Fighting Fire with Sound—No Water Required

Two of the most significant agreements Trump criticized are the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC. The Framework Convention is the 1992 treaty that led to the Paris Agreement limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The IPCC is the organization that assesses the causes and effects of rising temperatures and the risks of not limiting them.

The Framework Convention mandates that wealthy industrialized nations take steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions and help poorer countries address climate change. Now, the U.S will not be involved in discussions about issues such as adapting to climate hazards and adopting renewable energy. 

The Framework Convention employs about 400 people and has an office in Bonn, Germany. When the Trump administration said last year that it would not pay for about 20 percent of the convention’s budget, Michael Bloomberg, the philanthropist and former mayor of New York City, made up the shortfall. The Framework Convention was ratified by the U.S. Senate more than 30 years ago, and according to Reuters, some legal experts say the Senate would have to approve Trump’s withdrawal.  

In a statement, the Center for Biological Diversity said Trump’s executive order was illegal and that pulling out of that convention was on a different order of magnitude from withdrawing only from the Paris Agreement. The U.S. did not attend the recent COP30 climate summit in Belem, Brazil, and would be the only country in the world to withdraw from the Framework Convention.

Oceans cover about 70 percent of Earth’s surface, influencing weather patterns by transferring heat and moisture into the atmosphere. The oceans absorb more than 90 percent of the excess heat in the atmosphere trapped by greenhouse gas emissions. Because of that, the oceans are an important indicator of climate change.

The increasing temperatures have regional variations that can be substantial. For example, part of the Northern Pacific Ocean has warmed very rapidly, while tropical areas have not, mostly due to the La Niña and El Niño cycle. Meanwhile, the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea are warming, and heat has been accumulating near both the North and South Poles.

Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the authors of the study, told Fast Company that, for each of the past nine years, ocean temperatures have set a new record, and that the heating of Earth won’t stop until we stop burning fossil fuels. Another author of the report, John Abrams of the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, told Wired, that last year was a bonkers, crazy warming year, joking that “bonkers” was a scientific term.

The study was published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

But one company asks, how about fighting fire with sound—no water required? That’s the premise of “infrasound fire suppression” technology by Sonic Fire Tech, a California company that uses acoustic waves to douse flames—no chemicals, suppressants, water, or power needed, which is important given many water systems and electric grids go offline during wildfire events. “It sounds like magic, but it’s just physics,” says the company in a promotional video in which a tree is set on fire and a man wearing a backpack with the system installed puts it out in seconds.

For a fire to exist, it takes three things: heat, fuel, and oxygen. Their “Sonic Home Defense” system emits powerful low-frequency sound waves that disrupt that combustion triangle, by vibrating the oxygen faster than the fuel can use it. To protect a structure, the company places an acoustic generator box on the premises. It will create sound waves that will travel through a duct system with sensors and emitters installed along the eaves of a home. The emitters turn on to release a cone of acoustic energy when a flame is detected nearby. 

There has been high interest from homeowners—who can afford it—as the system is not cheap, costing roughly two percent of a home’s value. There has also been interest from California utilities such as PG&E and Southern California Edison, which have contracts for demonstration projects, as well as from the state’s insurance commissioner, Ricardo Lara, according to the Orange County Register. 

The idea of using acoustic waves to fight fires is not new and is based on research, including studies conducted by NASA, but it’s timely, as water resources become scarcer. The company says the sound wave technology, which is not harmful to pets, would work best when paired with traditional strategies such as fire-resistant materials and maintaining defensible space around a home. 

While sleep is beneficial to animals, it’s also risky, leaving them vulnerable to predators and cutting into time otherwise spent foraging, mating, or caring for offspring. So why do it? Scientists long ago determined that sleep serves a biological function, since evolution has preserved it across all animals, so the researchers looked at two of the earliest animals with nervous systems, the upside-down jellyfish (Cassiopea andromeda) and the starlet sea anemone (Nematostella vectensis) to dig deeper.

They concluded that one of sleep’s core functions is to protect neurons from DNA damage and cellular stress, a function that began hundreds of millions of years ago before complex brains evolved. DNA damage increases the need for sleep, and sleep enables repair. 

The findings have broad implications for human health. Sleep is important not only for learning, memory, and clearing waste from brain cells but also for maintaining the health of nerve cells themselves. Sleep disorders are associated with cognitive decline and an increased risk of neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, conditions linked to DNA damage in nerve cells.

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.