Weekly Roundup | Earth and Nature: Top 20 stories of the week of Feb 23rd - Mar 2nd, 2017
The planet's hope and salvation lies in the adoption of revolutionary new knowledge being revealed at the frontiers of science. - Bruce Lipton
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1 +17y+ ago
Sand mining: the global environmental crisis you’ve never heard of
From Cambodia to California, industrial-scale sand mining is causing wildlife to die, local trade to wither and bridges to collapse. And booming urbanisation means the demand for this increasingly valuable resource is unlikely to let up
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Submitted on February 28th 2017 by kxh
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2 +17y+ ago
‘Shell knew’: oil giant's 1991 film warned of climate change danger
Public information film unseen for years shows Shell had clear grasp of global warming 26 years ago but has not acted accordingly since.
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Submitted on February 28th 2017 by leweb
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3 +17y+ ago
Siberia's 'doorway to the Underworld' Is Getting So Big It's Uncovering Ancient Forests
It's no secret that Siberia's permafrost has been on thin ice lately. Conditions are varying so much that huge holes are appearing out of nowhere , and, in some places, tundra is quite literally bubbling underneath people's feet .
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Submitted on February 25th 2017 by kxh with 3 comments
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4 +17y+ ago
Neanderthal DNA Determines Our Health and Appearance Today Way More Than We Thought
The last Neanderthals died out tens of thousands of years ago, but the effects of interbreeding are still being felt today, with a new genetic study revealing that certain traits in modern humans, such as height and schizophrenia risk, can be...
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Submitted on February 26th 2017 by kxh
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5 +17y+ ago
Are Viruses Alive?
Viruses are contagious, but are they alive? By Laura Geggel.
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Submitted on February 28th 2017 by AdelleChattre with 1 comments
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6 +17y+ ago
Inside the final days of the Standing Rock protest
“Those small victories were always difficult to claim at Standing Rock because the terms of the protests were absolute — either the pipeline was built or it wasn’t — and I imagine that as people return to their homes or ship off to the next fight, they will have to find a more personal justification for the months they spent there.” By Jay Caspian Kang. (Feb. 21, 2017)
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Submitted on February 28th 2017 by AdelleChattre
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7 +17y+ ago
The man behind the 'doomsday' vault that stores every known crop on the planet explains how it came to be
Buried in the side of a mountain in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago between mainland Norway and the North Pole, the Global Seed Vault stores virtually every kind of seed.
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Submitted on February 23rd 2017 by kxh
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8 +17y+ ago
President Trump Takes Aim at the Environment
President Trump brandished executive pen and fresh hyperbole last week in blessing the coal industry’s decades-old practice of freely dumping tons of debris into the streams and mountain hollows of America’s mining communities. “Another terrible job-killing rule,” Mr. Trump declared at a signing ceremony that struck down the Obama administration’s attempt to regulate surface mining wastes. He insisted he was saving “many thousands of American jobs” in sparing coal companies the expense of cleaning up their environmental messes.
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Submitted on February 23rd 2017 by wetwilly87
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9 +17y+ ago
'A very mean worm': New species of 'Bobbitt' worm was 1-2 metres long with powerful teeth
Researchers have discovered a new species of an ancient worm that was more than a metre long and had powerful jaws and teeth with which to catch its prey.
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Submitted on February 24th 2017 by KingLin
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10 +17y+ ago
Watch an Ambush of Tigers Rip a Drone Out of the Sky and Then Eat It
A group of tigers is called an “ambush” for a reason. When these massive cats get together and decide to catch some prey, they’re simply vicious. A quadcopter learned this the hard way at a Siberian tiger enclosure in China’s Heilongjiang Province. Not only did the beasts swipe the drone out of the sky—they took a few bites of the poor gadget.
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Submitted on February 23rd 2017 by sjvn
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11 +17y+ ago
Scientists Are Developing Graphene Solar Panels That Generate Energy When It Rains
Solar power is making huge strides as a reliable, renewable energy source, but there's still a lot of untapped potential in terms of the efficiency of photovoltaic cells and what happens at night and during inclement weather. Now a solution has been put forward in the form of producing energy from raindrops. The key to the new process is graphene: a 'wonder' material we've heard plenty about before. Because raindrops are not made up of pure water and contain various salts that split up into positive and negative ions, a team from the Ocean University of China in Qingdao thinks we can harness power via a simple chemical reaction. Specifically,
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Submitted on February 26th 2017 by drunkenninja
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12 +17y+ ago
Would You Want a Dog That Was Genetically Engineered to Be Healthier?
