TOP 100 CAMPING SITES
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Flame Off!: Turning Natural Gas Pollution into Gasoline As if burning oil and all of its derivatives wasn't bad enough for the environment, there's also the natural gas that bubbles up as the oil is pumped out. This byproduct cannot be easily harvested in many cases--some oil fields are far from pipelines that can transport it and other options are very expensive. As a result, oil companies either release it into the atmosphere--a process known as venting--or burn it in a flare. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Go Ahead, Play With (and on) the Art With a city park installation, an artist blurs distinctions between sculpture and environment. nytimes.com |
The Future of Farming [Below is the original script. But a few changes may have been made during the recording of this audio podcast.]We may be running out of dirt. The intensive farming of recorded history, accelerated by the last several decades of industrial agriculture, now strips the soil of some 20 tons of dark, rich organic matter per hectare per year. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Southern California fire threatens historic Mount Wilson Observatory The so-called Station Fire, which now covers more than 120,000 southern California acres and is burning largely uncontained, continues to threaten the century-old Mount Wilson Observatory, home to astronomer Edwin Hubble at the time he made his landmark observations of the universe's expansion. The observatory is currently unmanned due to the fire threat and the attending smoke, but a webcam atop Mount Wilson's 150-foot solar tower has provided observatory managers and concerned observers with a view from the scene. At 12:55 P.M. (Eastern Daylight Time) the camera showed a great deal of smoke but no flames. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Pollution's Toll on the Brain In these days of hybrid cars and carbon credits, it is common knowledge that substances exhaled by autos and coal plants are harmful to our respiratory system. What may be surprising is the degree to which they may harm the brain--in some instances, as much as exposure to lead. A recent string of studies from all over the world suggests that common air pollutants such as black carbon, particulate matter and ozone can negatively affect vocabulary, reaction times and even overall intelligence.The most recent of these studies found that New York City five-year-olds who were exposed to higher levels of urban air pollutants known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) while in the womb exhibited an IQ four points lower than those subjected to less PAH. Alarmingly, “the drop was similar to that seen in exposure to low levels of lead,” says epidemiologist Frederica Perera, director of the Columbia Center for Children’s Environ­mental Health and head author of the study, in which mothers wore personal air monitors during their pregnancy. The IQ change was enough of a dip to affect school per­formance and scores on standardized tests. [More] rss.sciam.com |