TOP 100 CAMPING SITES
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| Afghanistan names its first endangered species For the first time, the government of Afghanistan has banned the hunting, harvesting or trading of 33 species, including the increasingly rare snow leopard (Panthera uncia), the paghman salamander (Paradactylodon mustersi), goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa), and Himalayan elm tree (Ulmus wallichiana). "This is the first law within the current government that protects wildlife," says Peter Zahler, Assistant Director for Asia Programs for the Bronx-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which helped to create the list. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Bamboo Boom: Is This Material for You? Daniel Smith remembers when he first tried to sell a bamboo floor. The San Francisco entrepreneur thought his woodlike product was attractive and durable, but when he took samples to a Dallas trade show in 1994, the reaction wasn’t quite what he had hoped for. No one believed the plant’s round stalks--then most familiar in the U.S. as the stuff of backyard torches--could be turned into a smooth, lasting floor.“One architect said to me, ‘I appreciate that you’re at the cutting edge of design and development, but I don’t want to be cut by that edge,” Smith says. [More] rss.sciam.com |
The population of a unique Mexican amphibian drops 90 percent in four years Urban growth is quickly driving one of the world's most bizarre creatures into extinction. According to a new study, the axolotl ( Ambystoma mexicanum ), a Mexican amphibian that never metamorphoses past its larval stage, has seen a 90 percent population drop in the last four years. Only an estimated 700 to 1,200 axolotls now remain. The species was already listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Don't Let the Bedbugs Bite: Pest Management Proves More Effective than Pesticides In a large apartment building, it’s impossible to avoid the neighbors. You can hear the Bruce Springsteen that the tenant in 7B cranks while vacuuming, the kids in 8A directly above tromping around, and if someone decides to paint, the fumes reach everyone on the floor. So when a building supervisor notified owners in a sixty-unit co-op building in Brooklyn that one of the apartments had a bedbug infestation, Eddie Rosenthal feared that it was only a matter of time until the bugs spread to his home. [More] rss.sciam.com |
U.S. Supreme Court turns down Michigan's request to block Asian carp invasion of Great Lakes The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday said it would not help stop the spread of invasive Asian carp by ordering the closure of locks between Chicago-area waterways and Lake Michigan. A suit from Michigan and four other states, plus Ontario, had requested closing the locks to block Asian carp from entering Lake Michigan and damaging its ecosystem, as they have done elsewhere in the country. [More] rss.sciam.com |