APES Current Events

 Nolan Miller Heagerty  Period 1     A rare bee species has recently been found in Australia. Only 6 individuals of this species have ever been found, and the last recorded instance was in 1923. The rarity of this bee, which was thought to be extinct, is largely due to the fragmented habitats where they live, with 40% of forests having been cleared. If this continues, the species may very well become extinct.      I think it is very amazing that there are only six times that this species has been found, and the last one was nearly 100 years ago. It is quite amazing to think that these bees have been living somewhere for all that time without anyone finding them. I also think it is a bad thing that they may very well go extinct as a result of habitat loss.  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210225143923.htm

    The evidence towards a 9th planet at the edge of our solar system might be fake according to more recent studies. Previous findings showed that a bunch of objects in the edge of our solar system are being drawn into a cluster by an invisible planet around 10 times the size of Earth. This unseen planet has been named Planet 9 or Planet X. However a new study of 14 of these remote objects shows no evidence of clustering, which removes the main reason to believe in a 9th planet.  Caltech planetary scientists Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin used some these objects to help find some of the properties of this planet and found its orbit to be between 500-700 times the size of Earth's, or between 16-23 times larger than Neptune's orbit. Old studies only relied off of a handful of objects we found where we looked, Gary Bernstein states "Its important to know what we didn't see, in addition to what we did". Bernstein's team then ran 10 billion simulations with the...

 In order to avoid catastrophes regarded our climate, the amount of emissions produced would have to be cut in half by 2030. New pledges submitted by United Nations would only cut it down by 1%, which is nowhere close to good. It's far from the promises made by many countries. Paris fell back and didn't reach their goal of limiting global temperature increase which was expected by the end of 2020. The United States was pulled out from this plan by Donald Trump, but is now back in and planning on submitting their 2030 goals by April 22. The US is a huge issue, producing more greenhouse gases than any other country. China is also a huge issue in emission production and has not yet submitted their goals either. China has expectations of being carbon neutral by 2060. Some countries submitted plans without change, and Mexico seems to be retreating from their original clean energy plan. On the brighter side, 63 countries raised their targets. The Paris Agreement is not allowed to dic...

In this study it explains how air pollution affect children in the long run. If a child is exposed to any type of air pollution (wildfire smoke for example), even for one day, they have a high risk of getting heart disease or any other illness in adulthood. Researchers explain how air pollution affects children's immune and cardiac system. Researchers have found out that exposed air pollution correspond with white blood cells, this increases the ability for a child to get heart disease when they're an adult. Air pollution affects everyone, more and more Americans are dying from this. Death caused by a respiratory disease is the second most common way to die globally.  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210222124613.htm

A research team from Princeton University created a new sensor that could be an important asset to the oil and gas industry. The research team demonstrates their new sensor, which is detecting methane concentrations. This sensor uses cascade light emitting device, where wavelengths can measure chemicals. With this sensor, the research team is hoping that this would lead to more accurate methane measurements. We can have a better understanding of how methane emissions work from livestock and from dairy farms. We can also get a better understanding of climate change with this sensor. Methane sensing has been used with mid-IR LEDs but the performance of it was limited because of low light intensities. When the research team used ICLED (which was by far more powerful), the performance for methane sensing was improved. To see how the sensor works, the sensor measures infrared light through pure air, and then measure it through a methane contained room. The researchers tested out the new sen...

 Industrial Agriculture creates major pollution, which can cause public health problems and have a bad impact on the environment. This is actually the leading cause of water pollution in the United States. This can have negative impacts on people, animals, and the environment. The pollution in the water comes from the contents in the fertilizers. For instance, Nitrogen fertilizer is used for farm fields in the Midwest, and will eventually travel into the gulf of Mexico, contaminating the water. It will create what is called the Dead zone. No fish or other organisms can survive in this area. I think this is a major problem and more should be done to control it. Especially since this is the leading cause of pollution in the US, it should be a wake up call to make a change.  https://foodprint.org/issues/how-industrial-agriculture-affects-our-water/ 

     Recently, the discovery of an increased amount of hydrocarbons found within oceans, specifically the Gulf of Mexico has been made. These increases in material found may indicate a different type of organism spawned, and it a large detriment to the immediate surrounding habitable area. This is because the amount of hydrocarbons found is roughly 500 times more than the sum of all other types of petroleum inputs to the ocean, manmade or otherwise. This stunning uncovering may mean that manmade intervention, in order to prevent the damage that these hydrocarbon-producing organisms are creating. I feel that this relates directly to our work in class, as it makes main focal points on manmade pollution being a cause for concern, but overall takes a look at how the environment can be harmed because of a simply overproduction of one material. Source Used