How important is rigorous gym exercise versus ordinary work day exercise/tasks? New research at Oregon State University suggests the health benefits of small amounts of activity – even as small as one- and two-minute increments that add up to 30 minutes per day – can be just as beneficial as longer periods of physical exercise…

The destruction of tropical peatland forests is causing them to haemorrhage carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, scientists say. The research, published in Nature, suggests peatland contributions to climate change have been badly underestimated. ‘If you don’t consider carbon lost through drainage then you underestimate the carbon losses from these deforested sites by 22 per cent,’…

Meat consumption around the world has been on the rise as incomes have grown. In the United States, more meat is consumed than anywhere else. For many, a meal simply is not a meal if it does not have at least a half-pound of flesh on it. Vegetarianism has been in practice by large groups…

It took over two-and-a-half-years for the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics to finally accept a paper outlining a new meteorological hypothesis in which condensation, not temperature, drives winds. If proven correct, the hypothesis could have massive ramifications on global policy—not to mention meteorology—as essentially the hypothesis means that the world’s forest play a major role…

Once an active silver mine in the early 19th century, Hope Mine recently transformed from a barren, abandoned plot into a verdant, restored landscape. Sierra Club Green Home explores the innovative biochar initiative led by the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies (ACES) that made it possible. Following the devaluation of silver and the Silver Panic…

North America’s largest land animal will roam the Alaskan wilderness once again if a plan unveiled last week is approved. Wood bison, a subspecies of the more familiar plains bison, once lived throughout Alaska and much of western Canada but haven’t been seen in the state’s wilderness for more than a century due to hunting…

An urban heat island is a metropolitan area that is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas due to human activities. The temperature difference usually is larger at night than during the day, and is most apparent when winds are weak. The main cause of the urban heat island is modification of the land surface…

While scientists have yet to isolate cause and effect, many suspect chemicals used in drilling and hydrofracking (or “fracking”) operations are poisoning animals through the air, water, or soil. Last year, Michelle Bamberger, an Ithaca, New York, veterinarian, and Robert Oswald, a professor of molecular medicine at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine, published the first…

In Darkush, Syria, civilians must turn to their environment for the basic need of warmth. Day after day, freezing temperatures prevail, and tree after tree is cut down. The national park to the northwest of Idlib, a herding area, is slowly becoming a flatland. Without the trees, which are beautiful and rare, the volume of…

Dung beetle occurs in coastal dunes and marshes around the Mediterranean Basin. They are also known as scarab beetles that were sacred to the ancient Egyptians. These insects roll balls of dung across the earth just as the sun god Ra rolled across the sky. A team of scientists from South Africa and Sweden have…