Latest Articles
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Scientists drill into ancient buried lake
Russian scientists have confirmed that they successfully drilled into Lake Vostok, a subglacial lake that has spent the last several million years isolated from Earth’s surface by a thick slab of ice. And I mean THICK — drilling down to the lake has taken 20 years of work. But the team has finally hit water, […]
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Sugar low: Do sweeteners need to be regulated?
A much-debated op-ed article in the journal Nature argues that sugar regulation should be the focus of wide-scale policy measures.
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Rick Santorum is literally the worst
Santorum swamped Romney (sorry) at two caucuses and a nonbinding primary yesterday, suggesting that his candidacy is a less funny joke than previously thought. Well whatever, they’ve clearly been playing King of the Mountain all campaign season, knocking each other off the top of the dung heap — at this point, do we care which […]
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A challenge to chefs: Make me a delicious vegetarian entree — or stop claiming to care about sustainability
Chefs these days like to talk big about sustainable food, but they forget one of the key tenets of eco-friendly eating: cut back on the meat.
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In France, cyclists can run red lights legally
Sometimes France is so fricking enlightened it hurts. Lawmakers recently decided to allow “cyclists in some cities to disregard red lights at certain intersections,” Treehugger writes. Paris will be testing the idea at 15 intersections, and Bordeaux, Strasbourg, and Nantes have been running the same experiment for a while. If the pilot goes well, 1,700 […]
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The Prius C: Not a swan, but a damn fine duck
Meet the newest addition to the Prius family, and find out how well it performs.
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Watch President Obama shoot a marshmallow cannon
Sometimes, even when there’s a Democratic president, I worry about science policy — whether there will be sufficient funding for research and education, whether the administration is soliciting and heeding feedback from scientists on subjects like climate, that sort of thing. And then I see the genuine delight on President Obama’s face as he helps […]
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World’s most environmentally outspoken president forced to resign at gunpoint
Mohamed Nasheed, president of the climate change-threatened Maldives, was forced to step down from office -- at gunpoint.
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Help name this baby polar bear
The Toronto Zoo is having a contest to name its new baby polar bear. Here are my entries, based on my initial responses to seeing the above photo (from the zoo’s Facebook page):
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The oldest living thing on Earth is 6,000 tons of grass
Meet Posidonia oceanic, a type of Mediterranean seagrass that is also the longest-lived thing on Earth. What’s its secret? The usual — clean living, plenty of exercise, asexual reproduction, being 6,000 tons of grass, and not getting flattened by climate change … YET.