| This "Green" Home: Simple Cheap Improvements to Your House Dear EarthTalk: What are some simple low cost improvements I can do to my home to make it greener? -- Stefan Lonce, via email [More] rss.sciam.com |
Can the World's Most Polluted Places Ever Be Cleaned? [More] rss.sciam.com |
EPA Proposes Tougher Standards for Smog U.S. EPA today proposed significantly tougher smog standards after reconsidering the George W. Bush administration's controversial 2008 regulations.The draft rule released by EPA proposes to revise the two standards aimed at protecting public health and welfare to comply with recommendations made by the agency's science advisers. The Bush administration had rejected those suggestions when issuing the 2008 national air quality standards for ground-level ozone, or smog, drawing criticism and legal challenges from environmental and public health groups. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Five tips for people who love both the Earth and old houses Editor's Note: Scientific American's George Musser will be chronicling his experiences installing solar panels in Solar at Home (formerly 60-Second Solar). Read his introduction here and see all posts here . Earlier this week I posed the question of whether old houses will ever be able to reduce their energy needs by the factor of five or so needed to combat climate change. My discussion was inspired, in part, by a provocative essay written last year by preservationist Sally Zimmerman of Historic New England . Yesterday she wrote to say that my post and the comments that people left have been widely circulated among preservationists. She offered some more thoughts that I think frame the issue beautifully: [More] rss.sciam.com |
100 Years Ago: Sleeping Sickness SEPTEMBER 1960 EVOLUTION OF MAN-- “Mutation, sexual recombination and natural selection led to the emergence of Homo sapiens. The creatures that preceded him had already developed the rudiments of tool-using, toolmaking and cultural transmission. But the next evolutionary step was so great as to constitute a difference in kind from those before it. There now appeared an organism whose mastery of technology and of symbolic communication enabled it to create a supraorganic culture. Other organisms adapt to their environments by changing their genes in accordance with the demands of the surroundings. Man and man alone can also adapt by changing his environments to fit his genes. His genes enable him to invent new tools, to alter his opinions, his aims and his conduct, to acquire new knowledge and new wisdom. --Theo­do­s­ius Dobzhansky” [More] Evolution - Natural selection - Human - Evolutionary psychology - Gene rss.sciam.com |