articles

Two crops or one? Sometimes, growing two crops simultaneously on the same piece of land – called intercropping – can benefit farmers. But it needs careful planning and resource management.

The first astronomers had a limited toolkit: their eyes. They could only observe those stars, planets and celestial events bright enough to pick up unassisted. But today’s astronomers use increasingly sensitive and sophisticated instruments to view and track a bevy of cosmic wonders, including objects and events that were too dim or distant for their sky-gazing forebears.

The world’s hottest summers on record will be the new norm within 20 years due to human-influenced climate change, says the president of the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium at the University of Victoria.

Climatologist Francis Zwiers co-authored a study confirming that sweltering summers as gauged by a long-standing measurement of human heat tolerance have become at least 70 times more likely over the past four decades. By 2050, virtually every summer will be hotter than any experienced to date.

You may not find them in the produce aisle yet, but it’s only a matter of time before new disease-resistant apple cultivars overtake favorites like Honeycrisp in popularity, according to a University of Illinois apple expert.

Post-doctoral researcher Andrés Posso-Terranova and his former supervisor José Andrés have found evidence that a single gene called MC1R controls the deep black color on the skin of these poisonous frogs. The researchers have found that the disruption of the gene is responsible for the black blobs and stripes. Their results have been published this week in the international journal Evolution.