News
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Is there such a thing as a “Natural GMO”?
Posted: May 5, 2015The first genetically modified crop wasn't made by a megacorporation. Or a college scientist trying to design a more durable tomato. Nope. Nature did it — at least 8,000 years…
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How Pollen Can Play a Role in Affecting Climate
Posted: May 5, 2015The main job of pollen is to help seed the next generation of trees and plants, but a new study from the University of Michigan and Texas A&M shows that…
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Germany is key market for the Tesla Home Battery system
Posted: May 5, 2015Electric car pioneer Tesla unveiled a "home battery" last week which its founder Elon Musk said would help change the "entire energy infrastructure of the world". Environmentally-conscious German customers are…
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“Living shoreline” can enhance coastal resilience
Posted: May 4, 2015The resilience of U.S. coastal communities to storms, flooding, erosion and other threats can be strengthened when they are protected by natural infrastructure such as marshes, reefs, and beaches, or…
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Looking for diamonds? Check under this newly discovered plant
Posted: May 4, 2015There’s diamond under them thar plants. A geologist has discovered a thorny, palmlike plant in Liberia that seems to grow only on top of kimberlite pipes—columns of volcanic rock hundreds…
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Solar power in Scotland is not a little enterprise
Posted: May 4, 2015The call by WWF Scotland follows the publication of new figures revealing that there was enough sunshine in April to have met more than 100% of the electricity needs of…
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Fracking wastewater and the risk to our food
Posted: May 3, 2015Unconventional drilling creates a huge amount of waste, some of which is being sprayed onto farmer’s fields. A 2005 report from New Zealand stated cows grazing on “dump farms” have…
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Rivers recover after dam removal
Posted: May 2, 2015More than 1,000 dams have been removed across the United States because of safety concerns, sediment buildup, inefficiency or having otherwise outlived usefulness. A paper published today in Science finds that rivers are…
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Declining 'large herbivore' populations may lead to an 'empty landscape'
Posted: May 1, 2015The decline of the world's large herbivores, especially in Africa and parts of Asia, is raising the specter of an "empty landscape" in some of the most diverse ecosystems on…
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Photosynthesis measured on a global scale
Posted: May 1, 2015A research team led by geoscientists from Brown University and the Marine Biological Laboratory has provided some crucial ground-truth for a method of measuring plant photosynthesis on a global scale…
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