River Flood Conditions in Germany by Combining Three Different RCMs with a Regional Eco-hydrological Model." Climatic Change 116.3-4 (2012): 631-63. Web.

Mosquitos To The Rescue

Recently due to Zika Virus outbreak, scientist have been trying to work hand in hand with areas such as Brazil and Columbia, where they encounter this virus more frequently. The plan is for mosquitos to be infected with a bug,  Wolbachia (This reduces the mosquitos ability to spread virus) . Wolbachia is a bacterium that is unharmful to humans, but infects 60% of insects. The mosquito that is mostly transmitting the Zika Virus is the Aedes aegypti mosquito. Scientists have been researching to figure out how to inject the bug into these mosquitos. According to studies, Wolbachia will compete with the virus itself to get their resources off the mosquito host, eventually leading the virus to lose out and not have the ability to replicate successfully. Thus making it more difficult for the virus to be passed on from mosquito to human. Scientists have said that small scale observational trials in problem countries such as Brazil, Columbia, and Indonesia can help reduce the spread of this virus in humans. They view the Wolbachia bacteria as a new protection against mosquito caused diseases. Its seen as something dependable, affordable, and versatile, not only preventing Zika virus spread, but also other viruses such as dengue and chikungunya viruses. Scientists plan is to release the modified mosquitos and allow them to breed with other mosquitos therefore transmitting the bug to generations to come. Monitoring of these mosquito borne viruses will be going on for the next three years.

Mundasad, Smitha. 2016. Mosquito army released in zika fight in brazil and Columbia. BBC News

Reverse combustion from nanoparticles

Copper nanoparticles ( spheres) embedded in carbon nanospike

An accidental discovery was made, when a catalyst made of carbon, copper, nitrogen and applied voltage to trigger complicated chemical reaction that reverses the combustion process. Using nanotechnology-based catalyst which contains multiple reaction sites, the solution of carbon dioxide dissolved in water turned into ethanol with a yield of 63%! Usually, this type of electrochemical reactions results in a mix of several different smaller products. Though it is difficult to go from carbon dioxide to ethanol with a single catalyst, researchers discovered that the catalyst’s novelty lies in its nanoscale structure, consisting of copper nanoparticles embedded in carbon spikes. This approach avoids the use of expensive or rare metals such as platinum that limit the economic viability of many catalysts. By arranging common materials with nanotechnology, researchers were able to limit side reactions and end up with the desired product. The initial analysis suggests that the spiky textured surface of catalysts provides ample reactive sites to facilitate the CO₂ to ethanol conversion. Since materials are low cost and the fact that this reaction occurs at room temperature in water, it is possible that the approach could be scaled up for industrially relevant applications, such as, storing excess electricity generated from variable power sources such as wind and solar.

Song, Y., Peng, R., Hensley, D. K., Bonnesen, P. V., et al. (2016), High-Selectivity Electrochemical Conversion of CO₂ to Ethanol using a Copper Nanoparticle/N-Doped Graphene Electrode. ChemistrySelect. doi:10.1002/slct.201601169