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Fighting honey fraud

May 12, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Honey fraud is a significant issue for the food industry. What is honey fraud? Typically, it involves mislabeling where honey was produced or what types of flowers the bees collected nectar from. Honey made from a single type of flower is often more expensive because of the unique flavor it provides or from potential health benefits. Sometimes even cheap alternatives like sugar syrups are labelled as honey. It turns out that honey is one of the most fraud-prone commodities in global trade, with fraud estimated to occur in up to 10% of the honey traded internationally. Honey from some countries, such as China and India, has had 30% or more of samples found to be fraudulent.

Researchers at McGill University in Montreal have developed an AI-powered method to verify the origin of honey thereby ensuring that what is on the label corresponds to what is in the jar.

The McGill method can determine what kind of flowers the bees visited to produce a particular sample of honey. Previous honey authentication involved pollen analysis, which is ineffective for honey that was processed or filtered. The new method uses high-resolution mass spectrometry which captures a unique chemical “fingerprint” from the honey. Machine learning algorithms read the fingerprint to identify the honey’s origin.

The researchers tested their methodology on a variety of honey samples which they then compared with honey from known botanical sources. Using previous methods for honey authentication can take days. The McGill method takes only minutes and works regardless of how the honey was processed.

According to the researchers, people deserve to know that the honey they buy is what it claims to be, and honest honey producers deserve protection from fraudulent competitors.

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Fighting honey fraud with AI technology

Photo, posted May 6, 2012, courtesy of Emma Jane via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Amphibians and climate change

April 7, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Amphibians are a group of vertebrate animals that include frogs, toads, and salamanders. They are unique for their ability to live both in water and on land during different stages of life. Amphibians play a crucial role in ecosystems, often serving as both predators and prey in food webs.

Amphibians are the world’s most at-risk vertebrates, with more than 40% of species listed as threatened. They are cold-blooded creatures and rely on external sources to regulate their body temperature. But needing to regulate their body heat this way makes amphibians particularly vulnerable to temperature change in their habitats.

Researchers from the University of New South Wales in Australia can now predict the heat tolerance of 60% of the world’s amphibian species. This new tool will allow scientists to better identify which amphibian species and habitats will be most impacted by climate change.

The study’s landmark findings, which were recently published in the journal Nature, found that 2% of amphibian species are already exposed to overheating in shaded terrestrial conditions. According to the research team, a 4°C global temperature increase could push 7.5% of amphibian species beyond their physiological limits.

Local amphibian extinctions can trigger ecological repercussions, including reshuffling community compositions, eroding genetic diversity, and impacting the food chain and overall ecosystem health.

The researchers highlight the importance of vegetation and water bodies in protecting amphibians during heat waves, and emphasize the need to provide adequate water and shade during future conservation efforts.

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The pot is already boiling for 2% of the world’s amphibians: new study

Photo, posted October 8, 2011, courtesy of Dave Huth via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Drying rivers and hydropower

February 7, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A decade ago, Ecuador began a major transition to using hydroelectric power. Like in many other South American countries, the presence of abundant rivers could supply large amounts of energy and drive economic expansion and lead to a new era of prosperity.

This ambitious plan has run into the impacts of climate change. An extraordinary drought has engulfed much of South America, drying rivers and reservoirs, and has put Ecuador’s power grid on the brink of collapse.

Since September, daily energy cuts in Ecuador have lasted as long as 14 hours. An industry group says that the nation is losing $12 million in productivity and sales for every hour the power is out. Just a few years ago, Ecuador was making great strides in reducing poverty. Now, as the energy crisis has increased its grip on the country, much of what was achieved is being lost.

Ecuador’s situation is not unique. In recent years, abnormally dry weather in multiple places has resulted in extreme low water levels in rivers, reducing hydropower resources in Norway, Canada, Turkey, and even rainforest-rich Costa Rica.

Overall, more than one billion people live in countries where more than half of their energy comes from hydroelectric plants. With a warming climate and increasing incidence of extreme weather events like drought, it is likely that hydropower will become a less reliable energy source. More than a quarter of all hydroelectric dams are in places with a medium to high risk of water scarcity by 2050.

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The Rivers Run Dry and the Lights Go Out: A Warming Nation’s Doom Loop

Photo, posted January 15, 2020, courtesy of Pedro Szekely via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Solar-powered desalination

November 7, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

People in remote, low-income regions far from the ocean often need to meet their water needs from groundwater and groundwater is becoming increasingly saline due to climate change. Desalination of brackish groundwater is a huge and largely untapped source of drinking water, but there are challenges in making the process efficient and reliable.

