| Culinary Ecotourists Turn Wilderness Foraging into Dinner Strolling through an equatorial rain forest or a northern pine forest can be thrilling enough, if only for the lavish scenery. But when you learn that you can eat a lot of what you see, a picturesque landscape takes on added intrigue. That’s the fun behind a burgeoning form of responsible leisure travel called culinary ecotourism--a new breed of gastronomic vacation, different from the languid style of those château-and-bistro foodie tours. The goal is to experience food not just as a diner, but as a gatherer, gardener and member of the kitchen staff. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Eyes Wide Shut: Earth's Vital Signs Soon to Go Unmeasured as Satellites Fail Satellites aren't built to last forever, so it's not a big surprise that the third and last laser on NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) quit working on October 11, outlasting its designed mission length by three and a half years. Since its launch in 2003 ICESat has been a critical instrument for continuously monitoring how much ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland are contributing to the rise of the world's oceans and how much the swath of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is thinning--both of which are occurring faster than projected. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Going with the Flow: Hydrokinetic Power Developers Face Technical and Regulatory Hurtles in Bid to Tap Tides The quest to turn the motion of the world's waterways into a significant source of energy may still be in its nascent stage, but several tidal power projects are making headway. Whether they operate in lakes, rivers or the oceans, projects attempting to harness the tides share the same mission: to improve the technology and offer an economical alternative to fossil fuels. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Parks Worker Is Raped at Playground in Brooklyn A 29-year-old woman was assaulted in the park house at St. Andrew’s Playground by a man who was armed with a box cutter and fled on a bicycle, the police said. nytimes.com |
Will Economic Health Align with Environmental Health? It's official. The Great Recession helped stave off climate change. Or at least reduced the ongoing increase in concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.Based on energy consumption statistics from various nations, scientists estimate that global CO2 emissions dropped by 1.3 percent in 2009. But that still made them the second highest ever--just behind 2008. [More] rss.sciam.com |