Researchers tracked air pollution at 15 monitoring sites across New York City during the first year of the country’s first congestion pricing program.

Fine particulate pollution inside the congestion zone fell about 13 percent beyond what regional trends, weather and year-to-year variability would predict.

The decline closely matched the roughly 11 percent drop in vehicles entering the zone, though pollution had already been falling citywide for other reasons.

Nitrogen dioxide dropped more than 20 percent across the metro area, but the study could not attribute that regional decline to congestion pricing.

The “top predator” from the Jurassic is relatively small in size: Megacauda sungei measures just half a meter from its nose to the tip of its tail. 165 million years ago, the furry ancestor to today’s mammals hunted its prey in water. The cusps of its teeth were also curved backwards to enable it to catch its slippery prey. However, the true evolutionary revolution is its soft palate, which separates the oral cavity from the pharynx while also enabling swallowing and breathing. This is an important requirement for suckling as a survival advantage. The findings by researchers from the Universities of Shenyang, Chicago, and Bonn are now being published in the journal ‘Nature’. 

A new study led by researchers at the University of Plymouth (UK) has have produced the first assessment of whether light pollution is posing a threat to 'Good Environmental Status' in our ocean and along out coastlines. The new framework was tested using data available for European waters, with parts of the Adriatic, Baltic, Mediterranean and North seas proving the most likely to be impacted by light pollution.

A new species of extinct crocodile from Egypt has been discovered, sharing more than just its home with the Great Sphinx. Herugavialis cairensis was found in the very same rocks used to build the iconic monument. And, just as the Sphinx is famously missing the tip of its nose, the fossil crocodile is also missing the tip of its snout.

A team of scientists, including researchers at Penn State, is using diffusion — the same artificial intelligence technique used to generate images of weightlifting cats or cartoon versions of family photos — to build better hourly-rate prediction models to monitor flash flood risk.

AMHERST, Mass. — “Is there enough water? What’s happening with climate change? How do I operate my hydro plant? In a world of water problems, there are problems that we need a good model to solve,” says Colin Gleason, a hydrologist in the Riccio College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. But the models are only as good as the math that they’re based on, and, short of measuring every river in the world, there is no way to check this on a global scale.