Category: English

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Paul Mwebaze, Research Economist at the Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Drive through the plains of Iowa or Kansas and you’ll see more than rows of corn, wheat and soybeans. You’ll also see towering wind turbines spinning above fields and solar panels shining in the sun on barns and machine sheds.

For many farmers, these are lifelines. Renewable energy provides steady income and affordable power, helping farms stay viable when crop prices fall or drought strikes.

But some of that opportunity is now at risk as the Trump administration cuts federal support for renewable energy.

Wind power brings steady income for farms

Wind energy is a significant economic driver in rural America. In Iowa, for example, over 60% of the state’s electricity came from wind energy in 2024, and the state is a hub for wind turbine manufacturing and maintenance jobs.

For landowners, wind turbines often mean stable lease payments. Those historically were around US$3,000 to $5,000 per turbine per year, with some modern agreements $5,000 to $10,000 annually, secured through 20- to 30-year contracts.

Nationwide, wind and solar projects contribute about $3.5 billion annually in combined lease payments and state and local taxes, more than a third of it going directly to rural landowners.

These figures are backed by long-term contracts and multibillion‑dollar annual contributions, reinforcing the economic value that turbines bring to rural landowners and communities.

Wind farms also contribute to local tax revenues that help fund rural schools, roads and emergency services. In counties across Texas, wind energy has become one of the most significant contributors to local property tax bases, stabilizing community budgets and helping pay for public services as agricultural commodity revenues fluctuate.

In Oldham County in northwest Texas, for example, clean energy projects provided 22% of total county revenues in 2021. In several other rural counties, wind farms rank among the top 10 property taxpayers, contributing between 38% and 69% of tax revenue.

The construction and operation of these projects also bring local jobs in trucking, concrete work and electrical services, boosting small-town businesses.

The U.S. wind industry supports over 300,000 U.S. jobs across construction, manufacturing, operations and other roles connected to the industry, according to the American Clean Power Association.

Renewable energy has been widely expected to continue to grow along with rising energy demand. In 2024, 93% of all new electricity generating capacity was wind, solar or energy storage, and the U.S. Energy Information Administration expected a similar percentage in 2025 as of June.

Solar can cut power costs on the farm

Solar energy is also boosting farm finances. Farmers use rooftop panels on barns and ground-mounted systems to power irrigation pumps, grain dryers and cold storage facilities, cutting their power costs.

Some farmers have adopted agrivoltaics – dual-use systems that grow crops beneath solar panels. The panels provide shade, helping conserve water, while creating a second income path. These projects often cultivate pollinator-friendly plants, vegetables such as lettuce and spinach, or even grasses for grazing sheep, making the land productive for both food and energy.

Federal grants and tax credits that were significantly expanded under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act helped make the upfront costs of solar installations affordable.

However, the federal spending bill signed by President Donald Trump on July 4, 2025, rolled back many clean energy incentives. It phases down tax credits for distributed solar projects, particularly those under 1 megawatt, which include many farm‑scale installations, and sunsets them entirely by 2028. It also eliminates bonus credits that previously supported rural and low‑income areas.

Without these credits, the upfront cost of solar power could be out of reach for some farmers, leaving them paying higher energy costs. At a 2024 conference organized by the Institute of Sustainability, Energy and Environment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where I work as a research economist, farmers emphasized the importance of tax credits and other economic incentives to offset the upfront cost of solar power systems.

What’s being lost

The cuts to federal incentives include terminating the Production Tax Credit for new projects placed in service after Dec. 31, 2027, unless construction begins by July 4, 2026, and is completed within a tight time frame. The tax credit pays eligible wind and solar facilities approximately 2.75 cents per kilowatt-hour over 10 years, effectively lowering the cost of renewable energy generation. Ending that tax credit will likely increase the cost of production, potentially leading to higher electricity prices for consumers and fewer new projects coming online.

The changes also accelerate the phase‑out of wind power tax credits. Projects must now begin construction by July 4, 2026, or be in service before the end of 2027 to qualify for any credit.

