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  Paris (AFP) June 11, 2018 Dozens of French farmers blocked access to 13 refineries across the country on Monday to protest plans to import palm oil for use in biofuels, a move they denounce as unfair competition which jeopardises their livelihood. Energy giant Total wants to import up to 300,000 tons a year of palm oil, which environmental advocates say has caused massive deforestation chiefly in southeast Asia. French rapeseed and sunflower growers, who say they will lose out due to Total's imports, accuse foreign palm ... read more |
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Dogs can detect agricultural diseases earlyWashington DC (SPX) Jun 11, 2018 A study out of Florida International University evaluates the use of scent-discriminating canines for the detection of laurel wilt-affected wood from avocado trees. Julian Mendel, Kenneth G. Furton, ... more  
The Cambodian village on stiltsSiem Reap, Cambodia (AFP) June 5, 2018 Each monsoon the soaring stilts that hold up the houses of Kampong Phluk prove their worth, as the dusty Cambodian village is transformed into a deep waterway. ... more 
On the origins of agriculture, researchers uncover new cluesFort Collins CP (SPX) Jun 11, 2018 The invention of agriculture changed humans and the environment forever, and over several thousand years, the practice originated independently in a least a dozen different places. But why did agric ... more 
Five things to know about the Bayer-Monsanto megadealFrankfurt Am Main (AFP) June 7, 2018 Bayer may have finally completed its hard-fought takeover of US seeds and pesticide maker Monsanto, but that is unlikely to silence critics who have dubbed the tie-up a "marriage made in hell". ... more |
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Philippines president says corruption scandal protests justified
Philippines commission to probe widening flood project scandal Magnitude 7.4 quake strikes off Russian Far East, tsunami warning lifted Magnitude 7.4 quake strikes off Russian Far East, tsunami warning issued S.Sudan flooding displaces 100,000 in matter of weeks: UN Afghan deputy PM visits earthquake hit area Death toll from Indonesia flooding rises to 23 Death toll from Indonesia flash floods rises to 19 Deadly floods inundate Indonesia's Bali and Flores islands Surveillance camera captures tornado in eastern Australia |
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| Previous Issues | Jun 11 | Jun 10 | Jun 08 | Jun 07 | Jun 06 |
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Study suggests scientists can use microbial measurements to gauge river flowCorvallis OR (SPX) Jun 05, 2018 Oregon State University scientists have created a tool that can predict the flow rate of Arctic rivers with a surprising degree of accuracy based on the makeup and abundance of bacteria in the water ... more
Bayer to ditch Monsanto name after mega-mergerFrankfurt Am Main (AFP) June 4, 2018 German chemicals and pharmaceuticals giant Bayer on Monday said it will discard the name Monsanto when it takes over the controversial US seeds and pesticides producer this week, as environmental groups kept up their criticism of the mega-merger. ... more 
Scientists boost crop production by 47 percent by speeding up photorespirationUrbana IL (SPX) Jun 05, 2018 Plants such as soybeans and wheat waste between 20 and 50 percent of their energy recycling toxic chemicals created when the enzyme Rubisco - the most prevalent enzyme in the world - grabs oxygen mo ... more 
Alibaba shows off automated wine store in Hong KongHong Kong (AFP) May 29, 2018 With no shop workers or cash tills and payments made using facial recognition, China's largest e-commerce platform Alibaba created a fully automated wine store at Hong Kong's Vinexpo fair Tuesday. ... more 
EU top court fines Italy over failure to treat sewageLuxembourg (AFP) May 31, 2018 The European Union's top court on Thursday fined crisis-ridden Italy 25 million euros for years of failure to treat urban sewage, warning of steeper fines with more delays. ... more |
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 Food security in Cambodia faces threat due to hydropower 
Hail storms batter French champagne makersReims, France (AFP) May 30, 2018 French champagne producers are counting their losses after a battering by a wave of hail storms that wiped out 1,000 hectares of grapes, the main growers' association said Wednesday. ... more  |
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Making sense of the water supply situation in Cape TownCape Town, South Africa (SPX) May 30, 2018 Cape Town has come dangerously close to running out of water after 3 years of persistent drought. Tight water usage restrictions have been successful in stalling 'day zero' - when the city's t ... more 
Radish cover crop traps nitrogen; mystery followsWashington DC (SPX) May 31, 2018 When you think of a radish, you may think of the small, round, crunchy, red-and-white vegetable that is sliced into salads. You might be surprised to learn that a larger, longer form of this root ve ... more 
Italy's oldest olive oil discovered in peculiar potCastelluccio, Italy (SPX) May 31, 2018 Olive oil is a staple of Italian cuisine. It's been that way for thousands of years. And new chemical analysis conducted on ancient pottery proves the liquid gold has existed in Italy hundreds of ye ... more 
Sugarcane pest produces foam to protect itself from heatSao Paulo, Brazil (SPX) May 31, 2018 Tiny balls of froth can often be seen near the roots of plants in sugarcane plantations in Brazil during summer. The foam protects nymphs of the root spittlebug Mahanarva fimbriolata, a major pest o ... more 
Water is not the same as waterBasel, Switzerland (SPX) May 30, 2018 Water molecules exist in two different forms with almost identical physical properties. For the first time, researchers have succeeded in separating the two forms to show that they can exhibit diffe ... more |
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 Washington DC (SPX) Jun 11, 2018 
To mark World Ocean Day, Global Fishing Watch (GFW) has increased ocean transparency by releasing the first-ever 'live' global view of likely transshipping at sea - a practice that can mask illegal fishing activity, and imagery of night-time fishing and its location, exposing vessels often hidden from other monitoring systems.
