Ghana is being pressured to sell out it’s global agribusiness. The U.S. and the global seed industry are trying to strong-arm Ghana into adopting the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, known as UPOV. The treaty confers intellectual property rights on huge seed companies such as Monsanto and locks farmers into a limited selection of […]
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Native Americans’ Siberian Roots have been documented in recent research. The skeleton of a girl who died over 12k years ago has provided DNA confirming evidence that Native Americans must have originally migrated from Siberia. Analysis of the DNA showed a genetic marker commonly found in today’s Native American population. Human geneticist Chris Tyler says, “From archaeological, genetic, and […]
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An enormous iceberg in Antarctica has killed off 150,000 penguins and threatens to wipe out an entire colony, which has become trapped and unable to reach food. A study by researchers from New Zealand and Australia said only about 10,000 Adélie penguins have survived after an iceberg – labelled B09B – grounded in a bay in 2010. The grounding, at […]
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There’s an oil painting on one wall in the cluttered room that serves as central headquarters of Burch Farms, a large vegetable grower in Faison, N.C. The painting shows an African-American couple, the woman in a long, plain dress, the man in a homespun shirt. They’re digging sweet potatoes with their bare hands and an old-fashioned hoe. Jimmy Burch Sr., […]
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The city of San Francisco is praising an addition to their “311” mobile application that is supposed to help the city deal with its growing homeless population. But the app is already under heavy criticism by anti-gentrification groups who say its unnecessary to report the homeless for interacting with the public, or for simply existing. Under Mayor Ed Lee’s watch, San Francisco’s homeless population has skyrocketed, increasing […]
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Public urination is a problem in most major cities of the world, but now another town is using technology to “pee back” the perpetrators, so to speak. Authorities in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg, Germany, had the walls in this well-known red light district sprayed with a super-hydrophobic nano-coating which is so water repellent that, as tech website gizmag.com […]
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Over the past decade, thanks in part to widespread restrictions on when and where people can light up, the number of Americans who smoke has rapidly declined. But despite that reduction, some 58 million Americans are still regularly exposed to secondhand smoke, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Although this is a 50 percent drop […]
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The amount of plastic garbage in the North Pacific Ocean has risen a hundredfold since the 1970s, and the floating debris is now so abundant that marine life is adapting to its presence. Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography sampled an expanse of the sea between Hawaii and California, where currents tend to deposit flotsam from around the Pacific […]
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Tropical forests account for a third of the total carbon fixed by photosynthesis. Lianas’ increasing abundance may be driven by changing climate, increased disturbance or by more severe seasonal drought. By reducing the ability of tropical forests to accumulate and store carbon released through burning fossil fuels, lianas could cause a positive feedback loop, accelerating climate change. “This study has […]
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The amount of CO2 is increasing all the time – we just passed a landmark 400 parts per million concentration of atmospheric CO2, up from around 280ppm before the industrial revolution. That’s a 42.8% increase. A tiny amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, like methane and water vapor, keep the Earth’s surface 30°Celsius (54°F) warmer than it would be […]
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