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Air pollution may be changing sperm

Popular Science

Harmful nitrogen dioxide and ozone levels could affect fertility and pregnancies. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy . Air quality is linked to a wide range of health issues including respiratory problems, cardiovascular complications, and cancer, and that list of concerns only continues to grow .


SentinelKilnDB: A Large-Scale Dataset and Benchmark for OBB Brick Kiln Detection in South Asia Using Satellite Imagery

Neural Information Processing Systems

Air pollution was responsible for 2.6 million deaths across South Asia in 2021 alone, with brick manufacturing contributing significantly to this burden. In particular, the Indo-Gangetic Plain; a densely populated and highly polluted region spanning northern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and parts of Afghanistan sees brick kilns contributing 8-14% of ambient air pollution. Traditional monitoring approaches, such as field surveys and manual annotation using tools like Google Earth Pro, are time and labor-intensive. Prior ML-based efforts for automated detection have relied on costly high-resolution commercial imagery and non-public datasets, limiting reproducibility and scalability. In this work, we introduce SENTINELKILNDB, a publicly available, hand-validated benchmark of 62,671 brick kilns spanning threekiln types Fixed Chimney Bull's Trench Kiln (FCBK), Circular FCBK (CFCBK), and Zigzag kilns - annotated with oriented bounding boxes (OBBs) across 2.8 million km2 using free and globally accessible Sentinel-2 imagery. We benchmark state-of-the-art oriented object detection models and evaluate generalization across in-region, out-of-region, and super-resolution settings. SENTINELKILNDB enables rigorous evaluation of geospatial generalization and robustness for low-resolution object detection, and provides a new testbed for ML models addressing real-world environmental and remote sensing challenges at a continental scale. Datasets and code are available in SentinelKilnDB Dataset and SentinelKilnDB Bench-mark, under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.


The battle in rural America against AI data centres

BBC News

Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK. The world's largest data centre (62sq miles) has been approved in Utah, but there is growing opposition towards the project. At twice the size of Manhattan with promises to create thousands of jobs, we look at the bi partisan opposition against it. In this episode, Justin and Anthony discuss the enormous buildings being built across rural America, to house the huge amounts of data that A.I companies work with. Tech bosses say the centres are essential to the growth of Artificial Intelligence.


Indoor Air Quality Dataset with Activities of Daily Living in Low to Middle-income Communities

Neural Information Processing Systems

In recent years, indoor air pollution has posed a significant threat to our society, claiming over 3.2 million lives annually. Developing nations, such as India, are most affected since lack of knowledge, inadequate regulation, and outdoor air pollution lead to severe daily exposure to pollutants. However, only a limited number of studies have attempted to understand how indoor air pollution affects developing countries like India. To address this gap, we present spatiotemporal measurements of air quality from 30 indoor sites over six months during summer and winter seasons. The sites are geographically located across four regions of type: rural, suburban, and urban, covering the typical low to middle-income population in India. The dataset contains various types of indoor environments (e.g., studio apartments, classrooms, research laboratories, food canteens, and residential households), and can provide the basis for data-driven learning model research aimed at coping with unique pollution patterns in developing countries. This unique dataset demands advanced data cleaning and imputation techniques for handling missing data due to power failure or network outages during data collection. Furthermore, through a simple speech-to-text application, we provide real-time indoor activity labels annotated by occupants. Therefore, environmentalists and ML enthusiasts can utilize this dataset to understand the complex patterns of the pollutants under different indoor activities, identify recurring sources of pollution, forecast exposure, improve floor plans and room structures of modern indoor designs, develop pollution-aware recommender systems, etc.


SpaceX rocket fireball linked to plume of polluting lithium

BBC News

When a SpaceX rocket failure set the skies aflame over western Europe last February, no-one was sure if the debris was also polluting our atmosphere. Now scientists are directly linking the uncontrolled rocket re-entry to a plume of lithium measured less than 100km above Earth. It is the first time researchers have drawn a direct link between a known piece of space debris crashing to Earth and pollution levels. They warn that as SpaceX chief Elon Musk pledges to launch one million satellites in the coming years, this contamination could be the tip of the iceberg. The scientists were already investigating the problem of pollution from space debris when they realised a SpaceX Falcon 9 had failed in flight.


