| Tuning In To The Insect Philharmonic [ The following is an exact transcript of this podcast. ]“Can you hear the end of the daytime insect? That’s the cicada. But I’m hearing crickets in the background too. And just listen for a second, listen to how many different sounds you can hear.” That’s Allison Beall of the Marshlands Conservancy, a wildlife sanctuary in Rye, New York. She led a twilight walk through the preserve on September 5th. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Are Algae Mass Murderers? Algae seem harmless enough. These precursors to plants thrive throughout the world's waters. But these single-celled plants have global consequences. We can thank them for oxygen in the atmosphere, oil in the lithosphere as well as dead zones in the oceans and now even a dead horse in France . That's right. The fumes from decomposing algae on a French beach killed a horse and rendered its rider unconscious this past summer. And poisonous tides caused by algal blooms make eating shellfish dicey at times as well as causing mass die-offs of fish, birds and even sea-going mammals. Plus, according to a new theory, that might just be a small taste of the plants' killing ability. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Dog Days: Don't forget Punxsutawney Phil's endangered cousins Now that you know we're getting six more weeks of winter , why not snuggle up in front of the computer to ponder the fates of the groundhog's less fortunate cousins. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Green Tech Wilting Under Patent Office Scrutiny It's been a slow start for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's (USPTO) pilot program to fast-track the evaluation of patent applications for so-called green technology , with the agency approving about one third of the requests it has received. Only 316 of the 925 applications filed under the agency's Green Technology Pilot Program launched in December have qualified to jump to the front of the patent-examination line. This has led to mixed reviews from tech companies and even the patent office itself. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Life Is Tough, Especially for Microbes The list of ways for life to make a living keeps getting longer. There are the obvious: like turning light into chemical energy like plants do. Or eating plants like many animals do.Then there are more specialist methods: for example, pairing the hydrogen produced by radioactive decay with sulfate formed by geological processes to grow a mile and a half beneath the planet's surface . [More] Times Roman - Typeface - Color - Fonts - Sans-serif rss.sciam.com |