Who cares what the neighbors think. That scraggly flower garden may be better for city-living lizards, concludes a new study from New Zealand.
“The responses of lizard populations to urbanization are probably the least understood of all vertebrates,” Yolanda van Heezik and Karin Ludwig of the University of Otago in New Zealand write in […] Read More »
In a bit of a surprise, the average size of some bird species has gotten bigger in central California over the last few decades. The finding runs counter to predictions that a warming climate would tend to cause creatures to downsize – and highlights the sometimes convoluted effects that climate change can have.
Between […] Read More »
Ever since our ancestors first harnessed fire hundreds of thousands of years ago, humans have tapped various forms of artificial light to extend our days past sunset and brighten up the indoors. “Indeed, artificial light is so integrated into the human lifestyle as to be barely noticeable,” a team led by Sandia National Laboratories light […] Read More »
It’s tough to love a species with an unpronounceable name. The Guardian decided to solve this problem through crowd-sourcing, asking readers to give common names to threatened or endangered species that previously had only a Latinate moniker. An expert panel of judges recently chose winners for the second annual “Name a Species” competition. Here’s a […] Read More »
Despite efforts to recycle plastic, mountains of the stuff still end up in dumps and landfills. The problem is that plastic bottles, lids, containers, and the like must not only be clean but must also be sorted into their various types, if recycling them is not to be prohibitively expensive. Recently, though, a factory has […] Read More »
The “Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef,” a unique exhibition and thought-provoking fusion of science, conservation, mathematics, and art, was recently on display in Washington, D.C., at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. By engaging local communities to crochet coral reefs, the exhibition celebrates the reefs’ beautiful diversity and speaks to the urgent need to […] Read More »
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By Tim Flannery
Parallels between the ants and ourselves are striking for the light they shed on the nature of everyday human experiences. Some ants get forced into low-status jobs and are prevented from becoming upwardly mobile by other members of the colony. Garbage dump workers, for example, are confined to their humble and […] Read More »
After boiling and simmering water for 30 minutes on five different stoves, researchers measured total greenhouse-gas emissions (normalized here to grams CO2 equivalent).
Source: MacCarty, N. et al. 2008. A laboratory comparison of the global warming impact of five major types of biomass cooking stoves. Energy and Sustainable Development doi:10.1016/S0973-0826(08)60429-9.
Photos by Nordica MacCarty
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In 1883, German physiologist Max Rubner pondered why large mammals and birds typically live longer than small ones. He offered a “rate-of-living” explanation that linked body size to metabolic rate. In essence, small animals live fast and die young because they have high metabolic rates, he theorized, while big ones burn the candle more slowly. […] Read More »
The golden glow of street lights could soon be replaced by the green fluorescence of tree leaves. Scientists from the Academia Sinica and the National Cheng Kung University in Taipei and Tainan have implanted glowing gold nanoparticles, known as bio–light emitting diodes, or bio-LEDs, inside the leaves of a plant.
The sea urchin–shaped nanoparticles […] Read More »
By Alan Burdick
I’m always struck by how quiet ocean documentaries are. One hears the ghostly soundings of whales, of course, the eager pip of dolphins, the clacking of a crab’s claws. But invariably, as if to cover for an awkward and extended natural silence, the sound track swoops in, alternately dreamy and orchestral, […] Read More »
Imagine a breakthrough that creates free fertilizer, allows poor farmers to increase yields while conserving land, and is not only carbon-neutral but actually absorbs CO2.
What is this amazing innovation? Dennis Garrity likes to call it a tree. “This is quite a novel concept,” he says. “In the future, we may see agriculture occurring […] Read More »
