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A Smartypants Scientist Makes An Easy Analogy About Our Planet, And Now I'm Scared

A Smartypants Scientist Makes An Easy Analogy About Our Planet, And Now I'm Scared
Related:  A Planet Fed & Watered

They're Back! Chesapeake Oysters Return To Menus After Rebound : The Salt hide captionA plate of Sweet Jesus oysters grown in Chesapeake Bay by Hollywood Oyster Co. in Hollywood, Md. Katy Adams/Courtesy Clyde's Restaurant Group A plate of Sweet Jesus oysters grown in Chesapeake Bay by Hollywood Oyster Co. in Hollywood, Md. The history of the Chesapeake Bay oyster hasn't always been a pure one. So you could forgive a chef for being skeptical about the big bivalve comeback being staged in D.C. and the surrounding area this winter as oyster season gets underway. But many mid-Atlantic chefs are actually cheering. "Almost every oyster you're buying cleans the bay," gushes Brian Stickel, corporate chef for Clyde's Restaurant Group. Old Ebbitt sells more than a million oysters a year. "At our restaurants, we sell up to eight oysters at a time, but I definitely see people asking more for local oysters," Stickel says. There's also the matter of taste. So why did Chesapeake oysters disappear from menus in the first place? Elizabeth Shogren/NPR More than enough, says Sughrue.

Why time seems to speed up as we get older Five or six times a day, every day, for 48 years, chronobiologist Robert Sothern has counted off 60 seconds in his head and then compared the results against a clock. As part of a lifelong experiment on circadian rhythms, Sothern, now 69, is trying to confirm or reject a widely held belief: Many people feel that time flies by more quickly as they age. So far, Sothern's results are inconclusive. It's true that lately, according to his measurements — and his gut — time seems to be speeding up as he nears his 70s. "I'm tending now to overestimate the minute more than I used to," he tells me. But then again, he had detected a similar pattern — more overestimates — in the 1990s, only to have his estimates fall in the 2000s. This matches what other researchers have found too. There's considerable evidence that time doesn't speed up as we age Kevin Dooley / Flickr There are a few different ways to study how we perceive time. The results? But stopwatches can only tell us so much.

A Lonely Quest for Facts on Genetically Modified Crops KONA, Hawaii — From the moment the bill to ban on the island of Hawaii was introduced in May 2013, it garnered more vocal support than any the County Council here had ever considered, even the perennially popular bids to decriminalize marijuana. Public hearings were dominated by recitations of the ills often attributed to genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.s: cancer in rats, a rise in childhood allergies, out-of-control superweeds, genetic contamination, overuse of , the disappearance of butterflies and bees. To see the full article, subscribe here. Another Council member favored razing every genetically modified papaya tree on the island. But under Ms. “You’re exempted,” Mr. Even so, Mr. Many of the island’s papaya farmers, descendants of immigrants who came to work on sugar plantations, have links to the Philippines, as does Mr. If Mr. Japanese as well as American regulators had approved the papaya. Photo Mr. Superweeds and Rats But a vast majority were there in support. Mr. Dr. Dr.

Between Pigs And Anchovies: Where Humans Rank On The Food Chain : The Salt hide captionAn animal's ranking on the food chain depends on where its meals place on the ladder. That puts plants on the bottom (they make all their food), polar bears on top and people somewhere between pigs and anchovies. Lisa Brown for NPR An animal's ranking on the food chain depends on where its meals place on the ladder. When it comes to making food yummy and pleasurable, humans clearly outshine their fellow animals on Earth. But in terms of the global food chain, Homo sapiens are definitely not the head honchos. In the new study, ecologists specifically calculated human's trophic level — a number between 1 and about 5.5 that tells you how much energy it takes to make a species' food. Plants and algae, which use energy from the sun to produce all their food, sit at the bottom of the food chain, with a trophic level of 1. Next come the omnivores that eat a mixture of plants and herbivores. Instead, we sit somewhere between pigs and anchovies, scientists reported recently.

A Microbiologist Recreated 'Starry Night' With Bacteria In A Petri Dish What Happened On Easter Island — A New (Even Scarier) Scenario : Krulwich Wonders... We all know the story, or think we do. Let me tell it the old way, then the new way. See which worries you most. Robert Krulwich/NPR First version: Easter Island is a small 63-square-mile patch of land — more than a thousand miles from the next inhabited spot in the Pacific Ocean. These settlers were farmers, practicing slash-and-burn agriculture, so they burned down woods, opened spaces, and began to multiply. As Jared Diamond tells it in his best-selling book, Collapse, Easter Island is the "clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources." When Captain James Cook visited there in 1774, his crew counted roughly 700 islanders (from an earlier population of thousands), living marginal lives, their canoes reduced to patched fragments of driftwood. And that has become the lesson of Easter Island — that we don't dare abuse the plants and animals around us, because if we do, we will, all of us, go down together. A Story Of Success? Success? I wonder.

