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Archive page 26 of 73

Oct 7, 2017

Won't Someone Please Think of the Sushi?

A friend picked up the kids from the bus stop last night and I met up with them for dinner at the neighborhood sushi restaurant. See, they love sushi. Ducky is 5…

Oct 5, 2017

Climate Change Will Make Chemical Spills Worse

Henry's law constant (HLC) for a given chemical is the concentration of a chemical in air / concentration of a chemical in water under defined test circumstances. That is interesting, but the…

Sep 28, 2017

Democratic Norms and the Settlement of Iceland

Iceland today is a small island of roughly 300,000 people in the North Atlantic, often credited as the oldest functioning democracy. Iceland was originally colonized by Norse migrants leaving Scandinavia in search…

Sep 25, 2017

Music Festival Pollution Prevention

I found the sustainability report for Bonnaroo, the music festival featuring U2, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and a bunch of other bands I am too old to recognize. These music festivals…

Sep 18, 2017

Analytical Approaches for Organic Compound Properties

The report of Leistra on reported versus estimated boiling points and vapor pressures for pesticides provides an interesting case study in mathematical underpinnings for the phenomena investigated. Reports of chemical properties are…

Sep 11, 2017

The Implementation of the Clean Water Act

The federal Clean Water Act is a collection of laws passed by Congress that together form the principal federal law on preventing water pollution. This includes permanent lakes, rivers, streams, ponds, and…

Sep 9, 2017

Some Hurricane Science

Hurricanes are the topic of choice this year given Harvey's record-breaking destruction of the Texas coast and the unusual position of three concurrent North Atlantic hurricanes tracking as I write this. Given…

Sep 6, 2017

Irma is Not Category 6, but Could be

As Hurricane Irma continues to gain strength, some have started calling it a category 6 hurricane. The problem with this is the scale only goes up to 5. There are 5 hurricane…

Sep 6, 2017

Maryland Watershed Stewards

I was recently appointed to the Howard County Watershed Stewards Academy's Advisory Committee and yesterday was my first meeting. I wanted to take a minute and discuss this program and the value…

Sep 4, 2017

Making the Things You Buy Better

For reasons too complicated to get into, I am taking a course in environmental chemistry. And that means I will be writing about it occasionally here. Because that's the kind of thing…