Tag: "NPR"

Plastic not Fantastic

Plastic not Fantastic

Humans produce 500 billion plastic bags annually. In China, they recently banned it. Australia, Bangladesh, Ireland, Italy, South Africa,Taiwan, Mumbai and India have either banned it or discouraged its use by raising taxes. And on March 27, 2007, San Francisco became the first city in the USA to ban it from large grocery stores. More [...]

 
Turning Plastic Bags into Beautiful Bolsas

Turning Plastic Bags into Beautiful Bolsas

And how this metamorphosis saves Monkeys! Colombia: a beautiful country, with incredible forests and diverse wildlife, but like many other countries, a trash problem. With no formal trash collection system, the forests and villages suffer from scattered plastic bags, endangering wildlife and creating a mess on village streets. One such village was Los Limites, until [...]

 
A Village Takes on Global Warming

A Village Takes on Global Warming

Each big storm with a high tide and an onshore wind takes a big bite out of Sarichef.Photo By Shishmaref Erosion and Relocation Coalition In an email this week from John Woodward, an Alaska builder and Home Energy author, he wrote, "I put together a working/management group to manage the relocation of the community of [...]

 
Housing the Human Computer

Housing the Human Computer

A look into the science of skin. In an article this week in the New York Times, brainpower was correlated with the complexity of nerve synapses. Leading researcher Dr. Grant, who has studied the interconnectedness of neurons, likened this connection to technology; "From the evolutionary perspective, the big brains of vertebrates not only have more [...]

 
Phoenix on Ice?

Phoenix on Ice?

A patch of what might be ice, exposed by Phoenix's landing rockets.So, did it land on ice? Huh? Did it? Two blogs ago I wrote about the then upcoming landing of the Phoenix spacecraft on Mars, near the Northern polar ice cap (Probing the Martian Pole). The entire point of landing on Mars' extreme northern [...]

 
You're as likely to be struck by lightning as to have a severe reaction to a vaccine.

Vaccines: One Small Risk for a Child, One Giant Benefit for Mankind

You're as likely to be struck by lightningas to have a severe reaction to a vaccine. I was reading an article in Time last week about parents not vaccinating their children. The story was about how this phenomenon is becoming more widespread. These kinds of stories are weird to me because vaccines are pretty safe. [...]