Science & Technology
© landarchs.com
Back in the early '60's Jessica Mitford wrote a shocking book — The American Way of Death — that exposed how the funeral industry took advantage of the aggrieved with expensive and unnecessary burial practices. Now we are learning that this $15 billion-a-year business is also unsustainable — and highly destructive to the environment.
Consider this: the millions of gallons of toxic embalming fluid used to pretty up and "preserve" corpses eventually find their way into the ground, contaminating soil and water resources. And the iron, lead, copper, zinc, and cobalt used in caskets and vaults also contaminate the soil. Even cremation isn't nearly as clean as you might think. Crematories release by-products from embalming fluid, dental fillings, surgical devices, etc.
© inhabitat.com
Eco cemetery offers natural burials.
Eco cemetery offers natural burials.
Suzanne Kelly, PhD — author of Greening Death: Reclaiming Burial Practices and Restoring Our Tie to the Earth, (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, September 2015) — has been a chief advocate for this practice. Kelly's work, which she discusses in this podcast with Jeff Schechtman, is beginning to have an impact. She says that today families are starting to push back on non-sustainable practices.
"Death is understood to be a path to environmental protection," says Kelly. "The Green burial offers us the possibility of restoring our lost relationship to the land."
Comment: When ya gotta go...go green! "Dust to dust"...what kind matters!
© Greg Shirah / Reuters
The planet Mars showing showing Terra Meridiani is seen in an undated NASA image.
The planet Mars showing showing Terra Meridiani is seen in an undated NASA image.
Planetary scientist Shoshanna Cole came up with the theory after studying a 100-acre area on Husband Hill in the Columbia Hills of the Gusev Crater on Mars using data gathered by a number of instruments on the 2003 Mars Exploration Rover Spirit.
She found that acidic vapors released by eruptions may have been responsible for eating away rocks on the Watchtower Class outcrops on the Cumberland Ridge and Husband Hill summit.
"The special thing about Watchtower Class is that it's very widespread and we see it in different locations. As far as we can tell, it is part of the ground there," which means that these rocks record environments that existed on Mars billions of years ago, Cole said in a press release submitted by the Geological Society of America.
© Wikimedia commons
Queen Mary's Psalter shows men harvesting in 14th century Europe.
Queen Mary's Psalter shows men harvesting in 14th century Europe.
Climate scientists have produced an atlas reconstructing weather conditions over the last millennium, in an effort to understand more about current changes to the weather.
They hope their Old World Drought Atlas (OWDA) will allow for a greater understanding of climate forecasts.
"Climate model projections suggest widespread drying in the Mediterranean Basin and wetting in Fennoscandia in the coming decades largely as a consequence of greenhouse gas forcing of climate," write the scientists in their paper, published in Science Advances on Friday.
The method combines a low-frequency ultrasonic wave to levitate the cells and confine them to a single layer within a fluid and a high-frequency ultrasonic wave to measure the cell's stiffness.
"An acoustic wave is a pressure wave so it travels as a wave of high and low pressure. By trapping a sound wave between a transducer — such as a speaker — and a reflective surface, we can create a 'standing wave' in the space between," explained research assistant Brian Patchett. "This standing wave has stationary layers of high and low pressure, a.k.a. 'anti-nodes,' and areas, 'the nodes' where the pressure remains the same."
© Cambridge University Photo Library, Author provided
Bilingualism unlocks the way words work.
Bilingualism unlocks the way words work.
In this case, bilingualism or multilingualism can be seen as an extraordinary situation - a source of admiration and worry at the same time. But there are communities where bilingualism or multilingualism are the norm - for example in regions of Africa. A Cameroonian, for example, could speak Limbum and Sari, both indigenous languages, plus Ewondo, a lingua franca, plus English or French, the official languages, plus Camfranglais, a further lingua franca used between anglophone and francophone Cameroonians.
© SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
In this artistic rendering, a magnetic pulse (right) and X-ray laser light (left) converge on a high-temperature superconductor to study the behavior of its electrons.
In this artistic rendering, a magnetic pulse (right) and X-ray laser light (left) converge on a high-temperature superconductor to study the behavior of its electrons.
This unexpected twist marks an important milestone in the 30-year journey to better understand how materials known as high-temperature superconductors conduct electricity with no resistance at temperatures hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit above those of conventional metal superconductors but still hundreds of degrees below freezing. The study was published today in Science.
The study also resolves an apparent mismatch in data from previous experiments and charts a new course for fully mapping the behaviors of electrons in these exotic materials under different conditions. Researchers have an ultimate goal to aid the design and development of new superconductors that work at warmer temperatures.
© J. Sibbick
This is an image of Namacalathus hermanastes.
This is an image of Namacalathus hermanastes.
The find is the first to suggest the earliest complex animals on Earth -- which may be related to many of today's animal species -- lived millions of years earlier than was previously known.
Until now, the oldest evidence of complex animals -- which succeeded more primitive creatures that often resembled sponges or coral -- came from the Cambrian Period, which began around 541 million years ago. Scientists had long suspected that complex animals had existed before then but, until now, they had no proof.
Genetic family tree data suggested that complex animals -- known as bilaterians -- evolved prior to the Cambrian Period. The finding suggests that bilaterians may have lived as early as 550 million years ago, during the late Ediacaran Period.
© Flickr/ NASA Johnson
A peer-reviewed article on the successes of the EmDrive project is yet to be published, but the online "leak" clearly indicates humanity may be a step closer to a brand-new range of speeds.
Mushrooms are often associated with two things: psychedelic experiences and pizza toppings. However, Plos One published a study last week implying that mushrooms may have a direct link to rainfall.
Comment: We have been unconscious users and wasters of electricity and water for the total period of late-modern man, with perhaps the exception of the late 1800's. A big reality check is coming.