Month: April 2014

  • Dissolving shells on the West Coast

    Evidence now indicates that acidity of West Coast continental shelf waters is dissolving the shells of tiny free-swimming marine snails, called pteropods, the major food source for pink salmon, mackerel and herring. Funded by NOAA, the study estimates the percentage of pteropods in this region with dissolving shells due to ocean acidification has doubled in…

  • Ethanol: Worse Than Conventional Fuel?

    Ethanol was pitched as the new hope for alternative fuels in America, but what if it’s actually worse than conventional gasoline? That’s exactly what a new government-funded study is saying in an analysis of cellulostic ethanol — fuel made from byproducts like the leftovers from growing corn.

  • Glyphosate found in breast milk

    A pilot study of American mothers’ milk has found levels of the herbicide glyphosate around 1,000 times higher than allowed in European drinking water. Campaigners are demanding a ban on the use of glyphosate on food crops. In the first ever testing on glyphosate herbicide in the breast milk of American women, Moms Across America…

  • California Drought

    The current drought hitting California makes the nightly news in many of the state’s major markets — and for good reason. It’s the worst drought California has seen for 15 years. The entire state is officially in drought, according to the April 22 edition of the U.S. Drought Monitor. Every area in California is suffering…

  • France moving away from Nuclear power

    France may be the world’s most nuclear energy dependent country, but times are changing as the country looks to increase the amount of wind–sourced electricity in its power mix. When French President François Hollande took the reins of power in 2012 he pledged to reduce the country’s nuclear dependency from 75% to 50% by 2025.

  • Illegal Fishing still a big problem in the US

    When people talk about illegal trafficking in wildlife, the glistening merchandise laid out on crushed ice in the supermarket seafood counter — from salmon to king crab — probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. But 90 percent of U.S. seafood is imported, and according to a new study in the journal Marine…

  • Congo rainforest losing its greenness, finds NASA

    The Congo, the world’s second largest rainforest, is losing its greenness, finds a new study published in Nature. The research, based on analysis of NASA satellite data, reveals the impact of long-term drought that has affected the region in 2000. The study may help scientists forecast the Congo rainforest’s future outlook.

  • Who came first: the farmer or the hunter-gatherer?

    This is the question being asked by researchers from Uppsala and Stockholm Universities. And now with a genomic analysis of eleven Stone Age human remains from Scandinavia the researchers have concluded that the Stone Age farmers assimilated local hunter-gatherers who were historically lower in numbers than the farmers. There has been much debate as to…

  • World On Track for Hefty Temperature Increase This Century

    If the world continues down its current carbon-spewing course, global temperatures will hit a staggering 4.8 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the end of the century, with potentially disastrous consequences for humanity, ecosystems and sustainable development, according to a new report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

  • After Widespread Deforestation, China Bans Commercial Logging in Northern Forests

    Forestry authorities in China have stopped commercial logging in the nation’s largest forest area, marking an end to more than a half-century of intensive deforestation that removed an estimated 600 million cubic meters (21 billion cubic feet) of timber. The logging shutdown was enacted in large part to protect soil and water quality of greater…