Tag: research
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Climate Change Causing Salamanders to Shrink, Leaving Them Vulnerable to Predators and Extinction
Wild salamanders living in some of North America’s best salamander habitat are getting smaller as their surroundings get warmer and drier, forcing them to burn more energy in a changing climate. [caption id="attachment_327994" align="alignnone" width="504"] This Northern gray-cheeked salamander, Plethodon montanus, is one of the Appalachian salamander species that has gotten significantly smaller in recent…
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Koch Brothers Are Largest Lease Holders in Alberta Tar Sands
The largest lease holder in Canada’s oil sands is a subsidiary of Koch Industries, the conglomerate that is the source of the fortune owned by the controversial conservative political donors, Charles and David Koch. [caption id="attachment_327488" align="alignnone" width="500"] The Alberta, Canada, tar sands operations. Photo credit: Occupy.com[/caption] The Koch’s holdings in the tar sands were disclosed…
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Plants of the Colorado Rockies Show Impact of Climate Change
For almost 40 years, field scientists strapped on cross-country skis, shouldered backpacks with supplies and set out over three miles of snow and rocks to a field station near a meadow high in the Rocky Mountains as soon as the snow began melting. Every other day, they counted each flower they found, identified the plant…
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Study Finds Greenland Glaciers Losing 10 Billion Tons of Ice Per Year
The glaciers of northeast Greenland, long thought to be the most stable part of the massive Greenland ice sheet, are melting at an accelerating pace, losing roughly 10 billion tons of ice annually for the past decade, say researchers from the U.S. and Denmark. [caption id="attachment_326643" align="alignnone" width="400"] This map shows major ice drainages in Greenland, along…
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Stanford University Scientists Produce Electricity From Sewage
Scientists at Stanford University produced a battery that generates electricity from an unlikely resource—sewage. Their microbial battery won’t be powering neighborhoods, but they believe it could aid the power used to treat wastewater, which accounts for about 3 percent of energy in developed nations like the U.S. The researchers hope the prototype, which is about the size…