Imagine that instead of switching on a lamp when it gets dark, you could read by the light of a glowing plant on your desk. MIT engineers have taken a critical first step toward making that vision a reality. By embedding specialized nanoparticles into the leaves of a watercress plant, they induced the plants to […]
A GHOST IN THE MAKING: RUSTY-PATCHED BUMBLE BEE DOCUMENTARY
Everyone has heard about bee declines, but with so much attention focused on domesticated honeybees, someone has to speak up for the 4,000 species of native bees in North America. Natural history photographer Clay Bolt is on a multi-year quest to tell the stories of our native bees, and one elusive species – the Rusty-patched […]
GLYPHOSATE ENVIRONMENTAL EXPOSURE STUDY
Your intake of glyphosate is happening through the food you eat, the water you drink and the places where you live and play. Some sources deliver higher amounts than others – for example, non-organic oats sprayed with glyphosate before harvest, and foods made with genetically modified soybeans. Other sources are not so clear, so we […]
Red Squirrels In The British Isles Are Infected With Leprosy Bacteria
Microbiologists at EPFL and the University of Edinburgh have discovered that red squirrels in Britain and Ireland carry the two bacterial species that cause leprosy in humans. Once rampant in medieval Europe, leprosy dramatically declined by the end of the Middle Ages for reasons that are still unclear. About a century ago, leprosy in Europe […]
Monsanto’s Glyphosate Most Heavily Used Weed-Killer In History
Monsanto’s signature herbicide glyphosate, first marketed as “Roundup,” is now the most widely and heavily applied weed-killer in the history of chemical agriculture in both the U.S. and globally, according to a landmark report published today. The paper, published Feb. 2, 2016 in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Sciences Europe, reports that to date 18.9 billion […]
Edible Food Packaging Made From Milk Proteins
At the grocery store, most foods — meats, breads, cheeses, snacks — come wrapped in plastic packaging. Not only does this create a lot of non-recyclable, non-biodegradable waste, but thin plastic films are not great at preventing spoilage. And some plastics are suspected of leaching potentially harmful compounds into food. To address these issues, scientists […]
BioBag® Compostable Bags For The Purpose Of Composting Organic Waste
BioBag® is a world leader in providing bags and films for the collection of organic waste for the purpose of composting. Unlike regular plastic, BioBags can be consumed by micro-organisms that live in our soils. Because we use starches from renewable crops, our bags can be readily composted along with organic waste in municipal composting […]
18 Million Americans Get Water From Systems Tainted With Lead
More than 18 million Americans got their drinking water from systems with lead violations in 2015, according to a groundbreaking Natural Resources Defense Council report. The problem could be significantly more pervasive because many more water systems known to have such violations — including that in Flint, Michigan — do not even show up as […]
Harvesting Liberty: A Short Film About Growing Hemp In The USA
Harvesting Liberty is a short film that documents visionaries Michael Lewis (of Growing Warriors) and Rebecca Burgess (of Fibershed) as they collaborate to reintroduce industrial hemp to the American landscape. Growing Warriors is a Kentucky-based farming program designed to train, assist, and equip military veterans with the skills, tools and supplies needed to grow organic […]
Pesticides: More Toxic Than Previously Thought?
Insecticides that are sprayed in orchards and fields across North America may be more toxic to spiders than scientists previously believed. A McGill research team reached this conclusion after looking at changes in the behavior of individual Bronze Jumping Spiders both before and after exposure to Phosmet, a widely used broad spectrum insecticide. It is […]