air quality
Do Face Masks Help With Wildfire Smoke? Yes, But More Is Needed
Here's How to Prevent Heart and Lung Damage As wildfire smoke threatens air quality and safety for millions, here's your playbook to keep your family safe from the damaging effects of smoke particulates. Wildfire season is fully upon us-- and with it, the smoke . The most spectacular threat of a wildfire is of course the possibility it might directly threaten lives and homes, like the wildfires last year that devastated Los Angeles . But it is the smoke and the stinging haze--and especially the invisible particulate matter borne aloft for hundreds of miles--that is most likely to pose grave health risks to millions across the country, as wildfires rage in Canada and across the American West during summer months. So do visits to lung doctors.
What to know about the Canadian and US wildfires and their impact
Cities across north-eastern Canada and the US are suffering from intense smoke brought on by wildfires burning across Ontario and Minnesota. Residents in New York, Boston and Toronto have been encouraged to avoid strenuous activity over potential health impacts caused by the pollution. Canada wildfires leave train'encased in flames' as smoke drifts towards US Where are the wildfires and how did they start? There are currently 858 wildfires actively burning across Canada - nearly 200 of those in Ontario - according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. Along the northern edge of Minnesota there are 17 fires that are still burning and an emergency declaration is in place to help mobilise suppression efforts.
Jacobian-Velocity Bounds for Deployment Risk Under Covariate Drift
We study long-horizon deployment of a frozen predictor under dynamic covariate shift. A time-domain Poincarรฉ inequality reduces temporal risk volatility to derivative energy, and a Jacobian-velocity theorem identifies directional tangent energy along the deployment path as the governing quantity under explicit along-path regularity and domination assumptions. Under low-rank drift, that quantity reduces to directional Jacobian energy in the drift subspace, motivating drift-aligned tangent regularization (DTR) and a matched monitoring proxy. Rather than smoothing the network isotropically, DTR penalizes sensitivity only along estimated drift directions. We validate the theorem-to-method pipeline in four experiments: a synthetic benchmark for the time-domain inequality, a controlled synthetic comparison against isotropic Jacobian regularization, and two frozen-deployment studies on the UCI Air Quality and Tetouan power-consumption datasets. DTR reduces risk volatility and directional gain in the controlled low-rank regime, beats isotropic smoothing there, and gives validation-selected deployment gains on both real datasets when the Air Quality drift subspace is estimated from target-orthogonal sensor motion. Moderate drift-subspace misspecification is tolerable while orthogonal misspecification largely removes the benefit.
Amazon is blowing out LEVOIT air purifiers so you can filter out irritants
The air in your house sucks--fix it with these Amazon deals on air purifiers and humidifiers. We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. If your sinuses are staging a revolt or your living room smells suspiciously like last night's stir-fry, it's probably time to call in a serious air purifier. LEVOIT's lineup routinely tops our lists because models cover everything from compact bedroom workhorses to family-room heavy hitters, and these Amazon deals are a chance to upgrade your home air quality before the next wave of wildfire smoke, pet shedding, or pollen hits. And there are also humidifiers on sale.
Lightweight ML-Based Air Quality Prediction for IoT and Embedded Applications
Sami, Md. Sad Abdullah, Abid, Mushfiquzzaman
This study investigates the effectiveness and efficiency of two variants of the XGBoost regression model, the full-capacity and lightweight (tiny) versions, for predicting the concentrations of carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Using the AirQualityUCI dataset collected over one year in an urban environment, we conducted a comprehensive evaluation based on widely accepted metrics, including Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Bias Error (MBE), and the coefficient of determination (R2). In addition, we assessed resource-oriented metrics such as inference time, model size, and peak RAM usage. The full XGBoost model achieved superior predictive accuracy for both pollutants, while the tiny model, though slightly less precise, offered substantial computational benefits with significantly reduced inference time and model storage requirements. These results demonstrate the feasibility of deploying simplified models in resource-constrained environments without compromising predictive quality. This makes the tiny XGBoost model suitable for real-time air-quality monitoring in IoT and embedded applications.
