Category Environment/Geology

Lake Towuti, Indonesia. (A) Regional context for Lake Towuti on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. Red box indicates approximate location of part B. Background is the Ocean base map from ESRI et al. (2015). (B) Generalized geologic map of Lake Towuti and the surrounding area showing the dominance of ultramafic material. Map is modified from Costa et al. (2015). (C) Bathymetry of Lake Towuti showing the location of the two analyzed sediment cores at the distal margins of the Mahalona River delta (white dots labeled 4 for TOW4 and 5 for TOW5). River inputs are shown in thin blue lines, with the Mahalona River shown as a thick blue line. Credit: Goudge et al. and GSA Bulletin

Timothy A...

Researchers developed a device that uses florescence from oil (left) to detect its presence and identify the type of oil. The small and simple device incorporates inexpensive electronic components (right). Credit: Oscar Sampedro, Universidade de Vigo.

Simple sensing device could make cleanup easier by identifying the type of oil involved in a spill. The device is designed to float on the water, where it could remotely monitor a small area susceptible to pollution or track the evolution of contamination at a particular location. “Fast detection of a spill is crucial for a quick antipollution response to avoid, as much as possible, the progressive mixture of the oil into the water, which would make cleaning more difficult and inefficient,” said Jose R...

This is a solidified lava flow over the side of a crater rim of Elysium. Credit: NASA HiRISE image, David Susko, LSU

New Mars research shows evidence of a complex mantle beneath the Elysium volcanic province. Mars’ mantle may be more complicated than previously thought. In a new study researchers at LSU found that the unusual chemistry of lava flows around Elysium is consistent with primary magmatic processes, eg. heterogeneous mantle beneath Mars’ surface or the weight of the overlying volcanic mountain causing different layers of mantle to melt at different temperatures as they rise to the surface.

Elysium is a giant volcanic complex on Mars, the second largest behind Olympic Mons. For scale, it rises to twice the height of Earth’s Mount Everest, or ~16 kilometers...

Geoffrey Coates, center, in his lab with James Eagan, a postdoctoral researcher in Coates’ group and researcher Anne LaPointe. Credit: Robert Barker/University Photography

When Geoffrey Coates, Tisch University Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, gives a talk about plastics and recycling, he usually opens with this question: What percentage of the 78 million tons of plastic used annually for packaging – for example, a 2-liter bottle or a take-out food container – actually gets recycled and reused in a similar way? The answer is just 2%. Sadly, nearly a third is leaked into the environment, around 14% is used in incineration and/or energy recovery, and a whopping 40% winds up in landfills.

One of the problems: Polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), 2/3 of the world’s plastic...