Yet Another Study Links Insecticide To Bee Losses. After nuclear disasters, wildlife thrives. Radiation from nuclear disasters such as Chernobyl and Fukushima may, surprisingly, have done the local wildlife no harm at all. Until now, it had been believed that radiation following the Chernobyl disaster must have had a dramatic effect on bird populations by causing damage to birds’ antioxidant defence mechanisms. Climate Change: Carbon Dioxide Levels In World's Air Reach 'Troubling Milestone' WASHINGTON — The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant.
Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395. So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon. "The fact that it's 400 is significant," said Jim Butler, global monitoring director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo. Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and most of it lasts about 100 years in the air, but some of it stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Calculating the environmental footprint of governments.
What does your life style do to our planet?
And what about your government's decisions? (Illustration photo: Coloubox) From new cars to email messages, from bananas to home-grown tomatoes: everything we buy, produce or consume has an environmental cost that has come to be called a “footprint”. If you want to be a good global citizen, the Internet offers a range of tools that you can use to understand just how big your footprint is – or what your existing lifestyle is doing to the planet. Apocalypse Soon: Has Civilization Passed the Environmental Point of No Return? Remember how Wile E.
Chickens Fed Caffeine, Banned Antibiotics, and Prozac Often Without The Farmer’s Knowledge. Qmnonic'/CC BY 2.0 It’s no surprise that conventionally factory farmed chickens aren't fed the best diet.
We already knew that they were routinely fed arsenic. In fact, a 2004 study from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy showed that more than half of store-bought and fast-food chickens contained elevated levels of arsenic. Radioactive cesium found in Japan’s fish, seawater. Fukushima as Manufactured Disaster. NASA's Perpetual Ocean animation turns ocean currents into art. NASA's stunning Perpetual Ocean animation visualizes ocean currents (Image: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is an unlikely entrant in the SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival.
Amid Censored Radiation Spikes, Major Nuclear Base Run Containment Exercise. Amid a number of reports of massive and bizarre radiation readouts coming from experts, eyewitnesses, radiation facilities, and a key choice news outlet, it has now come out that one of the largest nuclear bases is currently running a ‘nuclear containment exercise’.
The Minot Airforce Base exercise, running in North Dakota, reportedly involves the use of B-52 aircrafts. The news comes after a developing story arose over the potential cover-up of a nuclear situation stemming from near the border of Indiana and Michigan. Today's environment influences behavior generations later: Chemical exposure raises descendants' sensitivity to stress. Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Washington State University have seen an increased reaction to stress in animals whose ancestors were exposed to an environmental compound generations earlier.
The findings, published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, put a new twist on the notions of nature and nurture, with broad implications for how certain behavioral tendencies might be inherited. The researchers -- David Crews at Texas , Michael Skinner at Washington State and colleagues -- exposed gestating female rats to vinclozolin, a popular fruit and vegetable fungicide known to disrupt hormones and have effects across generations of animals.
PSU study finds 'caffeinated' coastal waters. Public release date: 18-Jul-2012 [ Print | E-mail Share ] [ Close Window ] Contact: David Santensantend@pdx.edu 503-725-8765Washington State University A new study finds elevated levels of caffeine at several sites in Pacific Ocean waters off the coast of Oregon—though not necessarily where researchers expected. This study is the first to look at caffeine pollution off the Oregon coast. It was developed and conducted by Portland State University master's student Zoe Rodriguez del Rey and her faculty adviser Elise Granek, assistant professor of Environmental Science and Management, in collaboration with Steve Sylvester of Washington State University, Vancouver. In spring 2010, Rodriguez del Rey and Granek collected and analyzed samples from 14 coastal locations and seven adjacent water bodies as far north as Astoria, Ore., and as far south as Brookings. Halibut pierced with mysterious ’projectile parasite’
The newly-discovered parasite which creates mysterious holes in the Greenland halibut was discovered by Greenlandic fishermen, and researchers have yet to figure out how prevalent this parasite is.
(Photo: Kurt Buchmann) The halibut is a popular delicacy among seafood lovers.