Imagine what your Thanksgiving table would look like without any food that is pollinated by bees. It’s a challenge issued by the group Environment Washington, which is highlighting the issue with a campaign called “No Bees, No Food.” Canvassers for the group say if bees die off, then turkey, rolls and potatoes are all that would be left on the […]
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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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The warming of the world’s oceans is penetrating radar. They discovered two causing a glacier the size of California in massive undersea valleys beneath the East Antarctica to melt, and scientists fear ice sheet, one of which is 3 miles wide, its collapse could eventually cause global Those canyons allow warm, salty water sea levels to rise by as much […]
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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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Luckily for most of the U.S., the likelihood this eruption would happen is pretty low: about one in 100,000 any given year. If it did happen, it would be pretty devastating, though. “Thinking about a Yellowstone super eruption is like imagining a large asteroid hitting the Earth,” says Jacob Lowenstern, a research geologist with the USGS and Scientist-in-Charge of […]
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Nature films and science documentaries usually portray Antarctica to be nothing but the most cold, isolated, almost anti-social continent on earth — at least if you’re not a penguin — but life at McMurdo Station disproves that. The 2011-2012 Antarctic southern summer season is now alive and kicking (after numerous delays), and “Mac Town” (as the residents of McMurdo call […]
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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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More than 850 million people around the world—one in nearly seven—don’t have enough to eat. Although current global food production is sufficient to feed everyone, the number eating less than the minimum the human body needs—an average 2,100 calories a day for adults—now grows by more than ten million a year, mostly in the poorest nations. Countries with unstable food […]
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Eating fruits and vegetables contaminated with pesticide residue may lower men’s sperm counts, a new study has found. Researchers at Harvard University surveyed 155 men who had sought fertility treatment about their eating habits. They found that subjects who ate more soft, thin-skinned fruits and vegetables such as apples, grapes, and potatoes—foods that tend to contain high levels of pesticide […]
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Scientists in the US who have been checking on the health of the Arctic over the last year are worried by what they’ve learned: it’s warmer, has less ice, and some of its animals and fish are facing new stresses. And in a surprise finding , which they cannot yet explain, the scientists discovered that green vegetation over much of […]
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