Engineers at MIT have developed a solar-powered desalination system that requires no batteries or external power sources and is capable of producing large quantities of clean water despite the variations of sunshine throughout the day.

The system is based on the process of electrodialysis and consists of water pumps, an ion-exchange membrane stack, and a solar panel array. What is unique about it is that it makes use of sensors and a control system that predicts the optimal rate at which to pump water through the system based on the output of the solar panels. As a result, it uses nearly all of the electricity generated to produce clean water and does not need stored or grid-based energy.

The MIT engineers tested a community-scale prototype on groundwater wells in New Mexico over a six-month period. The system harnessed on average over 94% of the electricity generated by its solar panels and produced as much as 5,000 liters of water per day despite large variations in weather and sunlight.

The new renewable-powered, battery-free system could provide much-needed drinking water at low cost, especially for communities where access to seawater and to grid power are limited. The team plans to further test and scale up the system so it can supply larger communities and even whole municipalities with low-cost drinking water.

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Solar-powered desalination system requires no extra batteries

Photo courtesy of Shane Pratt.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Better wood for storing carbon

August 29, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Scientists have discovered a new type of wood that is highly efficient at storing carbon. A comprehensive survey of the microscopic structure of the wood from many species of trees revealed that there is a type of wood that is neither softwood, such as pine and conifers, or hardwood, such as oak, ash, and birch.

The scientists from Cambridge University and Jagiellonian University in Poland analyzed some of the world’s most iconic trees using electron microscopy to survey their microscopic structure.

They found that tulip trees, which are related to magnolias and can grow over 100 feet tall, have a unique type of wood. The trees, which diverged from magnolias far back to a time when atmospheric CO2 concentrations were low, grow very tall and very quickly. These features were an adaptation to those conditions and result in the ability to store larger concentrations of carbon to compensate based on their microstructure. The elementary units of wood are known as macrofibrils, and tulip trees have much larger macrofibrils than hardwoods but smaller than those of softwoods. This unusual intermediate structure makes the trees highly effective at carbon storage.

Based on the research, it may be the case that tulip trees will end up being useful for carbon capture plantations – tree plantings specifically for the purpose of mitigating the effects of climate change. Some east Asian countries are already using various tulip tree species in plantations for locking in carbon. This was based on their large size and rapid growth, but it turns out that their novel wood structure may be the most compelling reason to use them.

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Scientists discover entirely new wood type that could be highly efficient at carbon storage

Photo, posted March 3, 2021, courtesy of Thomas Quine via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A giant solar plus storage facility

August 23, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

One of the country’s largest co-located solar and battery energy storage projects is now fully operational. The Gemini Solar+Storage project is located in Clark County, Nevada, about 30 minutes outside of Las Vegas.

The project’s 1.8 million solar panels can generate up to 690 megawatts of electricity, which is enough to supply about 10% of Nevada’s peak demand. The facility is co-located with 380 megawatts of 4-hour battery storage, which is enough to supply Nevadans with 1,400 MWh of power after sundown.

The project makes use of a unique storage configuration that allows the storage system to be charged directly from the solar panels, resulting in increased efficiency and maximizing the capture and storage of solar energy.

The project has minimized the environmental impacts to the nearly 5,000-acre site. Primergy, the project developer, took measures to leave vegetation in place, installed solar panels to follow the ground’s natural contours, and reduced the overall footprint by more than 20% through careful design. The project created 1,300 union and prevailing wage jobs and contributed $483 million to Nevada’s economy.

Solar facilities are increasingly co-located with battery storage plants. There is a huge project in Kern County California that includes 1.9 million solar panels capable of generating 875 megawatts of solar power and storing 3,287 megawatt-hours of energy. The deserts of the southwest are prime locations for such facilities.

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The house always wins: Massive Gemini solar + storage outside of Las Vegas reaches commercial operations

Photo courtesy of Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Geological thermal energy storage

August 7, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The electricity grid is increasingly using solar and wind power. Depending on those two sources requires the ability to store energy to have on hand when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. Energy needs to be stored away to be used hours, days, or even weeks after it is produced.

Energy storage is booming. California has increased its energy storage capacity tenfold in recent times. One day in April, storage batteries were the largest source of electricity in the state for a period of two hours. But batteries are not the only way to store energy. There are chemical, electrochemical, mechanical, and thermal methods that each has potential advantages and unique features.

