Tag: environment
Ocean Preserves Keep Fishing Boats Away from Grey Reef Sharks – Smithsonian

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Scientists tracked hundreds of reef sharks in the Pacific Ocean and used machine learning to find that massive marine refuges can work—if they’re the right size.
Global Warming Is Changing How the Ocean Carries Sound – Hakai

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Scientists are using an underwater drone to study a mysterious new sound channel in the Beaufort Sea.
Bees die needlessly as Zika prompts US state to spray pesticide – New Scientist
How Living Inside Biosphere 2 Changed These Scientists’ Lives – Mental Floss
Artificial dome world set for largest indoor weather experiment

Landscape Evolution Observatory
This summer Biosphere 2, the glassed-in ecosystem in the Arizona desert, will go with the flow. The largest-ever experiment to study how water moves through the landscape is set to start there next month.
“Chemical weathering is the first thing you need in order to form a habitable planet,” says Jean Dixon, a geomorphologist at Montana State University in Bozeman. But the process is still not well understood.
The Vulturepocalpyse Is Coming, and It’s Bad News

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Vultures are in trouble. Worldwide, 73 percent of vulture species are endangered or near threatened with extinction; only six of 22 species aren’t threatened. The problem is particularly bad in Africa and on the Indian subcontinent, where the birds are mostly killed by poisons and a veterinary anti-inflammatory drug used on livestock, finds a new study in the journal Biological Conservation by Evan Buechley and Çağan Şekercioğlu of the University of Utah.
The prospect of losing the unattractive, bald-headed carrion-eaters may not seem alarming for humans, but it is.
Mighty Solar Power Rangers

Solar panels at MIT.
Solar project shows way forward for MIT as lab for sustainability innovation
MIT professor Tonio Buonassisi has seen a lot of students tackle project-based learning, and it’s almost always intimidating. “It is kind of that moment of courage for them, when they’re at the edge of the pool looking into the water, trying to decide whether they jump in or not,” he says. “This group was in the water before I even said go.”
Read the full article at the MIT Office of Sustainability.