Grist List
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Global warming affects penguins’ sex lives
Nobody likes to be rushed during sex, but climate change is forcing some penguin species to reschedule business time. Wednesday night is no longer the night for love! Now you do it on Monday OR YOU DIE OUT.
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Farmers to use spider venom to protect crops
Farmers and bugs typically have a hate-hate relationship. Insects eat up valuable wheat, barley, and soybeans, and farmers slay them dead using an arsenal of chemical weapons (a.k.a. pesticides). But no longer. Australian growers may soon form an alliance with their new best buggy friends: spiders. Researchers at the University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular […]
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Critical List: Obama to expedite portion of Keystone XL; World Water Day
It’s World Water Day: How much do you use? (The average American household uses 350 gallons. I KNOW.) Obama is set to expedite the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline. The Supreme Court decided that the couple who wants to fight the EPA over whether their property counts as a wetland can go ahead […]
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Plane commutes on the rise
An increasing number of people are commuting to New York jobs from hundreds of miles away or even the other side of the country, according to WNYC’s Transportation Nation. There are about 4,000 regular plane commuters, accounting for more than 1,000 tons of carbon every week. Has nobody told these people about the internet?
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A science experiment run by gnomes
A company that makes scales for scientific use has demonstrated slight variations in Earth’s gravitational pull at the surface, in what may the first science experiment to use garden gnomes as instrumentation.
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EPA: ‘This water is fine, apart from all the methane’
The Environmental Protection Agency said that Dimock, Pa., has safe drinking water in spite of fracking. But independent testing found dangerous levels of methane. What gives?
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Earth Day too committed for you? Celebrate Earth Hour instead
Thanks, global recession: Earth Day gets cut down to Earth Hour. Or is this that thing where everyone turns their lights out?
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Robot jellyfish will use water for fuel, spy on you
A team working out of Virginia Tech and the University of Texas at Dallas is building a robotic jellyfish that mimics the real thing. Here it is in action: The robot gets its power from hydrogen and oxygenate, which reacts with platinum to create heat, driving the jellyfish’s “muscles.” One day, the jellyfish won’t even […]
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Behold H&M’s new green collection
H&M’s business model — selling cheap clothes that either disintegrate or fall out of fashion quickly — doesn’t exactly fit into the “buy less stuff” model of sustainability. But they’re still trying to sell eco-consciousness, in the form of “bonded recycled polyester,” which usually serves as jacket lining, apparently. This one’s probably the cutest of […]
