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A new report released by the Environmental Working Group reveals that over 218 million people across the United States are being exposed to potentially unsafe concentrations of hexavalent chromium in their drinking water, a chemical compound known to be toxic and carcinogenic in even extremely low concentrations. Nation-wide testing by local water utilities was ordered by the EPA between 2013 and 2016, resulting in over three-quarters of the 62,386 samples taken testing positive for the hexavalent chromium contaminant. An interactive map illustrating EWG’s findings can be found here.
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A new study that employs global positioning system measurements has revealed that the Greenland ice sheet is melting much faster than what previous estimates indicated, by roughly 7.6 percent. Previous estimates pegged the amount of ice loss between 2003 and 2013 at 2,500 billion tons, but the new study corrects this to 2,700 billion tons — a major factor in estimating the rate of future sea level rise.
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The increasing use of satellite imagery to analyze the surface of the Earth has opened the benefits of orbital imaging technology to fields of study that previously would not have been imagined. Formerly the purview of spy surveillance and meteorologists, satellite imaging is now helping archaeologists look for new places to explore in the landscape, searching for large-scale or subtle patterns that would otherwise have been invisible to a researcher on the ground.
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The Internet: a vast, planet-spanning network of fiber optic cable and computer servers, connecting untold billions of computer systems across the globe. One important aspect of the ‘Net that tends to remain unseen for the majority of us is that the backbone of this massive network is handled by only a handful of multinational corporations, facilitating upper-tier net access for major providers around the world. If the network of any one of these companies were to fail, it would be disastrous for global communications, blocking access to millions of netizens and businesses. If more than one were to be disrupted at once, for instance in a coordinated cyberattack, the consequences would be catastrophic — and it appears that someone is learning how to do just that.
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