Colorado State University researchers have published a paper that describes a new and more efficient light-based process for transforming fossil fuels into useful modern chemicals. In it, they report that their organic photoredox catalysis system is effective even at room temperatures. That advantage could lower energy demands around chemical manufacturing in a variety of instances and could also reduce associated pollution.

Several hundred thousand chemicals are considered as potentially environmentally relevant. Scientists from the RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau in Germany show that monitoring data for surface waters are only available for a very small fraction of these chemicals. In their article, published in the latest issue of Science, the authors also demonstrate that the environmental risks of highly toxic chemicals might be overlooked, because these chemicals affect ecosystems at concentrations that cannot be detected on a regular basis.

Millions of years ago, during periods known as “Snowball Earth,” when much of the planet was covered in ice, some of our ancient cellular ancestors could have waited out the deep freeze in pools of melted ice that dotted the planet’s icy surface, according to a new study.