• Return of the Native Wild Turkey—Setting Sustainable Harvest Targets When Information is Limited

    As American families sit down for the traditional turkey dinner this Thanksgiving, some will be giving thanks for a wild bird that is truly free range. Meleagris gallopavo, the wild turkey, has steadily gained in popularity with hunters since successful restoration efforts put it back on the table in the around the new millenium, bucking the trend of declining participation in hunting throughout the United States. The distinguished native bird is now second in popularity only to white tailed deer.

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  • Soil Researchers Quantify an Important, Underappreciated Factor in Carbon Release to the Atmosphere

    Soil plays a critical role in global carbon cycling, in part because soil organic matter stores three times more carbon than the atmosphere. Now biogeochemist Marco Keiluweit at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and colleagues elsewhere for the first time provide evidence that anaerobic microsites play a much larger role in stabilizing carbon in soils than previously thought.

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  • Serene Sirens: USGS Sea Cow Science

    A USGS video about manatees reveals that while the animals may act like the cows of the sea, they also have more than a bit of the magical siren or mermaid about them. 

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  • Spinning Biomass into Gold

    There’s a century-old adage coined by the paper industry that claims “you can make anything from lignin except a profit.”

    Art Ragauskas has heard this maxim countless times during his career, and it gets him a little riled up every time he hears it. As the UT-ORNL Governor’s Chair for Biorefining, Ragauskas is channeling that ire into proving that the old saying’s time has come and gone.

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  • Earth-Air Heat Exchanger Best Way to Protect Farm Animals in Livestock Buildings Against the Effects of Climate Change

    Without countermeasures, climate change will negatively impact animals in pig and poultry production. Beside the health and wellbeing of the animals, heat stress also affects performance and, as a result, profitability. As the animals are predominantly kept in confined livestock buildings equipped with mechanical ventilation systems, researchers at Vetmeduni Vienna examined the inlet air temperature of several air cooling systems. The best solution, they found, is the use of the earth for heat storage via an earth-air heat exchanger (EAHE). An EAHE cools in the summer, and warms up the inlet air during wintertime.

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  • Teaching KITT to drive in the rain

    In 1982, when David Hasselhoff jumped into KITT, a super-advanced Pontiac Trans Am that could drive itself, it was obvious Knight Rider was pure TV science fiction. But nowadays, with companies investing millions in autonomous vehicle research, could KITT be just around the corner?

    The technology behind self-driving cars is advancing at an incredible pace, with companies like General Motors, Google, Tesla and Uber testing cars in San Francisco, Phoenix and Boston. And the idea of robo-cars is very appealing to younger consumers, with nearly two-thirds of Millenials willing to own a self-driving vehicle within the next decade.

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  • Correctly Used Neonics Do Not Adversely Affect Honeybee Colonies, New Research Finds

    The three most widely used neonicotinoid pesticides for flowering crops pose no risk to honeybee colonies when used correctly as seed treatments, according to new studies by University of Guelph researchers.

    Amid mounting controversy over use of neonicotinoids (neonics) and declining bee populations, a new analysis by U of G scientists of previously unpublished studies and reports commissioned by agri-chemical companies Bayer and Syngenta – as well as published papers from the scientific literature – shows no significant ill effects on honeybee colonies from three common insecticides made by the companies.

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  • Why The World Needs to Rethink The Value of Water

    Research led by Oxford University highlights the accelerating pressure on measuring, monitoring and managing water locally and globally. A new four-part framework is proposed to value water for sustainable development to guide better policy and practice.

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  • Radiographs of Dolly's Skeleton Show No Signs of Abnormal Osteoarthritis

    Original concerns that cloning caused early-onset osteoarthritis (OA) in Dolly the sheep are unfounded, say experts at the University of Nottingham and the University of Glasgow.

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  • Engineers Model the California Reservoir Network

    For the first time, engineers at Caltech have developed an empirical statewide model of the California reservoir network. The model was built from data gathered over a 13-year period that includes the latest drought, allowing researchers to make observations about how 55 of the state's major reservoirs respond to a variety of external conditions as a unified system.

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