“Dogs have more genetic diseases than any other species on the planet.” David Ishee told me this early in our conversation. His claim makes sense: there’s no other animal that humans have purposefully bred with an emphasis on form over function—aesthetics over health—for so long. Centuries of inbreeding have left many dog breeds with a severely limited gene pool, and this lack of genetic diversity is to blame for disorders like brachycephaly in bulldogs, hyperuricemia in dalmations, and cardiomyopathy in boxers.
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Submitted on February 26th 2017 by drunkenninja
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13 +17y+ ago
Bumblebees Demonstrate the Power of Insect Brains
Scientists trained bumblebees to move a ball to the center of a platform to gain a sugary treat.
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Submitted on February 24th 2017 by KingLin
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14 +17y+ ago
Decoding the ancient tale of mass suicide in the Judaean desert
Have archaeologists proven the ancient tale of mass suicide in the Judaean desert or twisted science for political end?
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Submitted on February 26th 2017 by kxh
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15 +17y+ ago
Drought, That is Caused by Climate Change, is Causing Mass Tree Mortality in Forests Worldwide
In an analysis published in the journal Ecology Letters, the authors suggest that forests globally are at risk from the increased severity and frequency of droughts. The results show that trees across the world show a similar response, with death increasing consistently when drought severity increases. Dr Sarah Greenwood, a Postdoctoral Researcher in Stirling’s Faculty of Natural Sciences, explained that they have noticed that the death of trees caused by drought is consistent around the world and across diverse environments.
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Submitted on March 1st 2017 by dianep with 1 comments
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16 +17y+ ago
Plastic and how it affects our oceans
Plastic has transformed our lives, but has created a major environmental problem in our oceans — so just how big is the problem?
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Submitted on February 27th 2017 by kxh
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17 +17y+ ago
China sees sharp decline in ivory smuggling in 2016
Liu Dongsheng, deputy head of the SFA, made the remarks at the opening ceremony of a wildlife protection campaign, without specifying detailed numbers. China will stop commercial processing and sales of ivory by the end of this year. Last year, it imposed a three-year ban on ivory imports in an escalated fight against illegal trading of wild animals and plants. The number of illegal wildlife trade cases has been on the decline since last year, said Liu.
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Submitted on February 28th 2017 by TNY
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18 +17y+ ago
Cooking oil dumped in Lakewood pond kills more than 30 ducks, geese
More than 30 ducks and geese died after someone dumped cooking oil in a retention pond in Lakewood. Now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is asking the public to help them track down the people involved. The Estes Park Trail Gazette published a statement from the FSW about the incident.
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Submitted on February 28th 2017 by larylin with 1 comments
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19 +17y+ ago
Galloway Viking Hoard Campaign launched
A new campaign has been launched to keep the Galloway Viking Hoard for exhibition in the county where it was found. Buried in the 10th century, the hoard was discovered by a metal detectorist in field near Castle Douglas in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, in September of 2014. Archaeologists excavated the hoard and found more than 100 silver and gold pieces, from ingots to jewelry to fragments of Byzantine silk to an extremely rare Carolingian pot stuffed with more treasure. The Galloway Viking Hoard is the largest Viking treasure found in Scotland since 1891.
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Submitted on February 25th 2017 by CatLady
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20 +17y+ ago
Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portends huge carbon release
Huge slabs of Arctic permafrost in northwest Canada are slumping and disintegrating, sending large amounts of carbon-rich mud and silt into streams and rivers. A new study that analyzed nearly a half-million square miles in northwest Canada found that this permafrost decay is affecting 52,000 square miles of that vast stretch of earth—an expanse the size of Alabama.
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Submitted on February 28th 2017 by geoleo
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Here are this week's top five Earth & Nature tribes:
/t/climate 27 posts, 15 comments, 111 votes.
/t/globalwarming 13 posts, 11 comments, 13 votes.
/t/earth 8 posts, 4 comments, 43 votes.
/t/environment 18 posts, 6 comments, 106 votes.
/t/ourplanet 18 posts, 5 comments, 18 votes.
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