Saola. Photo © Bill Robichaud
Still so much to learn, and sometimes it seems like there is so little time to do so:
The Largest Mammal That No Scientist Has Ever Seen in the Wild
BY MATT MILLER
The saola is the largest terrestrial mammal never seen alive in the wild by a biologist. This is not a Bigfoot story. The saola undeniably exists. It roams only in the Annamite Mountains of Laos and Vietnam. Continue reading
Agricultural employees harvest cotton in a field in Benha, Egypt. Welspun India, a giant home textile manufacturer, is in trouble for falsely advertising bedding products as containing Egyptian cotton. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
We are in the business of providing comfortable bedding as responsibly as possible, and we are as vigilant on sheets as anything else. So, in the spirit of FYI:
Those luxury Egyptian cotton sheets you own may not be luxurious – or Egyptian
Target and Walmart are pulling bedding off their shelves after a falsely labeled Egyptian cotton products controversy involving manufacturer Welspun India
Alison Moodie
Egyptian cotton, which can be spun into fine, long fiber to make sheets with a high thread count, is synonymous with luxury bedding. But in the last four months, it’s been at the center of a controversy that has caused many Americans to wonder whether the Egyptian cotton sheets they rely on for a good night’s sleep actually contain any cotton from Egypt. Continue reading
Five lots of white truffles on display entice bidders in both Philadelphia and Italy. Kristen Hartke for NPR
It is that time of year again. We are reminded of those expensive mounds that come out of leafy loamy earth in Croatia, Italy, France and we few other fortunate places:
A $112,000 White Truffle?! At Auction, Philly Embraces Fungi Mania
KRISTEN HARTKE
Bowtie-bedecked auctioneer Samuel Freeman was faced with the unusual task of convincing a crowd to buy something he admits he knows nothing about: the Tartufo Bianco d’Alba, or Alba White Truffle.
“I’ve never auctioned food before,” Freeman says, “and I’d never even eaten a truffle until two days ago.” Apparently that first taste won him over. “It was unbelievable.”
At $458 per ounce once the bidding got underway, those truffles better knock your socks off. Continue reading
Melting sea ice in the Chukchi Sea, one of the areas included in the ban. Photo: Esther Horvath
Thanks to Audubon Magazine for their coverage of this news:
U.S. Offshore Drilling Banned Along Arctic and Atlantic Coasts for Next Five Years
A new federal leasing plan released today outlines where energy companies can look for oil while protecting vital bird habitat.
by Martha Harbison
After months of deliberations, the Bureau of Ocean Management announced its final five-year plan for offshore energy-exploration leases today. In that plan, no drilling leases would be available in U.S.-held Arctic and Atlantic waters from 2017 to 2022, meaning that no new drilling could happen in those areas until at least 2022. Continue reading
Thanks to Cool Green Science:
Using Cloud Computing to Untangle How Trees Can Cool Cities
BY TIMOTHY BOUCHER
We’ve all used Google Earth — to explore remote destinations around the world or to check out our house from above. But Google Earth Engine is a valuable tool for conservationists and geographers like myself that allows us to tackle some tricky remote-sensing analysis.
After having completed a few smaller spatial science projects in the cloud (mostly on the Google Earth Engine, or GEE, platform), I decided to give it a real workout — by analyzing more than 300 gigabytes of data across 28 United States and seven Chinese cities. Continue reading
We were led to this by a news/feature story, but the background material is even more interesting than the feature in the news. Here is a note worth a moment of your time:
Dr. Seuss was a storyteller in the grandest sense of the word. Not only did he tell fantastical tales of far-away places but he also gave us a unique visual language that carried his stories to new heights of artistic expression. Surrealism provided the foundation from which he built his career, but like a launch pad sitting idle just before liftoff, surrealism was soon to be engulfed in the flames of ridiculous fun and its launch tower thrown to the ground with each new editorial cartoon, magazine cover, painting, or children’s book. Continue reading
Bolin Bay in the Great Bear rain forest near Klemtu, on the central coast of British Columbia. CreditRuth Fremson/The New York Times
There is an excellent article about old treaties and new alliances empowering indigenous people in North America, which this excerpt captures well:
…In Idaho last summer, tribal representatives from 19 states met for what organizers said was the biggest Native American workshop on climate change, and they concluded that global environmental changes transcended national boundaries.
“This is how land resource decisions are going to be made in the future — through co-management with people who have been on the land forever,” said Hadley Archer, the executive director of the Nature Conservancy Canada, which helped put together the Great Bear forest agreement. To that end, the University of Victoria law school in British Columbia will begin enrolling students next year in a degree program that will combine the traditional study of court precedents and legislation with the study of tribal law. Continue reading
Bison trigger a camera trap set up on the prairie at The Nature Conservancy’s Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Pawhuska, Oklahoma.
We have posted on this topic a few times, and can predict there will be more:
9 Animal Cams You Need in Your Life
Eating healthy will do more for your immune system than megadoses of supplements. Gillian Blease/Ikon Images/Getty Images
Want To Prevent The Flu? Skip The Supplements, Eat Your Veggies
KATHERINE HOBSON
Flu season is upon us, which means it’s time for the wave of advertisements promoting $8 juices or even more expensive supplements to “boost your immunity” or “support immune function.”