Meanwhile, the Investment Tax Credit, which covers 30% of installed cost for solar and other renewables, faces similar limits: Projects must begin by July 4, 2026, and be completed by the end of 2027 to claim the credits. The bill also cuts bonuses for domestic components and installations in rural or low‑income locations. These adjustments could slow new renewable energy development, particularly smaller projects that directly benefit rural communities.

While many existing clean energy agreements will remain in place for now, the rollback of federal incentives threatens future projects and could limit new income streams. It also affects manufacturing and jobs in those industries, which some rural communities rely on.

Renewable energy also powers rural economies

Renewable energy benefits entire communities, not just individual farmers.

Wind and solar projects contribute millions of dollars in tax revenue. For example, in Howard County, Iowa, wind turbines generated $2.7 million in property tax revenue in 2024, accounting for 14.5% of the county’s total budget and helping fund rural schools, public safety and road improvements.

In some rural counties, clean energy is the largest new source of economic activity, helping stabilize local economies otherwise reliant on agriculture’s unpredictable income streams. These projects also support rural manufacturing – such as Iowa turbine blade factories like TPI Composites, which just reopened its plant in Newton, and Siemens Gamesa in Fort Madison, which supply blades for GE and Siemens turbines. The tax benefits in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act helped boost those industries – and the jobs and local tax revenue they bring in.

On the solar side, rural companies like APA Solar Racking, based in Ohio, manufacture steel racking systems for utility-scale solar farms across the Midwest.

As rural America faces economic uncertainty and climate pressures, I believe homegrown renewable energy offers a practical path forward. Wind and solar aren’t just fueling the grid; they’re helping keep farms and rural towns alive.

The Sustainably Co-locating Agricultural and Photovoltaic Electricity Systems (SCAPES) project, led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

– ref. How wind and solar power helps keep America’s farms alive – https://theconversation.com/how-wind-and-solar-power-helps-keep-americas-farms-alive-260657

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Marie-Claire Beaulieu, Associate Professor of Classical Studies, Tufts University

Many of us are heading to the beach to bask in the sun and unwind as part of our summer vacations. Research has shown that spending time at the beach can provide immense relaxation for many people. Staring at the ocean puts us in a mild meditative state, the smell of the breeze soothes us, the warmth of the sand envelops us, and above all, the continuous, regular sound of the waves allows us to fully relax.

But beach vacations only became popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries as part of the lifestyle of the wealthy in Western countries. Early Europeans, and especially the ancient Greeks, thought the beach was a place of hardship and death. As a seafaring people, they mostly lived on the coastline, yet they feared the sea and thought that an agricultural lifestyle was safer and more respectable.

As a historian of culture and an expert in Greek mythology, I am interested in this change of attitude toward the beach.

The sensory experience of the beach

As I write in my 2016 book, “The Sea in the Greek Imagination,” Greek literature discounts all the positive sensations of the beach and the sea and focuses on the negative ones in order to stress the discomfort the ancient Greeks felt about the beach and the sea in general.

For instance, Greek literature emphasizes the intense smell of seaweed and sea brine. In the “Odyssey,” an eighth century B.C.E. poem that takes place largely at sea, the hero Menelaus and his companions are lost near the coast of Egypt. They must hide under the skins of seals to catch the sea god Proteus and learn their way home from him. The odor of the seals and sea brine is so extremely repulsive to them that their ambush almost fails, and only magical ambrosia placed under their noses can neutralize the smell.

Similarly, while the sound of the waves on a calm day is relaxing for many people, the violence of storms at sea can be distressing. Ancient Greek literature focuses only on the frightening power of stormy seas, comparing it to the sounds of battle. In the “Iliad,” a poem contemporary with the “Odyssey,” the onslaught of the Trojan army on the Greek battle lines is compared to a storm at sea: “They advanced like a deadly storm that scours the earth, to the thunder of Father Zeus, and stirs the sea with stupendous roaring, leaving surging waves in its path over the echoing waters, serried ranks of great arched breakers white with foam.”