A project in Kern County, California, is making use of an abandoned oil field to create a long-term energy storage installation. The plan is to retrofit depleted oil wells to store concentrated solar energy in superheated groundwater for long periods of time. The stored heat can then be used to drive turbines when electricity is needed.

Some 1,200 feet below the surface of the oil field are pockets of permeable sandstone that have been emptied of the oil they previously contained. An array of parabolic mirrors will gather solar energy that will heat silicon oil in an underground loop to 700 degrees Fahrenheit. The oil pipeline will heat up groundwater down below. When electricity is needed, the heated groundwater will be brought to the surface to operate turbines.

There is no new technology involved. The individual aspects have never all been combined before, but the likelihood of success is high. There are lots of depleted oil fields that could be used this way in the future.

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Can a California Oilfield Be Retrofitted to Store Solar Energy?

Photo, posted July 18, 2017, courtesy of John Ciccarelli / BLM via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Keeping The Keeling Curve Going | Earth Wise

March 21, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The world’s longest-running record of direct readings of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is the Keeling Curve, measurements taken at the summit of Mauna Loa in Hawaii. The readings have been going on with almost no interruption since Charles Keeling began taking them in the 1950s. But the eruption of Mauna Loa last November toppled power lines at the mountaintop observatory and buried a mile of the main road up the mountain in lava.

Scientists have been scrambling to resume measurements and the near-term solution has been to take them, for the first time, on Mauna Kea, the neighboring large volcano about 25 miles away. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration flew in and installed instruments at the Mauna Kea observatory so that only about a week went by without measurements. It happened so quickly because months earlier, NOAA had already started looking into installing a backup site on Mauna Kea where there is an observatory run by the University of Hawaii.

NOAA used helicopters to install solar panels and batteries on Mauna Loa to restore power in the short term since it will be months before a new road can be built on the still-cooling lava. The plan is to collect parallel measurements for a year to see if Mauna Kea, which hasn’t erupted for thousands of years, might become a long-term backup for Mauna Loa.

The Hawaiian volcanoes are uniquely suited for the measurements because they are surrounded by thousands of miles of empty ocean and are very high up, away from towns, cars, and forests. Scientists are now monitoring measurements from the two sites to see how they compare.

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Battling Lava and Snowstorms, 2.5 Miles Above the Pacific

Photo, posted November 2, 2015, courtesy of Neal Simpson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Assessing The Planet’s Most Unique Birds | Earth Wise

January 11, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Birds come in a huge variety of shapes, sizes and plumages. The physical attributes of birds are adaptations that have taken countless millennia to develop, and physical attributes are closely related to the roles birds play in their environment.

According to a new study led by researchers from the University College London in the U.K., bird species with extreme or uncommon combinations of traits have the highest risk of extinction. Losing these bird species and the unique roles they play in the environment, including seed dispersal, pollination and predation, could have severe consequences on the health of ecosystems.

In the study, which was recently published in the British Ecological Society journal Functional Ecology, the researchers analyzed the extinction risk and physical attributes of 99% of all living bird species. The research team used a dataset of measurements collected from living birds and museum specimens. The measurements included things like beak size and shape, and the length of wings, tails and legs. The researchers combined this data with extinction risk, and then ran simulations to see what would happen if the most threatened birds were to go extinct.

Some of the bird species that are both most unique and most threatened include the Christmas Frigatebird and the Bristle-thighed Curlew. Kiwis were excluded from the study because the researchers viewed them as extreme morphological outliers.

While most unique birds were also classified as threatened on the Red List, the research was unable to show what links uniqueness in birds to extinction risk

The research team warns that if more isn’t done to protect these threatened species and avoid extinctions, the functioning of ecosystems will be dramatically disrupted.

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Planet’s most unique birds at higher risk of extinction

Photo, posted June 25, 2012, courtesy of Kristine Sowl / USFWS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Mosquito Magnets | Earth Wise

November 30, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

We’ve all probably had the experience of being in the great outdoors with other people and having some of them being nearly devoured by mosquitoes while others didn’t get bitten at all. It seemed like some people are mosquito magnets while others just aren’t the insects’ cup of tea, so to speak.

There have been various theories proposed over the years including such things as it being a question of blood type, or it having to do with how close one’s blood vessels are to their skin surface.

