Month: August 2013

  • Kill a Rat, Save an Ecosystem

    Worldwide, invasive alien species are second only to habitat destruction in reducing the planet’s biodiversity. Their effect is especially potent on islands. Cats, rats, weasels and stoats wreak havoc on native faunas which evolved in the absence of predatory mammals.

  • Saudi Arabia to Launch Online Atlas of Renewable Resources

    Saudi Arabia is launching an online atlas of renewable resources as part of a wider project to identify the potential renewable energy sources and where best to deploy technology to tap into those resources. The atlas data will be available in late 2013, published online through the Renewable Resource Monitoring and Mapping programme.

  • EPA looking at contaminated sites for renewable energy

    There are a lot of contaminated sites in the US. Many are former landfills that are urban mounds of varying size, and they are often devoid of trees. This makes them good candidate sites for solar power or other forms of renewable energy. This is a win-win opportunity in many instances! The U.S. Environmental Protection…

  • Rice gene digs deep to triple yields in drought

    A gene that gives rice plants deeper roots can triple yields during droughts, according to Japanese researchers writing in Nature Genetics this week (4 August). Rice is a staple food for nearly half of the world’s population, but is also particularly susceptible to drought owing to its shallow roots, researchers say. The new study shows…

  • Jumbo problems for the Indian railways

    Running late that morning, the Kanchankanya Express train zipped past Gulma and entered the Mahananda Wildlife Sanctuary in northern West Bengal, India. Till a few minutes ago, impatience was writ large on every face. Now with the fog having finally lifted and the green forest cover glistening under the sun, things were finally looking up.…

  • What does the future hold for GM cotton?

    Two decades into cotton’s genetic modification (GM) revolution, J. Berrye Worsham, President and CEO of the U.S. industry association Cotton Incorporated, exudes complete confidence in the GM route. “Employing biotechnology to its fullest extent, now and far into the future,” he says, “we anticipate dramatically increasing our yields of cotton fiber and using cottonseed as…

  • Increased grazing helps improve soil

    The world’s soil is in trouble. Ecologists say without dramatic changes to how we manage land, vast swathes of grassland are at risk of turning into hard-packed desert. To make sure that doesn’t happen, researchers are testing out innovative ways to keep moisture in the soil. In eastern Colorado, one way could be in the…

  • The American Chestnut is being restored

    Gary Jacob planted his Chestnut orchard in 2004 in association with the local chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF). The foundation has worked at a national level since 1983 to develop an American chestnut resistant to chestnut blight, an Asian fungus introduced in the early 20th century that nearly eliminated the chestnut from American…

  • Fuel from water advances

    Fuel from water? A form of Alchemy? Researchers have been trying for years to find a limitless, environmentally benign source of fuel. Now a University of Colorado Boulder team has developed a radically new technique that uses the power of sunlight to efficiently split water into its components of hydrogen and oxygen, paving the way…

  • Iraq creates first National Park

    Iraq’s Council of Ministers has approved the designation of the country’s first national park, in the Mesopotamian Marshes of southern Iraq. Once the third largest wetland in the world, the Mesopotamian Marshes are widely thought to be the original ‘Garden of Eden’. However, they were nearly destroyed during the Gulf War in the 1990s, when…