CAPE LEGOUPIL, ANTARCTICA: From the ground in this extreme northern part of Antarctica, spectacularly white and blinding ice seems to extend forever. What can’t be seen is the battle raging thousands of feet below to re-shape Earth. Water is eating away at the Antarctic ice, melting it where it hits the oceans. As the ice sheets slowly thaw, water pours […]
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Boyan Slat (born 27 July 1994) is a Dutch inventor, entrepreneur and aerospace engineering student who works on methods of cleaning plastic waste from the oceans. He designed a passive system for concentrating and catching plastic debris driven by ocean currents. This won a prize for Best Technical Design at Delft University of Technology and he has established a […]
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Polar bear numbers are expanding The Effects of Global Warming on Polar Bears has been quite significant. “A main Canadian power on polar bears, Mitch Taylor, said: ‘We’re seeing an increment in bears that is truly phenomenal, and in spots where we’re seeing an abatement in the populace it’s from chasing, not from environmental change.’” (Scotsman.com) Polar bears are found […]
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On the mountainous outskirts of Shenzhen, a fast-growing mega-city in China, the largest waste-to-energy plant in the world is on the horizon. You can bet that this disk-shaped trash-burning plant isn’t going to do any wonders for China’s notoriously bad air quality. It’s projected to burn 5,500 tons of trash per day — one-third of the waste Shenzhen produces. But the alternative […]
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Smokers or those who are exposed to secondhand smoke may require heavier doses of anesthesia and painkillers during surgery. A new study found that cigarettes—which are filled with more than 4,000 chemicals—can not only affect the metabolism of anesthetic drugs in the liver but may also influence nerve cells involved in the sensation of pain. Among 90 women who underwent […]
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“Harper Estelle Wolfeld-Gosk has 6,282 Twitter followers,” said Joe Coscarelli in NYMag.com. “She’s 2 weeks old.” The infant daughter of Today show correspondent Jenna Wolfe is just one of thousands of kids who have Twitter accounts that are written in their voices but are “set up, maintained, and authored by parents.” Here’s a sample of little Harper’s tweets: “Pooped AND […]
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Nearly Half Of Black Males, 40 Percent Of White Males Are Arrested By Age 23. A large number of American men have already been arrested by the time they’re in their early 20s, according to a new report. A study, published in the journal Crime & Delinquency, found that nearly half (49 percent) of African-American men and 40 percent of […]
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The Seabin marine waste collector shows how often the simplest solutions are the most effective. The rubbish collector, designed to float in marinas, inland waterways, residential lakes and harbors, collects floating debris and liquids by sucking water from the surface and letting if flow out through the bottom of the structure, trapping waste in a filter bag. The inventors have […]
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India has been told that it cannot go ahead as planned with its ambitious plan for a huge expansion of its renewable energy sector, because it seeks to provide work for Indian people. The case against India was brought by the US. The ruling, by the World Trade Organization (WTO), says India’s National Solar Mission − which would create local […]
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Long ago, in the largest canyon system in our solar system, vibrations from “marsquakes” shook soft sediments that had accumulated in Martian lakes. The shaken sediments formed features that now appear as a series of low hills apparent in a geological map based on NASA images. The map was released today by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). This map of […]
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