Science

The plains-wanderer is a small, critically-endangered bird with a tawny marking on its chest that can only be found in south-eastern Australia’s arid grasslands. It is estimated that only 250 to 1,000 of these speckled birds are left in the wild, according to Bush Heritage Australia. The plains-wanderer is at risk of impending extinction and […]

The extreme rainfall that flooded one third of Pakistan this summer, killed nearly 1,500 people, devoured 1.7 million homes and impacted more than 33 million people was most likely made worse by the climate crisis.  That’s the conclusion of World Weather Attribution, a group of scientists who use peer-reviewed methods to analyze whether or not […]

Bees are better for strawberries. About ten to fifteen percent of flowering plants are mostly self-pollinating, and strawberries are one of them. However, when the plump and delicious berries are pollinated by bees, they are not only redder and heavier, they also have a more pleasing ratio of sugar to acid and a longer shelf […]

By David Shiffman One of the most fascinating challenges of endangered species management is the concept of shifting baselines — the idea that how much worse a problem has gotten, and what your recovery goal should be, depends on when you start measuring the problem. In many cases we need scientific data on the population […]

There are two types of whale: baleen — who have plates of a keratinous substance that sieve their prey from the sea; and toothed — who have teeth and hunt squid, fish and other sea creatures. The sperm whale is the largest species of toothed whale and can be found in all of Earth’s oceans, […]

While more than 70 percent of deforestation worldwide is linked to agriculture, this isn’t the only threat faced by the world’s tropical forests. Another threat is industrial mining, and this could grow in significance as demand for rare-earth minerals rises due to the clean energy transition.  That’s why a team of researchers published the first-ever […]

A new study finds how nanoplastics journey up the food chain, from being absorbed from the soil by lettuce, moving to insects, and eventually winding up in fish. The authors note this could pose potential health risks if this process is replicated with other crops and organisms. There’s been growing concern about the presence of […]

A new startup in Israel called BioBetter wants to use tobacco crops to make cultivated meats less expensive. The company plans to use tobacco plants as plant-based growth factors (GFs) required in cellular agriculture, which produces cultivated meat. Cultivated meat is made from animal cells arranged in similar structures as animal tissues to produce real […]