When asked why she loves to garden, Shirley Ross quotes the late Lois Hole, Alberta’s most beloved green thumb.
"Caring is the soul of gardening . . . We take risks and place our trust in factors beyond our control. Yet in the end, we are almost always rewarded with a beautiful harvest."
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People living in the American Southwest have experienced a dramatic increase in windblown dust storms in the last two decades, likely driven by large-scale changes in sea surface temperature in the Pacific Ocean drying the region’s soil, according to new NOAA-led research.
With the increase in dust storms, scientists have also documented a spike in Valley fever, an infectious disease caught by inhaling a soil-dwelling fungus found primarily in the Southwest.
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A team of researchers from the United Kingdom has developed a novel method for assessing human/pathogen interactions in the natural environment, using citizen scientists wearing boot socks over their shoes during walks in the countryside. In the process, they found that slightly less than half of the socks were positive for the gastrointestinal pathogen, Campylobacter. The research is published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
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A comparison of conditions in the outback on either side of Australia’s dingo fence has revealed that extermination of these apex predators affects not only the abundance of other animals and plants, but also reduces the quality of the soil.
The UNSW study indicates greater control of kangaroo numbers is needed across a third of the Australian continent where dingoes are rare, to reduce damage on ecosystems.
“We have shown for the first time that the presence of dingoes is linked to healthier soils, because they suppress the numbers of kangaroos that graze on the vegetation,” says study senior author UNSW Associate Professor Mike Letnic.
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Stronger and more frequent hurricanes may pose a new threat to the sooty tern, an iconic species of migratory seabird found throughout the Caribbean and Mid-Atlantic, a new Duke University-led study reveals.
The study, published this week in the peer-reviewed open-access journal PeerJ, is the first to map the birds’ annual migratory path and demonstrate how its timing and trajectory place them in the direct path of hurricanes moving into the Caribbean after forming over the Atlantic.
“The route the birds take and that most Atlantic-forming hurricanes take is basically the same – only in reverse,” said Ryan Huang, a doctoral student at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, who led the study. “That means these birds, who are usually very tired from traveling long distances over water without rest, are flying head-on into some of the strongest winds on the planet.”
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"Even though radiation emitting radioactive elements like uranium are only contained in small quantities in food, their chemical properties and radioactivity could pose a risk if they are ingested over a longer period in higher concentrations. The actual risk is now being assessed within the scope of the cooperation with the BfS," explains BfR President Professor Dr. Dr. Andreas Hensel. "In this way, the BfS and BfR will jointly obtain more data for risk assessment," Hensel adds.
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