Finally, even the handsome Odysseus is made ugly and scary-looking by exposure to the sun and salt of the sea. In the “Odyssey,” this hero wanders at sea for 10 years on his way home from the Trojan War. At the end of his tribulations, he is barely hanging on to a raft during a storm sent by the angry sea god Poseidon. He finally lets go and swims to shore; when he lands on the island of the Phaeacians, he scares the attendants of the Princess Nausicaa with his sunburned skin, “all befouled with brine.”

The sand of the beach and the sea itself were thought to be sterile, in contrast to the fertility of the fields. For this reason, the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” regularly call the sea “atrygetos” – meaning “unharvested.”

This conception of the sea as sterile is, of course, paradoxical, since the oceans supply about 2% of overall human calorie intake and 15% of protein intake – and could likely supply much more. The Greeks themselves ate plenty of fish, and many species were thought to be delicacies reserved for the wealthy.

Death at the beach

In ancient Greek literature, the beach was frightening and evoked death, and in fact, it was common to mourn deceased loved ones on the beach.

Tombs were frequently located by the sea, especially cenotaphs – empty graves meant to memorialize those who died at sea and whose bodies could not be recovered.

This was a particularly cruel fate in the ancient world because those who could not be buried were condemned to wander around the Earth eternally as ghosts, while those who received proper funerals would go to the underworld. The Greek underworld was not a particularly desirable place to be – it was dank and dark, yet it was considered the respectable way to end one’s life.

In this way, as classical scholar Gabriela Cursaru has shown, the beach was a “liminal space” in Greek culture: a threshold between the worlds of the living and the dead.

Revelation and transformation

Yet the beach was not all bad for the Greeks. Because the beach acted as a bridge between sea and land, the Greeks thought that it also bridged between the worlds of the living, the dead and the gods. Therefore, the beach had the potential to offer omens, revelations and visions of the gods.

For this reason, many oracles of the dead, where the living could obtain information from the dead, were located on beaches and cliffs by the sea.

The gods, too, frequented the beach. They heard prayers and sometimes even appeared to their worshippers on the beach. In the “Iliad,” the god Apollo hears his priest Chryses complain on the beach about how his daughter is being mistreated by the Greeks. The angry god retaliates by immediately unleashing the plague on the Greek army, a disaster that can only be stopped by returning the girl to her father.

Besides these religious beliefs, the beach was also a physical point of connection between Greece and distant lands.

Enemy fleets, merchants and pirates were all apt to land on beaches or to frequent the coasts because ancient ships lacked the capability to stay at sea for long periods. In this way, the beach could be a fairly dangerous place, as military historian Jorit Wintjes has argued.

On the bright side, flotsam from shipwrecks could bring pleasant surprises, such as unexpected treasure – a turning point in many ancient Greek stories. For example, in the ancient novel “Daphnis and Chloe,” the poor goatherd Daphnis finds a purse on the beach, which allows him to marry Chloe and bring their love story to a happy conclusion.

Perhaps something remains today of this conception of the beach. Beachcombing is still a popular hobby, and some people even use metal detectors. Besides its demonstrated positive psychological effects, beachcombing speaks to the eternal human fascination for the sea and all the hidden treasures it can provide, from shells and sea glass to Spanish gold coins.

Just as it did for the Greeks, the beach can make us feel that we are on the threshold of a different world.

Marie-Claire Beaulieu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The beach wasn’t always a vacation destination – for the ancient Greeks, it was a scary place – https://theconversation.com/the-beach-wasnt-always-a-vacation-destination-for-the-ancient-greeks-it-was-a-scary-place-259356

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Brendan Szendro, Faculty Lecturer in Political Science, McGill University

The IRS will offer religious congregations more freedom to endorse political candidates without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status, the agency said in a July 2025 court filing. President Donald Trump has previously vowed to abolish the Johnson Amendment, which bars charitable nonprofits from taking part in political campaigns – although the latest move simply reinterprets the rule.

Celebrating the change, House Speaker Mike Johnson highlighted an argument that’s popular among some conservatives: that the Constitution does not actually require the separation of church and state.

Thomas Jefferson, who coined the phrase, did not intend “to keep religion from influencing issues of civil government,” Johnson wrote in a July 12 op-ed published on the social platform X. “The Founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.”

