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Gizmorama - May 5, 2014
Good Morning, American's beware! You're being subjected to unhealthy levels of air pollution according the American Lung Association's 15th annual "State of the Air" report card.
Learn about this interesting story and more from the scientific community in today's issue.
Until Next Time,
ErinP.S. Did you miss an issue? You can read every issue from the Gophercentral library of newsletters on our exhaustive archives page. Thousands of issues, all of your favorite publications in chronological order. You can read AND comment. Just click
GopherArchives****-- Nearly half of Americans subject to unhealthy levels of air pollution --*WASHINGTON (UPI) - More than 147 million Americans live in counties featuring unhealthy levels of either ozone or particle pollution -- that according the American Lung Association's 15th annual "State of the Air" report card. The new report looks at pollution data compiled from 2010 to 2012; last year's report covered data from 2009, 2010, and 2011. This year's air pollution report card was a mixed bag of good and bad news. The good news is: particle pollution around the country continues to improve. According to the report: "Thirteen of the 25 cities with the worst year-round particle pollution reached their lowest levels yet, including Los Angeles, Atlanta, Pittsburgh and Bakersfield." Particle pollutants are tiny pieces of solid and liquid pollution suspended in the air, like soot, smoke, ash, cement dust, etc. Particulate exposure is associated with asthma, lung cancer and other types of heart disease and respiratory problems. The bad news is: ozone pollution is getting worse. As the report indicates, 22 of the 25 most ozone-polluted cities, including Los Angeles, New York City, and Chicago, had more smog-filled days between 2011 and 2012, than it did between 2009 and 2010. Smog -- the result of a combination of coal smoke and vehicle emissions reacting with direct sunlight and ground-level ozone -- is powerful respiratory irritant that can also work to trap other types of pollution over a city. "We are happy to report continued reduction of year-round particle pollution across the nation, thanks to cleaner diesel fleets and cleaner power plants," said Harold Wimmer, CEO of the American Lung Association. "However, this improvement represents only a partial victory. We know that warmer temperatures increase risk for ozone pollution, so climate change sets the stage for tougher challenges to protect human health."
*-- NASA scientists find star as cold as the Arctic --*WASHINGTON (UPI) - If Earth orbited WISE
J085510.83-071442.5, a nearby star newly discovered by NASA scientists, there would likely be no such thing as a bathing suit or short shorts. That's because this "brown dwarf" -- a star too small to enable nuclear fusion and radiate light -- is as cold as the Arctic. With its temperature fluctuating between minus-54 and 9 degrees Fahrenheit, the star is the coldest ever spotted. Because brown dwarfs give off minimal light and heat, they're extremely hard to find without a telescope outfitted with an infrared lens. Astronomers have detected other brown dwarfs, but their temperatures have been around room temperature. "It's very exciting to discover a new neighbor of our solar system that is so close," said Kevin Luhman, an astronomer at Penn State, in a statement released by NASA. "And given its extreme temperature, it should tell us a lot about the atmospheres of planets, which often have similarly cold temperatures." At a distance of at 7.2 light-years away, the icy cold ball of gas is the fourth-closest star to Earth's solar system. The frigid star was discovered by NASA's Spitzer and WISE Telescopes. Its existence was confirmed by NASA scientists and collaborating astronomers from Penn State. "It is remarkable that even after many decades of studying the sky, we still do not have a complete inventory of the sun's nearest neighbors," said Michael Werner, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who works with data collected by Spitzer. "This exciting new result demonstrates the power of exploring the universe using new tools, such as the infrared eyes of WISE and Spitzer."
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