The Peculiar Story of the Witch of Wall Street
Walking the streets in black clothes and making obscene amounts of money, Hetty Green was one of the Gilded Age’s many characters
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Tag Archives: Smith’s
Students Allied Themselves With Robin Hood During This Anti-McCarthyism Movement
The students of the Green Feather Movement caused an on-campus controversy at Indiana University
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Students Allied Themselves With Robin Hood During This Anti-McCarthyism Movement
Our Nearest Neighbor Might Harbor Its Own Solar System
New data from Proxima Centauri shows it has a ring of cold dust—a sign that many planets may orbit the distant star
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Sea creatures may be eating all that plastic because it tastes delicious.
Poor dumb turtles and fish, always chomping on the ubiquitous plastic in the water by accident — or so the story went, until a handful of recent studies suggested sea creatures may actually be choosing to eat plastic.
In one of these experiments, researchers took single grains of sand and particles of microplastic — both around the same size and shape — and dropped them onto coral polyps. The tiny creatures responded to the plastic the same way they would to a tasty piece of food, stuffing the bits of trash into their mouths like so many Snickers Minis.
“Plastics may be inherently tasty,” Austin Allen, a study coauthor and marine science doctoral student at Duke University, told the Washington Post.
Coral polyps rely on chemical sensors — taste buds, essentially — to determine whether something is edible or not. And they were repeatedly chosing to swallow plastic during the study. Only once in 10 trials did a polyp make the same mistake with sand. In fact, the cleaner and fresher and more plastic-y the plastic was, the more readily the coral gulped it down.
While the long-term effects of the plastic-saturation of the planet are still unknown, this research suggests that accidentally tasty microplastics could pose an extra hazard to already beleaguered corals around the world.
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Sea creatures may be eating all that plastic because it tastes delicious.
The U.N. has good news and bad news about the Paris Agreement.
Poor dumb turtles and fish, always chomping on the ubiquitous plastic in the water by accident — or so the story went, until a handful of recent studies suggested sea creatures may actually be choosing to eat plastic.
In one of these experiments, researchers took single grains of sand and particles of microplastic — both around the same size and shape — and dropped them onto coral polyps. The tiny creatures responded to the plastic the same way they would to a tasty piece of food, stuffing the bits of trash into their mouths like so many Snickers Minis.
“Plastics may be inherently tasty,” Austin Allen, a study coauthor and marine science doctoral student at Duke University, told the Washington Post.
Coral polyps rely on chemical sensors — taste buds, essentially — to determine whether something is edible or not. And they were repeatedly chosing to swallow plastic during the study. Only once in 10 trials did a polyp make the same mistake with sand. In fact, the cleaner and fresher and more plastic-y the plastic was, the more readily the coral gulped it down.
While the long-term effects of the plastic-saturation of the planet are still unknown, this research suggests that accidentally tasty microplastics could pose an extra hazard to already beleaguered corals around the world.
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The U.N. has good news and bad news about the Paris Agreement.
Massive Green Squash Smashes Record for World’s Largest
Joe Jutras’ 2118-pound squash makes him the first person to earn the record for largest pumpkin, longest gourd and heaviest squash
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Damage From Hurricane Irma Can Be Seen From Space
Caribbean islands that were once lush and green now appear sickly and brown
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Why Everyone Went on a Wild Goose Chase Looking For The Planet Vulcan
The idea of a ninth planet in the Solar System would resolve a mathematical conundrum about Mercury–only problem is, it wasn’t there
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Why Everyone Went on a Wild Goose Chase Looking For The Planet Vulcan
A Book of Bees – Sue Hubbell
READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS
Genre: Nature
Price: $1.99
Publish Date: January 24, 2017
Publisher: Open Road Media
Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC
A New York Times Notable Book: “A melodious mix of memoir, nature journal, and beekeeping manual” ( Kirkus Reviews ). Weaving a vivid portrait of her own life and her bees’ lives, author Sue Hubbell lovingly describes the ins and outs of beekeeping on her small Missouri farm, where the end of one honey season is the start of the next. With three hundred hives, Hubbell stays busy year-round tending to the bees and harvesting their honey, a process that is as personally demanding as it is rewarding.   Exploring the progression of both the author and the hive through the seasons, this is “a book about bees to be sure, but it is also about other things: the important difference between loneliness and solitude; the seasonal rhythms inherent in rural living; the achievement of independence; the accommodating of oneself to nature” ( The Philadelphia Inquirer ). Beautifully written and full of exquisitely rendered details, it is a tribute to Hubbell’s wild hilltop in the Ozarks and of the joys of living a complex life in a simple place. “The real masterwork that Sue Hubbell has created is her life.” — The New York Times   “Beautifully written.” — The Philadelphia Inquirer   “A latter-day Henry Thoreau with a sense of the absurd.” — Chicago Sun-Times   “Engaging . . . Satisfying . . . Ms. Hubbell’s piquant style is as enticing as blackberry blossoms to her bees.” — Winston-Salem Journal Sue Hubbell is the author of eight books, including A Country Year and New York Times Notable Book A Book of Bees . She has written for the New Yorker , the St. Louis Post-Dispatch , Smithsonian , and Time , and was a frequent contributor to the “Hers” column of the New York Times . Hubbell lives in Maine and Washington, DC.
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Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, PUR, Smith's, Uncategorized
Tagged lai, maine, missouri, nature, philadelphia, Real, Smith's, times-notable, washington
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Irma has broken a mind-boggling number of records.
One would think that the demise of ticks and tapeworms would be cause for celebration (especially if your introduction to parasites was, as in my case, an encounter with zombie snails at a mercilessly young age).
But hold the party, say researchers. After studying 457 species of parasites in the Smithsonian Museum’s collection, mapping their global distribution, and applying a range of climate models and future scenarios, scientists predict that at least 5 to 10 percent of those critters would be extinct by 2070 due to climate change–induced habitat loss.
This extinction won’t do any favors to wildlife or humans. If a mass die-off were to occur, surviving parasites would likely invade new areas unpredictably — and that could greatly damage ecosystems. One researcher says parasites facilitate up to 80 percent of the food-web links in ecosystems, thus helping to sustain life (even if they’re also sucking it away).
What could save the parasites and our ecosystems? Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: “Reduce carbon emissions.”
If emissions go unchecked, parasites could lose 37 percent of their habitats. If we cut carbon quickly, they’d reduce by only 20 percent — meaning the terrifying (but helpful!) parasites creating zombie snails will stay where they are.
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Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Prepara, Smith's, The Atlantic, Uncategorized
Tagged anchor, broken-records, introduction, museum, Prepara, Smith's, smithsonian, studying, that-at-least, that-the-demise
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