Officials in several red states have challenged long-standing norms surrounding religion and state, ranging from introducing prayer and Bibles in public classrooms to attempts to secure government funding for religious schools.

Conservative thinkers have long pushed for closer ties between religion and the government, arguing that religious institutions can create strong communities. In my own research, I’ve found that mass shootings are less likely in a more religious environment.

For critics, of course, attempts to lower the wall of separation between church and state raise constitutional concerns. The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” What’s more, critics fear that recent attempts to lower barriers between church and state favor conservative Christian groups over other faiths.

But as a scholar of religion and politics, I believe another reason for caution is being overlooked. Research indicates that strong relationships between religion and state can be a factor that actually decreases religious participation, rather than encouraging it.

All or nothing

Some scholars suggest that religious institutions operate like businesses in a marketplace, competing for believers. Government policies toward religion can change the balance of power between competing firms the same way that economic policies can affect markets for consumer goods.

At a glance, it might seem like government support would strengthen religious institutions. In reality, it can backfire, whether or not the government promotes one particular faith above others. In some cases, adherents who cannot practice religion on their own terms opt out of practicing it entirely.

In Israel, for example, Orthodox Jewish institutions receive government recognition that more liberal Jewish denominations do not. Orthodox authorities are allowed to manage religious sites, run public religious schools and perform marriages. Many couples who do not want to get married under Orthodox law, or cannot, hold a ceremony abroad or register as a common-law marriage.

In fact, many scholars refer to Israel as an example of a religious “monopoly.” Because the government sponsors a particular branch, Orthodox Judaism, Jewish citizens sometimes face an “all or nothing” choice. The country’s Jewish population is sharply divided between people who are religiously observant and people who identify as secular.

Government involvement can also hurt religious institutions by making them seem less independent, decreasing people’s trust. In a 2023 study of 54 Christian-majority countries, political scientists Jonathan Fox and Jori Breslawski found that some adherents felt that religious institutions become less legitimate when backed by the government. In addition, support from the state decreased people’s confidence in government.

Their findings built on previous research showing that the public is less likely to contribute to faith-based charities and attend religious services when the government offers funding for religious institutions.

In fact, many of the world’s lowest rates of religiosity are found in wealthy countries that have official churches, or had one until relatively recently, such as Sweden. Others have a history of separating people of different faiths into their own schools and other institutions, such as Belgium and the Netherlands.

History lessons

Perhaps the strongest example of how government support for religion can decrease religious participation is found in the former Soviet Union and its allies.

During the Cold War, Soviet officials sought to stamp out religious activity among their citizens. However, policies to repress independent religious institutions worked hand in hand with policies to co-opt religious institutions that would work with the government. Access to religious spaces made it easier for officials to spy on members and punish clergy who protested their rule.

In Hungary, the Communist Party sponsored government-run Catholic churches that were cut off from the Vatican. In Romania, the regime integrated formerly Catholic Churches into a state Orthodox Church. In the former Czechoslovakia, meanwhile, the Communist Party paid clergy’s salaries to keep them subservient.

To this day, many countries in the former Eastern Bloc have low rates of religious participation. In Russia, for example, a majority of citizens call themselves Orthodox Christians, and the church wields influence in politics. Yet only 16% of adults say religion is “very important” in their lives.

While scholars can point to the legacy of overt repression as a source of low religiosity, government support of religious institutions is also a lingering factor. Most post-Soviet states inherited systems that require religious groups to register, and they only provide funding to faiths that the government considers legitimate. Similar policies remain common in southeastern and central Eastern Europe.

In recent years, some countries in the region, including Russia and Hungary, have experienced democratic backsliding at the hands of populist leaders who also politicize religion for their own gain. Because of low rates of religious practice in such countries, religious leaders may welcome government support.

Free market for faith

Most wealthy countries have witnessed steep declines in religiosity in the modern era. The United States is an outlier.

Overall, the percentage of Americans belonging to a religious congregation is declining, as is the share of Americans who regularly attend worship services. However, the percentage of Americans who are intensely religious has remained unchanged over the past several decades. Around 29% of Americans report praying several times a day, for example, and just under 7% say they attend religious services more than once a week.