A new study by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Rockefeller University has uncovered what appears to be the real explanation. According to the paper published in the journal Cell, certain body odors are the deciding factor. Every person has a unique scent profile associated with different chemicals present on their skin. The researchers found that people whose skin produces high levels of carboxylic acids are the most attractive to mosquitos.

The researchers collected scent samples from participants by having them wear silk stockings on their arms for six hours. The nylons were then cut into pieces and the pieces exposed to mosquitos. After several months of head-to-head battles between various nylon samples, the study clearly demonstrated that the samples from subjects with higher levels of carboxylic acids in the skin were far more attractive to mosquitos.

Humans produce the substance at much higher levels than other animals. There is little one can do about their own levels. Changing one’s diet or what soap they use doesn’t seem to make a difference.

Perhaps researchers can come up with some method of breaking down carboxylic acids in the skin in the future. Until such time, there are really people who are mosquito magnets.

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Some People Really Are Mosquito Magnets, and They’re Stuck That Way

Photo, posted September 4, 2014, courtesy of James Gathany / Centers for Disease Control via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Tree Diversity | Earth Wise

March 4, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Scientists have estimated that there are more than 8 million species of plants and animals in existence. Amazingly, only about 1.2 million of them have been identified and described so far and most of those are actually insects. Millions of other organisms have yet to be discovered.

One would imagine that most of these unknown species are tiny things that are hard to spot or encounter. But our ignorance of species even applies to trees, which are pretty easy to spot if you encounter them.

A new study involving more than 100 scientists across the globe has produced an estimate of the number of tree species on the Earth. The new global estimate is that there are 73,000 tree species, which is about 14% more than previously thought. Based on a combination of data from two global datasets, the study yielded a total of 64,100 documented tree species worldwide. The researchers then used novel statistical methods to estimate the total number of unique tree species at biome, continental, and global scales, which includes species yet to be discovered and described by scientists. Therefore, the estimate predicts that there are likely to be over 9,000 tree species still to be found.

Roughly 40% of the undiscovered tree species are likely to be in South America, which is the continent with the highest number of rare tree species and the highest number of continentally endemic tree species – meaning those found only on that continent. Hot spots of undiscovered tree species are likely the tropical and subtropical moist forests of the Amazon basin and the Andes-Amazon interface.

Extensive knowledge of tree richness and diversity is key to preserving the stability and functioning of ecosystems.

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Number of Earth’s tree species estimated to be 14% higher than currently known, with some 9,200 species yet to be discovered

Photo, posted November 5, 2017, courtesy of Deensel via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Volunteer Tourism | Earth Wise

February 13, 2020 By EarthWise 1 Comment

Spending vacation time in a disaster zone seems like a crazy idea, but so-called volunteer tourism can actually be a big help to communities trying to recover from natural disasters. It can also be a unique and rewarding experience for the volunteers.

Such volunteer tourism should not be confused with “disaster tourism”, the unfortunate practice of rushing to the scene of a calamity to gawk. That is certainly no help to anyone.

When disaster strikes a destination usually frequented by tourists, people naturally tend to stay away, leaving communities to deal with the loss of tourism income on top of the costs of repair and recovery.

A study by UTS, a technology university in Sydney, Australia, looked at the effects of volunteer tourism in the wake of the April 2015 earthquake in Nepal. They found that when it is done in an ethical matter than takes into account local conditions and the affected community, volunteer tourism can aid recovery and resilience.

In the months following the earthquake, most relief organizations asked international volunteers not to come unless they had specific expertise, such as medical skills, building skills, or emergency response experience. Eventually, Nepal relaxed conditions to include volunteers to help rebuild homes and schools, to intern in hospitals, and to support NGOs and to re-establish sustainable agriculture.

According to the Nepal Association of Tour and Travel Agents, almost one third of the tours booked to Nepal in the two years after the earthquake comprised groups who combined tourism with volunteering or philanthropy.

Volunteer tourism isn’t for everyone and for every situation, but for places that rely on tourism for their economy, building volunteer tourism into the recovery process can be a good strategy.

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Volunteer tourism can aid disaster recovery

Photo, posted July 2, 2015, courtesy of the World Humanitarian Summit via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Weird Answer To A Serious Problem

April 25, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Resistance to antibiotics is a rising problem that costs an estimated 700,000 lives each year. Some experts predict that if the problem can’t be solved, that number could grow to 10 million deaths annually by 2050. As a result, researchers around the world are investigating multiple ways to help fight antibiotic resistance.