Thanks As Usual, Monsanto

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These soybean leaves show evidence of damage from dicamba. It could cut the the harvest by 10 to 30 percent. Courtesy of the University of Arkansas

We live at a time when figuring out how to feed an already-oversized global population (relative to the earth’s natural resources and known agricultural methods) is a monumental task. But Monsanto seems determined to take shortcuts that do as much harm as good. And that is probably putting it too politely, considering the number of times their misdeeds come to our attention (thanks to National Public Radio, USA):

Crime In The Fields: How Monsanto And Scofflaw Farmers Hurt Soybeans In Arkansas

by Dan Charles, August 1, 2016

When agricultural extension agent Tom Barber drives the country roads of eastern Arkansas this summer, his trained eye can spot the damage: soybean leaves contorted into cup-like shapes.

He’s seeing it in field after field. Similar damage is turning up in Tennessee and in the “boot-heel” region of Missouri. Tens of thousands of acres are affected. Continue reading →

Indigenous-Outing

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Mr. Anderson’s work is often, like his colleague Elizabeth Kolbert’s, unusually thick in detail, and often kind of heavy. This item is heavy, detailed, but fascinating. His writing is often without illustration yet this piece is reported with abundant and excellent photography. Read a snippet below to get a sense of the interior of the article:

AN ISOLATED TRIBE EMERGES FROM THE RAIN FOREST

In Peru, an unsolved killing has brought the Mashco Piro into contact with the outside world.

By Jon Lee Anderson

…The Ministry of Culture’s team gathered a few months ago in Cuzco, high in the Andes, where a van was loaded with provisions. The leader was an anthropologist named Luis Felipe Torres, a slim man in his early thirties with an aquiline face and the unassuming manner of a professional observer. He was joined by Glenn Shepard, an American ethnobotanist. A youthful-looking man of fifty, Shepard had lived for a year in the nineteen-eighties among the Matsigenka people, who shared territory with the Mashco; he had learned their language and returned many times since. Shepard worked at the Emílio Goeldi Museum, an Amazonian-research center in Brazil, but he travelled to Peru frequently as an informal adviser to Torres’s department.

Continue reading →

National Park Service Service

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Brad Metler (left) and Mason Phillippi position a rock that will serve as an abutment for a small footbridge across the Oconaluftee River to an old cemetery in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Both men work for the park’s trail crew, which maintains more than 800-miles of trail in the park. Nathan Rott/NPR

Thanks to National Public Radio (USA):

Life In The Park: Finding Meaning In Park Service Work

There’s a popular refrain among National Park Service employees, one that doubles as a reminder, of sorts, after a long, wearisome day: “We get paid in sunrises and sunsets.”

For many park employees, the pay is seasonal and not great. The hours are long. The question is usually the same (“Where’s the bathroom?”). And no matter how many pamphlets you pass out, instructions you give or “Attention!” signs you put up, people still wander off trails, carve their names in trees and get too close to the bears. Continue reading →

Good Bag News from England

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Image via Pinterest

Last year in October, a five pence charge (around seven US cents) for plastic bags at supermarkets was introduced to discourage shoppers from using the wasteful and unnecessary receptacles – and prevent pollution at the same time. With this extra cost, use of the bags dropped by over 85%, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. But England hasn’t led the charge (pun intended) in this effort: Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all successfully employed the 5p cost prior. Rebecca Smithers reports for The Guardian:

Retailers with 250 or more full-time equivalent employees have to charge a minimum of 5p for the bags they provide for shopping in stores and for deliveries, but smaller shops and paper bags are not included. There are also exemptions for some goods, such as raw meat and fish, prescription medicines, seeds and flowers and live fish.

