In 1959 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built Camp Century beneath the surface of the northwestern Greenland Ice Sheet. There they studied the feasibility of deploying ballistic missiles within the ice sheet. The base and its wastes were abandoned with minimal decommissioning in 1967, under the assumption they would be preserved for eternity by perpetually accumulating snowfall.

International cooperation is needed to stop developed nations simply offloading defunct electronics on developing countries, argue Zhaohua Wang, Bin Zhang and Dabo Guan.

Original Source

Household flood management measures can significantly reduce the risk from flooding. Understanding the factors that influence the uptake of measures has important implications for the design of measures to induce people to take charge of risk mitigation.

Original Source

India is one of the world's largest food producers, making the sustainability of its agricultural system of global significance. Groundwater irrigation underpins India's agriculture, currently boosting crop production by enough to feed 170 million people. Groundwater overexploitation has led to drastic declines in groundwater levels, threatening to push this vital resource out of reach for millions of small-scale farmers who are the backbone of India's food security.

During the autumn of 2011 two catastrophic, very intense rainfall events affected two different parts of the Liguria Region of Italy causing various flash floods. The first occurred in October and the second at the beginning of November. Both the events were characterized by very high rainfall intensities (> 100 mm h−1) that persisted on a small portion of territory causing local huge rainfall accumulations (> 400 mm 6 h−1).

Original Source

Research reveals that liberals and conservatives in the United States diverge about their beliefs regarding climate change. We show empirically that political affiliation also matters with respect to climate related risks such as flooding from hurricanes. Our study is based on a survey conducted 6 months after Superstorm Sandy in 2012 of over 1,000 residents in flood-prone areas in New York City. Democrats’ perception of their probability of suffering flood damage is significantly higher than Republicans’ and they are also more likely to invest in individual flood protection measures.

Exposures to high-dose and high-dose-rate ionizing radiation are established risk factors for childhood acute leukemia (AL). The risk of AL following exposure to lower doses due to natural background radiation (NBR) has yet to be conclusively determined.

Original Source

This is the first study to examine the effect of alcohol marketing exposure on adolescents’ drinking in a cross-national context. The aim was to examine reciprocal processes between exposure to a wide range of alcohol marketing types and adolescent drinking, controlled for non-alcohol branded media exposure.

Original Source

Climate change is a global threat to species, and their capacity to adapt could be limited by habitat fragmentation. Many initiatives to restore habitats, increase connectivity and/or ensure ‘functioning ecological networks’ are explicitly or implicitly trying to address this threat. However, existing methods of analysing networks mainly treat the landscape as static, and it is difficult to use these to plan restoration.

Original Source

Changes in the hydrology of high-altitude catchments may have major consequences for downstream water supply. Based on model projections with a higher spatiotemporal resolution and degree of process complexity than any previous intercontinental comparative study, we show that the impacts of climate change cannot be generalized. These impacts range from a high climatic sensitivity, decreasing runoff, and significant seasonal changes in the Central Andes of Chile to increasing future runoff, limited seasonal shifts, but increases in peak flows in the Nepalese Himalaya.