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Study Suggests Community Gardening May Produce Health Benefits
April 19, 2013 08:58 AM - Allison Winter, ENN
There are many benefits to community gardens. From greening urban ecosystems, to offering education and cultural opportunities, community gardens provide a venue for people to come together and stimulate social interaction. For individuals, these gardens also provide a venue for exercise, food production, and improved diets. These potential benefits have lead to a new study that reveals those who participate in community gardening have a significantly lower body mass index and have lower odds of being overweight or obese compared to their non-gardening neighbors.
Shooting Asteroids
April 19, 2013 07:39 AM - Andy Soos, ENN
Asteroids is a video arcade game. The object of the game is to shoot and destroy asteroids and saucers while not colliding with either. Real asteroids are minor planets (small Solar System bodies and dwarf planets) that are not comets, especially those of the inner Solar System. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones. Shyam Bhaskaran of NASA is working a lot with asteroids these days. And also like many of his colleagues, the deep space navigator devotes a great deal of time to crafting, and contemplating, computer-generated 3-D models of these intriguing nomads of the solar system. But while many of his coworkers are calculating asteroids' past, present and future locations in the cosmos, zapping them with the world's most massive radar dishes, or considering how to rendezvous and perhaps even gently nudge an asteroid into lunar orbit, Bhaskaran thinks about how to collide with one.
Cigarette Butts Litter Waterways, Create Toxic Aquatic Ecosystems
April 18, 2013 04:29 PM - Editor, ENN
What would you say is the most littered item on US roadways? I think of two things: gum and cigarette butts. But let's focus on cigarettes for now. Cigarette filters are made from cellulose acetate, a plastic which is technically biodegradable. However, cigarette butts only degrade under conditions described by researchers as "severe biological circumstances," such as when filters end up in sewage. Even under optimal conditions, it can take at least 9 months for a butt to degrade.
Eating Lead
April 18, 2013 08:25 AM - Andy Soos, ENN
Lead is a nasty poison and can kill. So can bullets. Lead ammunition continues to take a deadly toll on endangered California condors that live in and around the Grand Canyon. Seven of the 80 wild condors in Arizona and Utah have died since December; three of those deaths have been definitively linked to lead poisoning from ingesting spent lead ammunition fragments in carrion and lead poisoning is suspected in the other four deaths. So bullets kill and, in this case, even by ingestion.
Lettuce Turnip the Radish Beet and Rocket
April 17, 2013 10:59 PM - Allison Winter, ENN
Permaculture is the branch of ecological design, which promotes development of sustainable and self-sufficient natural ecosystems. Focusing on twelve tenets, or design principles, that center on taking care of the earth while setting limits on consumption and redistributing surplus, the movement has yet to gain mainstream scientific acceptance. However, with help from a new album, "Permaculture — A Rhymer's Manual," Formidable Vegetable Sound System hopes to bring attention to permaculture and it's principles through their unique musical stylings. Globetrotting permaculture troubadour, Charlie Mgee has composed an entire album about sustainability, a topic most artists wouldn't think of touching without sounding too corny or too righteous. But who knew this new genre of edutainment (education and entertainment) would catch on? And who knew songs about permaculture could sound so cool and refreshing?
Antarctica Peninsula Climate Reconstruction
April 17, 2013 04:00 PM - Andy Soos, ENN
The Antarctic Peninsula is the northernmost part of the mainland of Antarctica. It is the section closest to another continent (South America). A new 1000-year Antarctic Peninsula climate reconstruction shows that summer ice melting has intensified almost ten-fold, and mostly since the mid 20th Century. Summer ice melt affects the stability of Antarctic ice shelves and glaciers. The research, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, adds new knowledge to the international effort that is required to understand the causes of environmental change in Antarctica and to make more accurate projections about the direct and indirect contribution of Antarctica’s ice shelves and glaciers to global sea level rise.
Titan Methane Lakes
April 17, 2013 08:03 AM - Andy Soos, ENN
Lakes and all bodies of liquid on a world's surface come and go over time. Titan has vast lakes of liquid Methane. By tracking a part of the surface of Saturn's moon Titan over several years, NASA's Cassini mission has found a remarkable longevity to the hydrocarbon lakes on the moon's surface. A team led by Christophe Sotin of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., fed these results into a model that suggests the supply of the hydrocarbon methane at Titan could be coming to an end soon (on a geological timescale). The study of the lakes also led scientists to spot a few new ones in images from Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer data in June 2010.
Sulfur Based Batteries/Plastic
April 16, 2013 04:34 PM - Andy Soos, ENN
A plastic material is any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids that are moldable. Plastics are typically organic polymers of high molecular mass, but they often contain other substances. How about mostly sulfur? A new chemical process can transform waste sulfur into a lightweight plastic that may improve batteries for electric cars, reports a University of Arizona-led team. The new plastic has other potential uses, including optical uses. The team has successfully used the new plastic to make lithium-sulfur batteries.
Maya Long Count
April 16, 2013 12:18 PM - Andy Soos, ENN
Ancient calendars were remarkably accurate but over the centuries it is hard to compare the dates of one to the modern day calendar. Things change after all and no calendar is perfect in an ever changing world. The Maya are famous for their complex, intertwined calendar systems, and now one calendar, the Maya Long Count, has been empirically calibrated to the modern European calendar, according to an international team of researchers. Archaeologists want to place the Long Count dates into the European calendar so there is an understanding of when things happened in the Maya world relative to historic events elsewhere. Correlation also allows the rich historical record of the Maya to be compared with other sources of environmental, climate and archaeological data calibrated using the European calendar.
Fungi Found to be Culprit for Horseradish Root Rot
April 16, 2013 05:55 AM - Allison Winter, ENN
Horseradish grown in the Midwest of the United States has been experiencing significant yield reductions for the past 30 years due to internal discoloring and root rot. According to crop science professor Mohammad Babadoost at the University of Illinois, "If the roots are discolored, they are not accepted for processing." This affects the success of these plants and the livelihood of Illinois farmers who grown over half of the horseradish produced in the United States.