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Climate Change Deniers Meet Their Match

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Naomi Oreskes. Photograph by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Public Affairs and Communications

Thanks to Harvard Magazine for this interview that puts into perspective how science writers can best serve the interest of accurate information about climate change:

Naomi Oreskes on How to Write about Science

by MARINA N. BOLOTNIKOVA

HISTORY OF SCIENCE professor Naomi Oreskes talks about climate change the way one might expect of both an earth scientist and a historian. “Science has to be part of the conversation on climate change,” she says, “but it’s not the whole conversation. At this time, I actually don’t think it’s the most important piece. There’s a basic issue of justice here, and we desperately need economists and sociologists and philosophers and artists to be heard.” Her humanist instincts allow her to move a wide audience in a way most scientists never achieve. Her work has helped broaden the public’s acceptance of climate change as an issue of scientific consensus rather than debate, and for taking up this public mantle of climate change advocacy, she will be honored with the Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication this winter. Oreskes recently talked to Harvard Magazine about the climate-denial industry, the political role of scientists, and writing about academic research for a wide audience. Continue reading →

Biodiversity, Conservation, Questions

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From Conservation, a provocative question answered in the summary of a scientific investigation:

IS BIODIVERSITY THE ENEMY OF NATURE?

It’s easy to use a word so often that its meaning is taken for granted. Nuances are lost, conceptual freight laid aside, assumptions unexamined. Take biodiversity: just a few decades old, the word is now ubiquitous, a default frame for thinking about nature — and that’s not necessarily a good thing. Continue reading →

A Tiger’s Tale Redux

/ Amie Inman / 1 Comment
Photo credit: Sudhir Shivaram

Photo credit: Sudhir Shivaram

International Tiger Day is my excuse to remember this post from three years ago, as a continued reminder of the importance of doing whatever we can to save these amazing creatures in the wild.  Meeting wildlife photographer Sudhir Shivaram, and some talented participants of his master bird photography workshop, (many of whom now contribute to this site), has consistently given all of us a window into wildlife viewing that few of us have the privilege to enjoy.

I actually write this from Chan Chich Lodge in Belize, a location that offers the amazing opportunity to be in the habitat of “new world” cats such as jaguar, puma, ocelot, margay and jaguarundi. We’ll write about what we’ve seen so far and what the fantastic staff has shared with us in separate posts – as here we want to honor the tiger. Continue reading →

Cool Chemistry

/ Jocelyn Toll / Leave a comment
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Source eurekalert.org

Increasing levels of CO₂ are the principle cause of the alarming climate changes that we have observed in the past several decades, so why not use the same chemical compound that is causing all our woes to generate fuel, or electricity, as we saw here a few days ago? The scientific community is well aware of the common and “conventional” renewable energies, so researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have engineered a solar cell that converts atmospheric carbon dioxide directly into usable hydrocarbon fuel, using only the sunlight for energy.  This new invention removes the necessity of batteries and solves two crucial problems: Continue reading →

US to Build First Offshore Wind Farm off R.I.

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A GE Renewable Energy offshore wind turbine off the coast of Belgium. Photo © GE via Wired.com

Wind power is a recurring subject here, and although there are thousands of turbines across the United States, none so far have been built collectively along the coast. Since so much of the US population is collected in coastal areas, having electricity produced closer to them is key to reduce loss via transportation. Brendan Cole reports for WIRED about the upcoming wind farm in Rhode Island:

BUILDING IN RHODE Island isn’t easy. Hurricanes and tropical storms barrel through its quaint coastline towns, interrupting perfect summer weekends. Freezing winters bring blizzards that can shut down the entire state. And every season features corrosive salty winds, biting at the coast as if sent by a Britain still seething at the first American colony to declare independence.

Continue reading →

Can the Cement Industry Reduce CO2 Emissions?

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Photo of Blue Circle Southern Cement factory near New Berrima, New South Wales, Australia, by WikiMedia Common contributor AYArktos

Portland cement is named for the area in England where it was first made almost three-hundred years ago, and is the standard ingredient used to create concrete around the world. Despite being a very useful building material that can be applied in a variety of ways without expensive technology, cement production is associated with carbon dioxide emissions, primarily from when the original limestone is decarbonized and from the massive amounts of fuel needed to fire up the kilns to make cement. Robert Hutchinson of the Rocky Mountain Institute writes an informative piece for GreenBiz on how the industry might change, and why:

The toughest climate challenges involve large global industries, with no good substitutes. One of these produces the material literally under our feet — concrete. Every year, each of us in the U.S. uses about one-third of a ton. Fast-growing developing countries use far more. Globally we produce over 4 billion metric tons of Portland cement per year — the key ingredient in concrete and responsible for the majority of its CO2 footprint — driving over 5 percent of total anthropomorphic CO2.

