EarthScape

Roma communities in France, currently the subject of a controversial crackdown by the Sarkozy administration, are being forced to scavenge growing volumes of potentially dangerous e-waste in a bid to escape poverty, an Ecologist investigation has revealed.

Mexico evacuated tourists and residents from islands off the Yucatan peninsula on Tuesday as Hurricane Paula, a Category 2 storm, was on track to sideswipe Mexico’s Caribbean resorts before heading toward Cuba. Packing winds of 100 miles per hour, the storm was expected to brush past the Yucatan coast, home to hundreds of resorts, before…

Physicists at Rutgers University in New Jersey have discovered new properties in a material that could result in efficient and inexpensive plastic solar cells for electricity production. The discovery, posted online and slated for publication in an upcoming issue of the journal Nature Materials, reveals that energy carrying particles generated by packets of light can…

A massive 50-km-long (30-mi) logjam has blocked the Rajang river in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, bringing river traffic to a standstill and posing a threat to riverbank communities, reports Malaysian state media. The Rajang, Malaysia’s longest river, is presently unnavigable, according to Bernama.

Food safety advocates may shudder at the thought, but a team of scientists in Canada have come up with a new breed of pig that is intended to make meat a greener, more sustainable food. The Enviropig is engineered to have the same meat quality as your typically breeded Yorkshire pig, with all the ideal…

ScienceDaily (Oct. 11, 2010) — The soils in large areas of the Southern Hemisphere, including major portions of Australia, Africa and South America, have been drying up in the past decade, a group of researchers conclude in the first major study to ever examine “evapotranspiration” on a global basis.

Use of artificial lighting at night can change human and insect behaviors, increasing the risk of insect-borne disease. Consider that before gas street lamps and electric light bulbs were invented in the 1800s, the world settled into darkness after sunset, relying only on the moon and stars for light. That is still the case in…

IEA calculations based on preliminary data show that China has now overtaken the United States to become the world’s largest energy user. China’s rise to the top ranking was faster than expected as it was much less affected by the global financial crisis than the United States. For those who have been following energy consumption…

Gavin Conway, a writer for the UK’s Sunday times, recently set out for a country drive. Quite the drive, in fact: his drive ended up lasting three days, on a three-day trip that took him from Maidstone, Kent, to the south of France, and almost all of the way back, on one tank of diesel.…

Energy companies are rushing to develop unconventional sources of oil and gas trapped in carbon-rich shales and sands throughout the western United States and Canada. So far, government officials have shown little concern for the environmental consequences of this new fossil-fuel development boom. The most direct path to America’s newest big oil and gas fields…