Some religion scholars argue that the “free-market approach” – where all faiths are free to compete for worshippers, without government interference or preference – is what makes America relatively religious. In other words, they believe that this so-called “American exception” is because of the separation between church and state, not in spite of it.

Time will tell if conservatives’ push for collaboration between religion and the government will continue, or have its intended effects. History suggests, however, that governments’ attempts to strengthen particular religious communities may backfire.

Brendan Szendro does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why government support for religion doesn’t necessarily make people more religious – https://theconversation.com/why-government-support-for-religion-doesnt-necessarily-make-people-more-religious-258541

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jun Wang, Professor of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, University of Iowa

Canada is facing another dangerous wildfire season, with burning forests sending smoke plumes across the provinces and into the U.S. again. The pace of the 2025 fires is reminiscent of the record-breaking 2023 wildfire season, which exposed millions of people in North America to hazardous smoke levels.

For most of the past decade, forecasters have been able to use satellites to track these smoke plumes, but the view was only two-dimensional: The satellites couldn’t determine how close the smoke was to Earth’s surface.

The altitude of the smoke matters.

If a plume is high in the atmosphere, it won’t affect the air people breathe – it simply floats by, far overhead.

But when smoke plumes are close to the surface, people are breathing in wildfire chemicals and tiny particles. Those particles, known as PM2.5, can get deep into the lungs and exacerbate asthma and other respiratory and cardiac problems.

The Environmental Protection Agency uses a network of ground-based air quality monitors to issue air quality alerts, but the monitors are few and far between, meaning forecasts have been broad estimates in much of the country.

Now, a new satellite-based method that I and colleagues at universities and federal agencies have been working on for the past two years is able to give scientists and air quality managers a 3D picture of the smoke plumes, providing detailed data of the risks down to the neighborhood level for urban and rural areas alike.

Building a nationwide smoke monitoring system

The new method uses data from a satellite that NASA launched in 2023 called the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution, or TEMPO, satellite.

TEMPO makes it possible to determine a smoke plume’s height by providing data on how much the oxygen molecules absorb sunlight at the 688 nanometer wavelength. Smoke plumes that are high in the atmosphere reflect more solar radiation at this wavelength back to space, while those lower in the atmosphere, where there is more oxygen to absorb the light, reflect less.

Understanding the physics allowed scientists to develop algorithms that use TEMPO’s data to infer the smoke plume’s altitude and map its 3D movement in nearly real time.

By combining TEMPO’s data with measurements of particles in the atmosphere, taken by the Advanced Baseline Imager on the NOAA’s GOES-R satellites, forecasters can better assess the health risk from smoke plumes in almost real time, provided clouds aren’t in the way.

That’s a big jump from relying on ground-based air quality monitors, which may be hundreds of miles apart. Iowa, for example, had about 50 air quality monitors reporting data on a recent day for a state that covers 56,273 square miles. Most of those monitors were clustered around its largest cities.

NOAA’s AerosolWatch tool currently provides a near-real-time stream of wildfire smoke images from its GOES-R satellites, and the agency plans to incorporate TEMPO’s height data. A prototype of this system from my team’s NASA-supported research project on fire and air quality, called FireAQ, shows how users can zoom in to the neighborhood level to see how high the smoke plume is, however the prototype is currently only updated once a day, so the data is delayed, and it isn’t able to provide smoke height data where clouds are also overhead.

Wildfire health risks are rising

Fire risk is increasing across North America as global temperatures rise and more people move into wildland areas.

While air quality in most of the U.S. improved between 2000 and 2020, thanks to stricter emissions regulations on vehicles and power plants, wildfires have reversed that trend in parts of the western U.S. Research has found that wildfire smoke has effectively erased nearly two decades of air quality progress there.

Our advances in smoke monitoring mark a new era in air quality forecasting, offering more accurate and timely information to better protect public health in the face of these escalating wildfire threats.

Prof. Wang’s group have been supported from NOAA, NASA, and Naval ONR to develop research algorithm to retrieve aerosol layer height. The compute codes of the research algorithm were shared with colleagues in NOAA.

