Conservation

There is a subset of people in the environmental conservation movement who hate their fellow man - they like nature but don't think anyone outside of their companies should enjoy it, they should just pay companies to raise money for advocacy.

'Blue haze' is a natural occurrence over heavily forested areas around the world but natural does not always mean good.  Still, while blue haze may be formed by natural emissions of chemicals, human activities can worsen it to the point of affecting the world's weather and even cause potential climate problems, according to a new study.

When you walk through a forest or even a large grassy area, it's not uncommon to be able to smell the plants around you, such as pine trees or other vegetation. That smell is nature's way of naturally making organic gases produced by the plants themselves, often millions of tons per day.

Reduviasporonites were tiny organisms that covered the planet more than 250 million years ago.  According to new research in Geology, they appear to be a species of ancient fungus that thrived in dead wood and the researchers believe that the organisms were able to thrive during this period because the world's forests had been wiped out.

Researchers had previously been unsure as to whether Reduviasporonites were a type of fungus or algae but by analyzing the carbon and nitrogen content of the fossilised remains of the microscopic organisms, the scientists identified them as a type of wood-rotting fungus that would have lived inside dead trees. 

I love it! As soon as I start whining about how humans are always exploiting resources without checking first for sustainability, along comes a story to prove me wrong.

The Giant Pacific Octopus or GPO, who lives throughout the Pacific Northwest (if terrestrial terms) or Northeast (in oceanic terms), has never been the target of a federally managed commercial fishery. But occasionally people murmur about it, and some clever folks have decided that we'd better know a bit more about octopus biology before such a fishery (octopussery?) comes on the scene.

Bad news has come for Illex argentinus, a cousin of my own dear Dosidicus gigas (they're both in the squid family Ommastrephidae). As the scientific name suggests, I. argentinus is found and fished off the coast of Argentina--and the 2009 season has ended with the national catch in precipitous decline from years past.

British start-up Novacem has developed a "carbon-negative" cement, meaning it absorbs more carbon dioxide over its life cycle than it emits.

Cement is a big ol' polluter - with an annual production of more than 2.5 billion tons, Reuters says, conventional "Portland" cement is responsible for an estimated 5 percent of global CO2
emissions, more than the airline industry.

The number of large-diameter trees that Yosemite National Park is famous far are on the decline, and warmer temperatures appear to be the culprit.

Their number have declined 24 percent in the park between the 1930s and 1990s. Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey and University of Washington compared the earliest records of large-diameter trees densities from 1932 to the most recent records from 1988.

The number of large-diameter trees that Yosemite National Park is famous far are on the decline, and warmer temperatures appear to be the culprit.

Their number have declined 24 percent in the park between the 1930s and 1990s. Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey and University of Washington compared the earliest records of large-diameter trees densities from 1932 to the most recent records from 1988.

Medieval Alphabet Book Stays In Britain

A unique alphabet book, offering a selection of spectacular and bizarre fonts to the luxury medieval manuscript illuminator stuck for inspiration, has been bought by the British Library after a £600,000 appeal.

The importance of the small manuscript, dating from 1500 but concealed within an 18th-century binding, had been missed for the centuries as it sat unrecognised in the Earl of Macclesfield's library.

Source: Guardian.co.uk