Radiation in the No. 1 reactor building at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan has been measured at the highest levels ever, making it virtually impossible for human workers to do much work there.
"The Ruby Mountains, a major Great Basin range, appears to harbor only half as many small animals as were found there in the 1920s, according to a new study by Utah Museum of Natural History researchers."
"With the rising Missouri River threatening to encroach a South Omaha sewage treatment plant, the City of Omaha will dump 6 million gallons of raw sewage a day into the river as it takes part of the plant off-line."
"The terrifying E. coli outbreak in Europe appears to have been caused by vegetable sprouts grown on an organic farm in Germany, an agriculture official said Sunday as the toll climbed to at least 22 dead and more than 2,200 sickened."
"'I watch them die, young and old,' [Spokane tribal gravedigger Harold] Campbell said. 'I think it’s caused by the radiation.' The radiation is from the Northwest’s only open-pit uranium mines -- an all-but-forgotten chapter of Washington’s Cold War history."
As world demand for staples like wheat, rice, corn, and soy outpaces dwindling growth in agricultural production, food prices are rising and more people are hungry. Now experts are saying that climate change is playing a bigger role than they once expected.
"A climate change scientist who has been targeted by death threats says the science community must still continue to release the latest research."
PDF versions of books published by the National Academies Press are now downloadable to anyone free of charge. This includes a current catalog of more than 4,000 titles plus future reports produced by the Press.
"Some areas in the tropics face famine because of failing food production, an international research group says."
"North China is dying. A chronic drought is ravaging farmland. The Gobi Desert is inching south. The Yellow River, the so-called birthplace of Chinese civilization, is so polluted it can no longer supply drinking water. The rapid growth of megacities — 22 million people in Beijing and 12 million in Tianjin alone — has drained underground aquifers that took millenniums to fill."
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