Microbes have not yet met an ocean, wall, or national border they could not permeate. Zika once again has demonstrated that large and small countries, relatively wealthy and relatively poorer countries all are dependent on a larger infrastructure for their national health security – even the United States cannot rely solely on itself to fight an outbreak or protect itself and Americans from the next outbreak. By Chelsea Clinton and Devi Sridhar.

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Submitted on April 2nd 2017 by gladsdotter with 2 comments

Bernie Sanders has claimed that an oil company “understands more about climate change” than Donald Trump, after ExxonMobil urged the government not to withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord. In a letter to the government, a senior official from the US’s largest oil company, said the accord signed in 2015 was “an effective framework for addressing the risks of climate change”. “It is prudent that the United States remain a party to the...

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Submitted on March 31st 2017 by ckshenn with 1 comments

Mosquitos generate lift via three mechanisms, two of them new to us.

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Submitted on March 31st 2017 by kxh with 1 comments

UBC scientists have scanned the genome of cannabis plants to find the genes responsible for giving various strains their lemony, skunky or earthy flavours, an important step for the budding legal cannabis industry. “The goal is to develop well-defined and highly-reproducible cannabis varieties. This is similar to the wine industry, which depends on defined varieties such as chardonnay or merlot for high value products,” said Jörg Bohlmann, a professor in the Michael Smith Laboratories...

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Submitted on March 31st 2017 by zritic

If you want to encourage wildflowers in your garden, leave your lawn to its own devices, argues Trevor Dines, botanist at conservation charity Plantlife.

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Submitted on March 30th 2017 by gladsdotter with 6 comments

Strokes of genius for strengthening young plants when they are at their most vulnerable, by James Wong

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Submitted on April 3rd 2017 by gladsdotter

Ancient bone and teeth ornaments found in an Indonesian cave advance our knowledge of the culture and traditions of some of the earliest people in our region.

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Submitted on April 4th 2017 by kxh with 1 comments

Hopes rise for critically endangered big cats, with only 221 Indochinese tigers thought to remain in Thailand and Myanmar

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Submitted on March 30th 2017 by estherschindler with 1 comments

No feathers, but specialized scales on its snout could sense vibration, heat.

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Submitted on March 30th 2017 by Appaloosa with 2 comments

Located roughly an hour north from central Tokyo is a fairly nondescript government building: Itakura Town Hall in Gifu prefecture. The building houses a small gallery that counts among its collections various obscure pottery work and paintings as well as a glass-enclosed sculpture of a Buddhist deity made from roughly 20,000 beetles in numerous varieties. If you have any form of entomophobia or insectophobia I suggest you don’t read on.

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Submitted on March 31st 2017 by gladsdotter

Companion planting just may help your garden grow.

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Submitted on April 2nd 2017 by Appaloosa with 2 comments

The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy “now appears irreversible” as the cost of green power plunges, according to a new report. In The Transition Takes Hold, Clean Energy Canada said some 6.7 million people were working in the sector worldwide with one out of every 50 new jobs in the US being created by the solar industry alone. And it highlighted prediction that generation costs for large-scale solar power plants were expected to drop by a massive 57 per cent by 2025, with onshore and offshore wind expected to become 26 and 35 per cent respectively.

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Submitted on March 31st 2017 by tukka

A wooden toy discovered during an excavation of an Iron Age site in central Norway hints that 1,000 years ago, a child may have imagined ferocious Viking battles by playing with a carved replica of a ship. Found buried in a dry well at a small farm in the town of Ørland on the coastal tundra, the boat is whittled in a style resembling Viking vessels, with an uplifted prow and a hole in the center that likely held a mast for a sail.

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Submitted on March 31st 2017 by Pfennig88

The best techie April Fool's joke I found was this charming one from Amazon. Petlexa.

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Submitted on April 2nd 2017 by sjvn with 1 comments

The story of water in the West, climate change, and the birth of the environmentalism lies at the bottom of Lake Powell. By Rebecca Solnit. Photographs by Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe.

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Submitted on April 2nd 2017 by gladsdotter

In Poland’s Krzywy Las, or Crooked Forest, the pine trees look like potbellied stick figures.

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Submitted on March 31st 2017 by LisMan

Oregon's first-in-the-nation bottle recycling program will now double the payout for used soda cans and glass bottles, and frugal residents have been stockpiling for months in anticipation. With other recycling options now commonplace, this eco-trailblazing Pacific Northwest state is hoping to revamp the program with the increase from 5 to 10 cents for bottled and canned water, soda, beer and malt beverages — regardless what their labels say.

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Submitted on April 1st 2017 by weekendhobo with 1 comments

Landslides have killed at least 112 people in south-west Colombia and left many more injured, says President Juan Manuel Santos. Hours of heavy rains overnight caused rivers to burst their banks, flooding homes with mud in Putumayo province. An unknown number of people are missing. One army officer said the main local hospital was struggling to cope.

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Submitted on April 2nd 2017 by messi

A blood-engorged nymphal tick of the genus Amblyomma surrounded by fossilized mammalian erythrocytes (red blood cells) has been discovered in a piece of 15-45-million-year-old amber. The discovery is reported March 20 in the online edition of the Journal of Medical Entomology.

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Submitted on April 4th 2017 by kxh

Ancient DNA researchers have learned to collaborate with American Indian tribes in relevant cases. But still more sensitivity is needed.

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Submitted on March 31st 2017 by estherschindler