Month: November 2012

  • To Fight Tick-Borne Disease, Someone Has To Catch Ticks

    Most people try to avoid ticks. But not Tom Mather. The University of Rhode Island researcher goes out of his way to find them. Mather’s not having much trouble finding deer ticks. In fact, he just might be the best deer tick collector in the country. He caught 15,000 of them last year.

  • Martian Dust Storms

    Mars also has the largest dust storms in the Solar System. These can vary from a storm over a small area, to gigantic storms that cover the entire planet. They tend to occur when Mars is closest to the Sun. A Martian dust storm that NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been tracking since last week…

  • Shrubs help assess history of Glaciers

    The stems of shrubs have given researchers a window into a glacier’s past, potentially allowing them to more accurately assess how they’re set to change in the future. Their findings have been published today, 27 November, in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters, and show how a glacier’s history of melting can be extended way…

  • The Uncertain Role of Extractive Reserves in Conservation

    During the 1980s, Brazilian rubber tapper Chico Mendes was a prominent activist for the preservation of the Amazon region. He urged his government to set up reserves for rubber tappers and was instrumental in creating various organizations and unions for his peers. In 1988, Mendes was murdered by a rancher intent on logging the site…

  • Initiative Raises Money to Keep Oil Companies out of Ecuador

    The Yasuni-ITT Initiative has been called many things: controversial, ecological blackmail, revolutionary, pioneering, and the best chance to keep oil companies out of Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park. But now, after a number of ups and downs, the program is beginning to make good: the Yasuni-ITT Initiative has raised $300 million, according to the Guardian, or…

  • New Study Reveals the Key to Maintaining Healthy Knees

    The human knee is an extremely important joint. It holds the weight of the entire body, provides the strength needed to lift heavy objects, and bends and flexes to give us mobility. Since this crucial joint is under stress at almost all times (except when sitting or lying down), it is susceptible to wear over…

  • New Development for Phytoremediation: Harvesting Collected Contaminants

    A team of researchers led by the University of Warwick are about to embark on a research program called “Cleaning Land for Wealth” (CL4W), that will use a common class of flower to restore poisoned soils while at the same time produce platinum and arsenic nanoparticles that can be used in a range of applications.…

  • Children cite ‘pollution’ as greatest environmental concern

    A comprehensive survey of youngsters from around the world has discovered the biggest concern they have about the environment they live in is pollution. The global poll of more than 6,000 children in 47 countries found that, although almost one in three 10-to-12-year-olds had personally experienced such catastrophes as drought, flood or fires, their most…

  • Temperatures are Up

    Feel warmer? Maybe not everywhere but global temperatures were the fifth highest on record for October. Meanwhile arctic sea ice doubles from last month yet remains second lowest on record for October. The globally-averaged temperature for October 2012 was the fifth warmest October since record keeping began in 1880. October 2012 also marks the 36th…

  • Colossal Galactic Bridge

    The Planck (European Space Agency or ESA) space telescope has made the first conclusive detection of a bridge of hot gas connecting a pair of galaxy clusters across 10 million light-years of intergalactic space. In the early Universe, filaments of gaseous matter pervaded the cosmos in a giant web, with clusters eventually forming in the…