But those are marketing terms, not scientific ones. And there’s no proof that those products are going to keep you from getting sick. Continue reading
Click the image above to go to Phaidon’s website or see a couple of the book’s photographs and blurbs about the book’s intent below:
Beautiful and bizarre beasts behind Darwin’s theory
Photographer Robert Clark’s new book offers some striking supporting evidence for the theory of natural selection
Southern cassowary (Casuarius casuarius) by Robert Clark. © Robert Clark. From Evolution: A Visual Record
Already, from the cover, we like it. Some of the sample images from inside the book seal the deal. Continue reading
The Timbisha Shoshone elder Pauline Esteves in 1999. In 1933, when Esteves was eight, her tribe’s homeland was declared Death Valley National Monument. PHOTOGRAPH BY LAURA RAUCH / AP
We had already published several posts mentioning one of the earth’s more remarkable deserts. But the spectacle that desert displayed this year brought it back to our attention, for several important reasons. Click here (or on the image above) to go to Alex Ross’s update of the epic article he published on Death Valley recently, which we linked to here:
“In the desert, you see, there is everything and there is nothing,” Balzac wrote. “It is God without mankind.” The sensation of sublime emptiness, of a sacred void, explains the enduring romantic appeal of a place like Death Valley,: Continue reading
Thanks to American Scientist for this book review:
From Little Acorns
SEEDS: A Natural History. Carolyn Fry. 192 pp. University of Chicago Press, 2016. $35.
Plant conservationists, horticulturists, plant ecologists, and the like face a perplexing public relations problem when it comes to their beloved subject: For many people, plant life—even though it is essential to the existence of all living things on our planet—may seem dull, especially in comparison with animal life. In 1998 American botanists James Wandersee and Elizabeth Schussler coined the term plant blindness, defining it as “the inability to see or notice the plants in one’s own environment,” leading to “the inability to recognize the importance of plants in the biosphere and in human affairs.” In the pages of Seeds, Carolyn Fry offers an almost certain cure for this malady. Continue reading
The title is either wishful thinking, or stating the obvious; we are not sure which. Thanks to our colleagues at Clean Technica for this:
Hawai’i Solar Power (In Depth)
Glorious blue skies and endless sunshine. Warm, balmy breezes. Isn’t that how you envision Hawai’i? Like the slogan, “Everything’s better in Hawaii,” right? Oops, one thing does dampen the impression of Hawai’i, though: its high cost of living, especially for energy. Continue reading
Credit James Rajotte for The New York Times
Some of La Paz Group’s senior contributors have recollections of Santorini going back three decades, and the history of the place is both geological and cultural; the complexity of that history is still being revealed:
An Ancient Tsunami That Ended a Civilization Gets Another Look
In the 17th century B.C., Santorini was a small volcanic island in the Aegean Sea, home to Akrotiri, a Late Bronze Age outpost of Minoan civilization, which preceded ancient Greece. Then the volcano erupted, burying Akrotiri in ash and obliterating much of Santorini, turning it into a few smaller islands. Continue reading
If you are a fan of grapefruit, as we are of the salt (National Public Radio, USA) read the entire article:
Grapefruit And Salt: The Science Behind This Unlikely Power Couple
NADIA BERENSTEIN
Grapefruit’s bitterness can make it hard to love. Indeed, people often smother it in sugar just to get it down. And yet Americans were once urged to sweeten it with salt.
Ad campaigns from the first and second world wars tried to convince us that“Grapefruit Tastes Sweeter With Salt!” as one 1946 ad for Morton’s in Life magazine put it. The pairing, these ads swore, enhanced the flavor. Continue reading
An image of the well-preserved medieval ship found at the bottom of the Black Sea, one of more than 40 wrecks discovered. Photogrammetry, a process using thousands of photographs and readings, produced a rendering that appears three-dimensional. Credit Expedition and Education Foundation/Black Sea MAP
For divers, as well as anyone fascinated by ancient maritime trade routes, this must be the best news in a long while:
‘We Couldn’t Believe Our Eyes’: A
Lost World of Shipwrecks Is FoundArchaeologists have found more than 40 vessels in the Black Sea, some more than a millennium old, shedding light on early empires and trade routes. Continue reading
A supermoon seen above Cairo in October. Credit Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters
Thanks to the New York Times for this reminder:
The Supermoon and Other Moons That Are Super in Their Own Ways
By NICHOLAS ST. FLEUR
Shrug off the supermoon.
Yes, it’s true that on Sunday and Monday nights the full moon will be at its closest to Earth in nearly 70 years. But to the casual observer, it probably won’t look much different from a regular full moon. Yet headlines heralding the event as some sort of don’t-miss spectacle are everywhere. Continue reading
Fritz Lang’s 1927 film “Metropolis”
ARCHIVES NEW ZEALAND
In the wake of a U.S. election that left half the population bracing for a dystopian future, it seems a timely moment to present Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent classic, Metropolis. Considered the “father” of science fiction cinema, the film was meticulously restored in 2010.
But it’s the extra element of a live score composed and presented by the Alloy Orchestra that makes this screening an exceptional event. This unusual three man musical ensemble writes and performs live accompaniment to classic silent films using a combination of found percussion and state-of-the-art electronics to generate an amazingly varied array of musical styles. Continue reading
In a village in southern Vietnam, a woman weaves a fishing net. By tradition, Vietnamese women make nets for their husbands. Danny Yen Sin Wong
Thanks to National Public Radio (USA) for this story on the SIPA collection of remarkable images from around the world:
Absolutely Gorgeous Photos Reveal The Beauty In A Hard Life
Can you find beauty in a life of hardship?
If the photos from the Siena International Photo Awards are any indication, the answer is yes. Last month, the winners and runners-up in 11 categories, including travel, nature, people and portraits, were announced. Continue reading
The fact that we’re rather “into birds” should come as no surprise to anyone giving even a quick perusal of this site. In addition to the birds themselves, we enjoy highlighting those who photograph them, those who paint them, those who study them, as well as those who craft them. Continue reading
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