Data released on GFW's map reveals in near real-time the locati ... more |
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 Prague (AFP) June 10, 2018 
A young woman drowned and a man is missing after they were caught inside Prague's drain system by torrential rains while participating in a global GPS-based treasure hunt, police said Sunday.
They were among a group of four people "geocaching" - using their smartphone's GPS to search for little treasures hidden all over the world - when the rapidly rising water from the storm trapped them ... more |
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 Paris (AFP) June 11, 2018 
Some of Africa's oldest and biggest baobab trees - a few dating all the way back to the ancient Greeks - have abruptly died, wholly or in part, in the past decade, researchers said Monday.
The trees, aged between 1,100 and 2,500 years and some as wide as a bus is long, may have fallen victim to climate change, the team speculated.
"We report that nine of the 13 oldest... individuals ha ... more |
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 Washington DC (SPX) Jun 11, 2018 
Someday, the gasoline you buy might trace its heritage to carbon dioxide pulled straight out of the sky rather than from oil pumped out of the ground. By removing emitted carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turning it into fresh fuels, engineers at a Canadian firm have demonstrated a scalable and cost-effective way to make deep cuts in the carbon footprint of transportation with minimal disru ... more |
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 Montreal, Canada (SPX) Jun 07, 2018 
Will you ever be able to charge your mobile device, car and even clothing with flexible solar cells? Researchers at Aalto University in Finland and Universite de Montreal are studying whether the now-experimental technology could someday be mass-produced and commercialized, and some of the issues that have to be resolved, including the environmental impact.
For the electronic cells to be v ... more |
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 Tallinn (AFP) June 1, 2018 
A state-owned Estonian wind farm launched a cryptocurrency mine on Friday, hoping to cash-in on Mother Nature's unlimited supplies of power on a windswept Baltic Sea island, a company official said.
Mining virtual currencies, like bitcoin, ethereum or ripple, requires powerful computers that are voracious users of electricity, making it uneconomical to mine without a cheap source of energy l ... more |
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 Beijing (AFP) June 6, 2018 
Rescuers pulled 23 workers out of a mine in northeast China on Wednesday, hours after they were trapped underground by an explosion that killed 11 and left two others missing, state media reported.
Nine other workers were injured in Tuesday's blast at the iron ore mine owned by Huamei Group, a subsidiary of China National Coal Group Co, in Benxi, Liaoning province.
The blast took place w ... more |
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 Hong Kong (AFP) June 11, 2018  Hong Kong's leading independence activist was jailed for six years Monday for his involvement in some of the city's worst protest violence for decades.
Edward Leung was convicted in May of rioting during the 2016 running battles with police, when demonstrators hurled bricks torn up from pavements and set rubbish alight in the commercial district of Mong Kok.
Handing down his jail term, J ... more |
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 Hong Kong (SPX) Jun 11, 2018 
To develop micro- and biomimetic-robots, artificial muscles and medical devices, actuating materials that can reversibly change their volume under various stimuli are researched in the past thirty years to replace traditional bulky and heavy actuators including motors and pneumatic actuators.
A mechanical engineering team led by Professor Alfonso Ngan Hing-wan, Chair Professor in Materials ... more |
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 Tokyo (AFP) June 5, 2018  At a recycling plant outside Tokyo, workers in face masks pick through an unending torrent of plastic rubbish, fuelled by a national obsession with pristine packaging - and famously strict rules that ensure much of it is reclaimed and reused.
Some 10 tonnes of recyclable plastics are brought in every day to be processed at the Ichikawa Kankyo Engineering centre, where workers hover over con ... more |
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 Portland OR (SPX) Jun 04, 2018 
Fires ignited by lightning have and will likely continue to increase across the Mediterranean and temperate regions in the Southern Hemisphere under a warmer climate, according to a new study co-led by a Portland State University researcher.
The study, published online in May in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, examined the observed and forecasted relationship between lightning-ig ... more |
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 Berkeley CA (SPX) Jun 11, 2018 
Last October, a University of California, Berkeley, team headed down to the Arizona desert, plopped their newest prototype water harvester into the backyard of a tract home and started sucking water out of the air without any power other than sunlight.
The successful field test of their larger, next-generation harvester proved what the team had predicted earlier in 2017: that the water har ... more |
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 Dhaka (AFP) June 11, 2018 
A landslide triggered by heavy rain killed a three-year-old Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh, police said Monday, the first casualty of the monsoon as wild storms wreak havoc in the crowded camps.
The young child was crushed in his sleep early Monday when a mud wall collapsed onto his family's shanty in Kutupalong refugee settlement, local police chief Abdul Khaer told AFP.
"It was trigger ... more |
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 Tokyo (AFP) June 11, 2018 
Malaysia's newly-elected prime minister called Monday for the Trans-Pacific Partnership to be "renegotiated," and urged protection for small countries in international trade.
Malaysia, along with 10 other countries, pushed ahead with the TPP in March despite Donald Trump having yanked the United States out of the huge multilateral trade deal.
But Mahathir Mohamad told a gathering in Toky ... more |
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 La Laguna, Spain (SPX) Jun 08, 2018 
When we look at the surface of the Sun the solar prominences are seen as dark filaments that populate the disk or as a blaze of plasma above it. Solar prominences are very dense plasma structures that levitate in the solar atmosphere.
It is generally believed that the star's magnetic field supports them so that they do not fall on the surface due to their own weight. These magnetic structu ... more |
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 Washington DC (SPX) Jun 06, 2018 
Starlings with aromatic herbs in their nest exhibit improved parenting behaviors, according to a new study by researchers at North Carolina State University.
For the study, scientists swapped out 36 natural starling nests for artificial nests. Half of the nests featured dry grasses and a combination of aromatic herbs, including milfoil, hogweed, cow parsley, black elder, goutweed and wi ... more |
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