Atmospheric pollution caused by space junk could be a huge problem

New Scientist

After a Falcon 9 rocket stage burned up in the atmosphere, vaporised lithium and other metals drifted over Europe. A SpaceX rocket that burned up after re-entering the atmosphere unleashed a plume of vaporised metals over Europe, a type of pollution that is expected to increase as spacecraft and satellites multiply. The upper stage of a Falcon 9, which is designed to splash down in the Pacific Ocean for possible re-use, lost control due to engine failure and fell from orbit over the north Atlantic in February 2025. We're finally solving the puzzle of how clouds will affect our climate People across Europe saw fiery debris streaking through the sky, some of which crashed behind a warehouse in Poland. Seeing the news, Robin Wing at the Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Germany and his colleagues turned on their lidar, an instrument for atmospheric sensing.


Why it's high time we stopped anthropomorphising ants

New Scientist

Why it's high time we stopped anthropomorphising ants We have long drawn parallels between ants and humans. Now we are comparing the insects to computers. Pollution is making many cities unlivable for their human inhabitants, but it is also tearing ant families and communities apart. Ants recognise each other by sniffing a thin layer of hydrocarbons on the outside of their exoskeletons; each colony has a specific "smell". But a new study reveals that ozone emissions can change the structure of these hydrocarbons.




'House burping' trend sees people flinging open their windows to get rid of germ-filled air - and now scientists say it really works

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Guthrie family'source' shares new version of events about how kidnapped Nancy was reported missing after failing to show up for church Bad Bunny smashes the record for the most watched Super Bowl Halftime Show in history with 135.4 MILLION views Bombshell secret that could DESTROY Turning Point USA: As Erika Kirk misses halftime show... whistleblowers tell all to KENNEDY Nancy Guthrie investigation takes dramatic new focus after missed ransom deadline: Brown bags of'evidence' and uncomfortable questions close to home Sad demise of 80s child star: No one in Hollywood even noticed when he died... now family reveal dark shame he'took to his early grave' Sweden's Princess Sofia breaks her silence on Jeffrey Epstein links and admits meeting him at'social events' Andrew's horrible stench is now engulfing William and Kate. THAT picture is just so damning... this could spell the end of the monarchy Wealthy banker's appalling act of greed outside stunning Maine beach house that ended generations-long family friendship Nancy Guthrie case at pivotal crossroads as Savannah laments'nightmare' and FBI takes central role while ransom letter's second deadline expires: 'Our mom is still out there' Irishman detained by ICE agents describes'torture' after five months in prison camp despite living in US 20 years, having an American wife and no criminal record Revealed: Lindsey Vonn's coach's chilling pre-race observation that predicted specific details of her'cursed' crash which broke her leg at Winter Olympics Secret behind how nepo baby, 27, REALLY became Pentagon's Karoline Leavitt... as ugly gossip about her'crass' husband swirls in DC Doctors took FIVE years to realize I had the same'taboo' cancer that killed Catherine O'Hara: Never let them ask you this question... The world's best pizza for 2026 has been revealed - and it's not in Italy Woke aide to NYC's socialist mayor boasted of her hatred for'white women behavior' after one gave her dirty look for taking 40 minute phone call on train The cure for baldness is finally here: Doctors hail'gamechanger' lotion with NO major side-effects or sex-drive impact that can regrow hair by more than 500pc. I dated 100 men but was STILL a virgin at 41. I thought I'd never find true love... then one word changed everything I'm a fitness coach and this is EXACTLY what I'd order from McDonald's on a weight-loss journey'House burping' trend sees people flinging open their windows to get rid of germ-filled air - and now scientists say it really works READ MORE: Gen Z are'rawdogging boredom' to fix their attention spans'House burping' is the latest trend taking over social media, with users flinging open the windows of their homes in the depths of winter, in the hopes of getting rid of germ-filled air.