– ref. Is that wildfire smoke plume hazardous? New satellite tech can map smoke plumes in 3D for better air quality alerts at neighborhood scale – https://theconversation.com/is-that-wildfire-smoke-plume-hazardous-new-satellite-tech-can-map-smoke-plumes-in-3d-for-better-air-quality-alerts-at-neighborhood-scale-259654

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jun Wang, Professor of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, University of Iowa

Canada is facing another dangerous wildfire season, with burning forests sending smoke plumes across the provinces and into the U.S. again. The pace of the 2025 fires is reminiscent of the record-breaking 2023 wildfire season, which exposed millions of people in North America to hazardous smoke levels.

For most of the past decade, forecasters have been able to use satellites to track these smoke plumes, but the view was only two-dimensional: The satellites couldn’t determine how close the smoke was to Earth’s surface.

The altitude of the smoke matters.

If a plume is high in the atmosphere, it won’t affect the air people breathe – it simply floats by, far overhead.

But when smoke plumes are close to the surface, people are breathing in wildfire chemicals and tiny particles. Those particles, known as PM2.5, can get deep into the lungs and exacerbate asthma and other respiratory and cardiac problems.

The Environmental Protection Agency uses a network of ground-based air quality monitors to issue air quality alerts, but the monitors are few and far between, meaning forecasts have been broad estimates in much of the country.

Now, a new satellite-based method that I and colleagues at universities and federal agencies have been working on for the past two years is able to give scientists and air quality managers a 3D picture of the smoke plumes, providing detailed data of the risks down to the neighborhood level for urban and rural areas alike.

Building a nationwide smoke monitoring system

The new method uses data from a satellite that NASA launched in 2023 called the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution, or TEMPO, satellite.

TEMPO makes it possible to determine a smoke plume’s height by providing data on how much the oxygen molecules absorb sunlight at the 688 nanometer wavelength. Smoke plumes that are high in the atmosphere reflect more solar radiation at this wavelength back to space, while those lower in the atmosphere, where there is more oxygen to absorb the light, reflect less.

Understanding the physics allowed scientists to develop algorithms that use TEMPO’s data to infer the smoke plume’s altitude and map its 3D movement in nearly real time.

By combining TEMPO’s data with measurements of particles in the atmosphere, taken by the Advanced Baseline Imager on the NOAA’s GOES-R satellites, forecasters can better assess the health risk from smoke plumes in almost real time, provided clouds aren’t in the way.

That’s a big jump from relying on ground-based air quality monitors, which may be hundreds of miles apart. Iowa, for example, had about 50 air quality monitors reporting data on a recent day for a state that covers 56,273 square miles. Most of those monitors were clustered around its largest cities.

NOAA’s AerosolWatch tool currently provides a near-real-time stream of wildfire smoke images from its GOES-R satellites, and the agency plans to incorporate TEMPO’s height data. A prototype of this system from my team’s NASA-supported research project on fire and air quality, called FireAQ, shows how users can zoom in to the neighborhood level to see how high the smoke plume is, however the prototype is currently only updated once a day, so the data is delayed, and it isn’t able to provide smoke height data where clouds are also overhead.

Wildfire health risks are rising

Fire risk is increasing across North America as global temperatures rise and more people move into wildland areas.

While air quality in most of the U.S. improved between 2000 and 2020, thanks to stricter emissions regulations on vehicles and power plants, wildfires have reversed that trend in parts of the western U.S. Research has found that wildfire smoke has effectively erased nearly two decades of air quality progress there.

Our advances in smoke monitoring mark a new era in air quality forecasting, offering more accurate and timely information to better protect public health in the face of these escalating wildfire threats.

Prof. Wang’s group have been supported from NOAA, NASA, and Naval ONR to develop research algorithm to retrieve aerosol layer height. The compute codes of the research algorithm were shared with colleagues in NOAA.

– ref. Is that wildfire smoke plume hazardous? New satellite tech can map smoke height for better air quality alerts at neighborhood scale – https://theconversation.com/is-that-wildfire-smoke-plume-hazardous-new-satellite-tech-can-map-smoke-height-for-better-air-quality-alerts-at-neighborhood-scale-259654