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The Big Headed Ant

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Source sciencenews.org

Whether it be inside or outside of our homes, ants are everywhere on land. The Pheidole drogon and Pheidole viserion worker ants, found in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, are ones that have spines protruding from their thoraxes, an intimidating sight for anyone or anything trying to tangle with them. However, researchers suggest that the thorny-looking spine might instead be a muscular support for the ant’s over-sized head, which is used to crush seeds. Continue reading →

The Most Avid Fans of Flying

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Photo © AURÉLIAN PRUDOR/CEBC CNRS

Who enjoys flying? I do (on planes, of course) and birds certainly do as well (they better because they do a lot of it)!  According to recent study, frigatebirds can drift in the skies for up to two months without landing (I think this makes them the biggest fans of flying, along with albatrosses, another ocean-faring flier). In order to do this, the seabird seeks out routes with strong and upward-moving currents to save energy on its flights across the ocean. By hitching a ride with favorable winds, frigates can fly more than 400 kilometers a day (which is the equivalent of a daily trip from Boston to Philadelphia) and avoid having to flap their wings as much.

For instance, the birds skirt the edge of the doldrums, windless regions near the equator. For this group of birds, that region was in the Indian Ocean. On either side of the region, the winds blow steadily. The winds come from cumulus clouds (the ones that look like fluffy cotton balls), which frequently form in the region. Riding upward-moving air currents underneath the clouds can help the birds soar to altitudes of 600 meters (about a third of a mile).

The birds don’t just stop there, though. Sometimes they fly higher into the [cumulus] clouds…[and] use the rising air inside the clouds to get an extra elevation boost. It can propel them up to nearly 4,000 meters (2.4 miles).

Continue reading →

American Coots

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The title may be reminiscent of recent movies like “American Sniper,” or “American Hustle,” or slightly older ones such as “American Psycho” and “American Beauty.” But as the video suggests, the American Coot is a type of bird, a wading species in a family called Rallidae, which most non-birders probably haven’t heard of because the birds are typically either near water or hiding in dense vegetation. Coots, along with rails, gallinules, and crakes, make up the Rallidae family, and all these types of birds like to stay on the ground, very rarely flying or venturing into trees unless it helps escape a predator. They’re more closely related to cranes than to ducks.

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“Kissing” Corals

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Source discovermagazine.com

You don’t have to be a romantic to appreciate the underwater rainbow canvas that is a coral reef and marvel at the fact that these organisms have been spotted exchanging an underwater embrace, a behavior researchers have termed “polyp kissing.”

A first-of-its-kind underwater microscope that can observe coral polyps at resolutions of up to 2 micrometers while still remaining a safe distance away allowed marine biologists to watch coral behavior in real time. Not only did they see two species of coral fighting for territory (a previously observed behavior), but also two corals entwine their gastrovascular openings in the act of “polyp kissing” (a previously unknown behavior). Continue reading →

First Solar Plane Voyage Around the World

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After a pit stop in Oman Solar Impulse 2 sets off for Ahmedabad, India on 10 March 2015 Photograph: Jean Revillard/Solar Impulse

The strange rear profile you see in the photo above is that of the Solar Impulse 2, a two-ton plane (a Boeing 747 weighs 154 tons) with solar panels on its wings that made history this week as it completed a round-the-globe voyage over the course of roughly three weeks in flight. The Solar Impulse 2 and one of its pilots, André Borschberg, broke the record for the longest nonstop solo flight ever a few weeks ago, when Borschberg flew from Japan to Hawaii. Damian Carrington reports for The Guardian:

The final leg of the feat, aimed at showcasing the potential of renewable energy, was a bumpy one, with turbulence driven by hot desert air leaving the solo pilot, Bertrand Piccard, fighting with the controls.

The plane, which has a wingspan wider than a Boeing 747 and carries more than 17,000 solar cells on its wings, began the circumnavigation in March 2015 in Abu Dhabi. It has since crossed both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans using no fossil fuel and has spent more than 23 days in the air.

Continue reading →