TOP 100 CAMPING SITES
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| Slide Show: Painting the Picture of Air Quality with Satellite Data A lot of things can impact the quality of the air you breathe, and they can come from places on far away or right on your block. For example, pollution spewed by factories in the Ohio River Valley does not stay there; instead, it often blows across swathes of Northeastern states. Wildfires blazing in California can send soot and gases aloft that eventually spread continent-wide. And, in the meantime, local emissions from cars and industry can foul the air and lead to smog, a sky-obscuring haze that makes it hard to breathe.Slide Show: Tracking Air Quality [More] rss.sciam.com |
Voyage to the Pacific Ocean's 'Garbage Patch' Editor's Note: Scuba instructor and underwater videographer Drew Wheeler is traveling on board the Algalita Marine Research Foundation's 50-foot (15.2-meter) Ocean Research Vessel, Alguita, on a two-month voyage to sample and study portions of a 10-million-square-mile (25.9-million-square-kilometer) oval known as the North Subtropical Gyre (a.k.a. "Pacific Garbage Patch"). Wheeler and the rest of the Alguita crew left Long Beach, Calif., on June 10 with a plan to cross the International Date Line and investigate regions of reported high plastic concentrations, northwest of the Hawaiian Islands. This is his first blog post for ScientificAmerican.com.June 17, 2009 [More] rss.sciam.com |
Tips for the Kind of Gas Mileage You Really Want On May 19 President Barack Obama announced a new federal gas mileage standard: by 2016 the nation's entire car and light truck fleet should average 35.5 miles per gallon. Or just slightly less than the highway mileage I get in my 17-year-old Honda Civic.The increase in the mileage requirement is actually modest. "The automakers' fleet average has been 27.5 mpg for years," according to an automobile insurance expert I spoke to. "However, this 'whole fleet average' is [expletive]. The rules by which they are allowed to achieve the fleet average are a joke." So when the rubber meets the road, 35.5 will be more like 32 or 28 or, more frighteningly, whatever number General Motors's stock happens to be trading at in 2016." [More] rss.sciam.com |
One in six Mediterranean mammals in trouble The latest regional update of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species finds bad news for mammals living around the Mediterranean. One in six species in the area are now threatened with extinction, according to the IUCN report, " The Status and Distribution of Mediterranean Mammals ,"--the first major assessment of mammals in this region. More than 250 experts contributed to the study. [More] rss.sciam.com |
DNA tests find "extinct" Siamese crocodile For nearly 20 years, the critically endangered Siamese crocodile ( Crocodylus siamensis ) has been considered nearly extinct in the wild, victimized by habitat loss and poaching. A small population was found in Cambodia in 2000 and, until now, it was believed that, at most, 250 of the rare crocodiles existed in the world. [More] rss.sciam.com |