One of Africa’s last remaining wilderness areas is in good shape and could potentially support 50,000 elephants and 1000 lions, a University of Queensland-led study has found.

Active components on buildings such as blinds whose design was copied from naturally occurring solutions — that is the subject of the research conducted by a team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the University of Freiburg, and the University of Stuttgart. The aim is to equip them with drive elements that can move without any electrical energy input. Serving as a model here are conifer pine cones, which utilize the varying swelling behaviors of their tissue to open when moist or close when dry.

It’s no secret that human activities affect fish, particularly those that must migrate to reproduce. Years of building dams and polluting rivers in some regions have left fish such as salmon struggling to return to their home streams and give birth to the next generation.

High in the snowfields atop the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, things are not as pristine as they used to be. Dust from the desert Southwest is sailing into the Rockies in increasing quantities and settling onto the snow that covers the peaks, often streaking the white surface with shades of red and brown.

Studies on mild fluctuations in weather have provided support for the idea that higher biodiversity results in more stable functioning of ecosystems, but critical appraisal of the evidence from extreme event studies is lacking.

A new study from UBC’s Okanagan campus has found that BMAA—a toxin linked to several neurodegenerative diseases—is present in high concentrations during cyanobacteria blooms in Lake Winnipeg.

At Thanksgiving, many Americans look forward to eating roast turkey, pumpkin pie, and tangy red cranberries. To feed that appetite, cranberry farming is big business. In Massachusetts, cranberries are the most valuable food crop. The commonwealth’s growers provide one-fourth of the U.S. cranberry supply.

Environmental satellites are a forecaster’s best friend. Orbiting high above the planet, these “eyes in the sky” watch for extreme weather and climate conditions that threaten lives and property.

Scientists have found lingering radioactivity in the lagoons of remote Marshall Island atolls in the Pacific Ocean where the United States conducted 66 nuclear weapons tests in the 1940s and 1950s.

 

New research by McGill University biologists shows that milder winters have led to physical alterations in two species of mice in southern Quebec in the past 50 years – providing a textbook example of the consequences of climate change for small mammals.