VayuChat: An LLM-Powered Conversational Interface for Air Quality Data Analytics
Acharya, Vedant, Pisharodi, Abhay, Mondal, Rishabh, Rafiuddin, Mohammad, Batra, Nipun
Air pollution causes about 1.6 million premature deaths each year in India, yet decision makers struggle to turn dispersed data into decisions. Existing tools require expertise and provide static dashboards, leaving key policy questions unresolved. We present VayuChat, a conversational system that answers natural language questions on air quality, meteorology, and policy programs, and responds with both executable Python code and interactive visualizations. VayuChat integrates data from Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) monitoring stations, state-level demographics, and National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) funding records into a unified interface powered by large language models. Our live demonstration will show how users can perform complex environmental analytics through simple conversations, making data science accessible to policymakers, researchers, and citizens. The platform is publicly deployed at https://huggingface.co/spaces/SustainabilityLabIITGN/ VayuChat. For further information check out video uploaded on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6rklL05cs4.
AIOT based Smart Education System: A Dual Layer Authentication and Context-Aware Tutoring Framework for Learning Environments
Neelakantan, Adithya, Satpute, Pratik, Shinde, Prerna, Devang, Tejas Manjunatha
The AIoT-Based Smart Education System integrates Artificial Intelligence and IoT to address persistent challenges in contemporary classrooms: attendance fraud, lack of personalization, student disengagement, and inefficient resource use. The unified platform combines four core modules: (1) a dual-factor authentication system leveraging RFID-based ID scans and WiFi verification for secure, fraud-resistant attendance; (2) an AI-powered assistant that provides real-time, context-aware support and dynamic quiz generation based on instructor-supplied materials; (3) automated test generators to streamline adaptive assessment and reduce administrative overhead; and (4) the EcoSmart Campus module, which autonomously regulates classroom lighting, air quality, and temperature using IoT sensors and actuators. Simulated evaluations demonstrate the system's effectiveness in delivering robust real-time monitoring, fostering inclusive engagement, preventing fraudulent practices, and supporting operational scalability. Collectively, the AIoT-Based Smart Education System offers a secure, adaptive, and efficient learning environment, providing a scalable blueprint for future educational innovation and improved student outcomes through the synergistic application of artificial intelligence and IoT technologies.
Synergistic Neural Forecasting of Air Pollution with Stochastic Sampling
Abeysinghe, Yohan, Munir, Muhammad Akhtar, Baliah, Sanoojan, Sarafian, Ron, Khan, Fahad Shahbaz, Rudich, Yinon, Khan, Salman
Air pollution remains a leading global health and environmental risk, particularly in regions vulnerable to episodic air pollution spikes due to wildfires, urban haze and dust storms. Accurate forecasting of particulate matter (PM) concentrations is essential to enable timely public health warnings and interventions, yet existing models often underestimate rare but hazardous pollution events. Here, we present SynCast, a high-resolution neural forecasting model that integrates meteorological and air composition data to improve predictions of both average and extreme pollution levels. Built on a regionally adapted transformer backbone and enhanced with a diffusion-based stochastic refinement module, SynCast captures the nonlinear dynamics driving PM spikes more accurately than existing approaches. Leveraging on harmonized ERA5 and CAMS datasets, our model shows substantial gains in forecasting fidelity across multiple PM variables (PM$_1$, PM$_{2.5}$, PM$_{10}$), especially under extreme conditions. We demonstrate that conventional loss functions underrepresent distributional tails (rare pollution events) and show that SynCast, guided by domain-aware objectives and extreme value theory, significantly enhances performance in highly impacted regions without compromising global accuracy. This approach provides a scalable foundation for next-generation air quality early warning systems and supports climate-health risk mitigation in vulnerable regions.