Environment

Foliage of the future: How Harvard’s new tech aims to prevent a global food shortage

Biology, Environment / /

What if humans created a leaf better at utilizing sunlight than plants? And what if that leaf was engineered with such efficiency that it could feed the future world? Researchers at Harvard University have created and improved their “bionic leaf” to do just that and are now ready to bring this new technology into the […]

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War! What is it good for? Destroying the environment

Environment, World / /

Fields once green and lush, pockmarked and rife with forgotten land mines. Two cities, hundreds of thousands of lives, gone in an instant. Shrapnel in trees, poisoned air, scorched earth. These are the devastating effects of war. Like carbon emissions, oil spills, and deforestation, most of the environmental disasters we face today are man-made. War

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How climate change will change chocolate

Environment / /

A world without chocolate seems impossible, with grocery stores stocking shelf after shelf of products ranging from bars to powder. However, if climate change continues at its current pace, a world without chocolate may become a reality. Even the smallest changes in climate can have serious consequences for the agricultural industry. As global temperatures increase,

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The Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction: Does anything seem familiar here?

Environment / /

Approximately 252 million years ago, the Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction was the deadliest event to ever take place in Earth’s 4.5 billion-year history. Over the course of 15 million years, the “Great Dying” wiped out nearly 70 percent of terrestrial plant and animal species and over 95 percent of marine species. It consisted of three phases

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Dropping like flies: Human threats to insects and the desperate need for more data

Biology, Environment / /

But, like so many other animals, these six-legged, exoskeleton-clad creatures are facing a crisis at the hands of human activity. Our planet is teeming with bugs. Over 1 million insect species are described, and scientists estimate that another four to 7.5 million have yet to be classified. Insects account for a large proportion of animals

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Climate confusion: Inconsistencies in greenhouse gas monitoring

Environment / /

Numerous research institutions have taken the initiative to document the concentrations, distributions, and rates at which greenhouse gases are emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere. The accumulation of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides, methane, and fluorinated gases from fossil fuel burning, industrial processes, and the agricultural industry poses a major threat to the already-depleting ozone layer. This

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The great unconformity: The billion-year gap in Earth’s geological history

Environment / /

In many ways, planet Earth is very much like a toxic relationship. It is beautiful in some moments, has destructive episodes via natural disasters, and is very secretive. Geologists have long been pondering a particular secret that the Earth has kept from us known as the Great Unconformity— a billion years missing from geological records.

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