By Rosanne Skirble (VOA) Researchers say that, by using the forecasts of El Nino effectively, officials might be able to predict possible outbreaks of violence and be more prepared to handle them. A new study in the journal Nature finds that war is associated with global climate. Researchers from Princeton University and the Earth Institute [...]
Toxic lead to cover Iowa dove killing fields
By Walter Brasch (Spectrum) Iowa, which gave us the carnival known as the Iowa Straw Poll and artery-clogging Deep Fried Butter, will unleash another health problem, beginning Sept. 1. The Iowa legislature last year approved a dove hunting season, the first in more than nine decades. However, the state’s Department of Natural Resources and the [...]
Old disease may be beginning of the end for banana
By Dan Koeppel (Science) Our standard supermarket banana, a variety called Cavendish, may be at the brink of disaster. Chosen for its resistance to a fungal pathogen that wiped out its predecessor, the Gros Michel banana strain, the popular fruit has long battled a related fungus, which has all but devastated the banana industry in [...]
Owner of W. Va. mine that exploded showed inspectors fake safety records
By Howard Berkes (NPR) Federal mine disaster investigators disclosed a few pieces of new information Tuesday night from their year-long look at the April 2010 deadly Upper Big Branch mine explosion. They said that: — Mine owner Massey Energy kept two sets of records that chronicled safety problems. One internal set of production reports detailed [...]
Climate sceptic Willie Soon received $1m from oil companies, papers show
By John Vidal (Guardian UK) One of the world’s most prominent scientific figures to be sceptical about climate change has admitted to being paid more than $1m in the past decade by major US oil and coal companies. Dr Willie Soon, an astrophysicist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre [...]
Female deer mice won't mate with males exposed to BPA, new study finds
(ScienceDaily) The latest research from the University of Missouri shows that BPA (a common ingredient in plastics) causes male deer mice to become demasculinized and behave more like females in their spatial navigational abilities, leading scientists to conclude that exposure to BPA during human development could be damaging to behavioral and cognitive traits that are [...]
Why food kills — 80 percent of US antibiotics go to livestock
By Nicholas D. Kristoff (NY Times) Every year in the United States, 325,000 people are hospitalized because of food-borne illnesses and 5,000 die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s right: food kills one person every two hours. Yet while the terrorist attacks of 2001 led us to transform the way we [...]
NASA's eco-friendly 'Sustainability Base' generates more electricity than it uses
By Tiffany Hsu (Los Angeles Times) Instead of sending its employees to space, NASA is building them an office of the future closer to home. The curvy, space-age building at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley incorporates technology used by astronauts and will be one of a few structures in the state that can [...]
UCLA eco-geographers predicted in 2008 that Osama was probably in Abbottabad
By Sara Reardon (Science) Could Osama bin Laden have been found faster if the CIA had followed the advice of ecosystem geographers from the University of California, Los Angeles? Probably not, but the predictions of UCLA geographer Thomas Gillespie, who, along with colleague John Agnew and a class of undergraduates, authored a 2009 paper predicting [...]
UK creating a wildflower network to boost declining bees
By Meera Selva (HuffingtonPost) Farmers and landowners are being asked to plant rows of wildflowers along the edges of England’s fields to create a network of “bee roads” to boost declining numbers. Conservationists said Tuesday they hope the wildflowers will provide food and shelter for wild bees, honeybees and butterflies, which play a crucial role [...]