How Food Hubs Are Helping New Farmers Break Into Local Food : The Salt hide captionMarty Travis (right) started the Stewards of the Land food hub in 2005. His son Will helps him transport food from local farms to area restaurants. Sean Powers/Harvest Public Media Marty Travis (right) started the Stewards of the Land food hub in 2005. His son Will helps him transport food from local farms to area restaurants. Lots of consumers are smitten with local food, but they're not the only ones. But they need help, and increasingly it's coming from food hubs, which can also serve as food processing and distribution centers. Donna O'Shaughnessy and her husband, Keith Parrish, are first-generation farmers in rural Chatsworth, Ill., about two hours south of Chicago. For many years, they ended each year in the red. They say they owe a lot to a year-round local food hub called Stewards of the Land, started in 2005 by Marty and Kris Travis, farmers in nearby Fairbury, Ill. The Travises became middlemen to fill a hole in the market.

The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan’s Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking Carl Sagan (November 9, 1934–December 20, 1996) was many things — a cosmic sage, voracious reader, hopeless romantic, and brilliant philosopher. But above all, he endures as our era’s greatest patron saint of reason and critical thinking, a master of the vital balance between skepticism and openness. In The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (public library) — the same indispensable volume that gave us Sagan’s timeless meditation on science and spirituality, published mere months before his death in 1996 — Sagan shares his secret to upholding the rites of reason, even in the face of society’s most shameless untruths and outrageous propaganda. Through their training, scientists are equipped with what Sagan calls a “baloney detection kit” — a set of cognitive tools and techniques that fortify the mind against penetration by falsehoods: The kit is brought out as a matter of course whenever new ideas are offered for consideration.

IMDB Top 250 Movies of All Time The top 250 movies of all time as voted by IMDb users. This list reflects the list in mid-2013. It changes over time, so we will release updated versions each year. 65,243 users · 345,792 views Required scores: 1, 56, 81, 105, 136 How many have you seen? The Shawshank Redemption (1994) The Godfather (1972) The Godfather, Part II (1974) Pulp Fiction (1994) The Good, The Bad and The Ugly The Dark Knight (2008) 12 Angry Men (1957) Schindler's List (1993) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) Fight Club (1999) Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) The Fellowship Of The Ring One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) Inception (2010) Goodfellas (1990) Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) Seven Samurai (1954) Forrest Gump (1994) The Matrix (1999) The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) City of God (2002) Seven (1979) The Silence of the Lambs (1991) Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) Casablanca (1942) The Usual Suspects (1995) Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) Rear Window (1954) Dr.

An Innovative Plan To Reel In Sport Fishermen To Feed The Hungry : The Salt hide captionCarly Milkowski, resource coordinator at hunger relief agency Wayside Food Services, shows students Jessica Jamison and Autumn Felker how to make fish cakes using a Martha Stewart recipe. Courtesy of Samantha Laster Carly Milkowski, resource coordinator at hunger relief agency Wayside Food Services, shows students Jessica Jamison and Autumn Felker how to make fish cakes using a Martha Stewart recipe. Portland, Maine, native Hollis McLaughlin's recollection of his mother's fish cookery produces a wistful expression as he takes a bite of the fish cakes given to him as part of the regular Wednesday night meal he is served free of charge at the Parkside Neighborhood Center. McLaughlin's mother, Kay, worked for over 30 years on Portland's waterfront, picking lobster and crab and packing sardines. The 62-year-old McLaughlin diplomatically refused to say which fish cake he liked better. The Maine Hunters for the Hungry program is one of the few administered by the state government.

“Personal kanban”: a time-management system that explodes the myth of multitasking — Quartz Multitasking is probably the single most overrated skill in modern life. It drains your brain of oxygenated glucose that could be put toward paying more focused attention, makes it difficult for a person to switch between tasks, and is generally an illusion anyway. Only 3% of the population are “supertaskers,” according to a study from Ohio University. The rest of us just pretend to be. A number of systems have been developed to save us from our endless to-do lists, which can turn any job into a soulless assembly line of chores. One such system is “Personal Kanban,” which was named for the Japanese concept that inspired it, a just-in-time manufacturing process developed at Toyota in the late 1940s. In an industrial setting, Kanban (which means “signboard” or “billboard” in Japanese, as a recent Medium post explains) relies on tickets that move with each product through a plant. Find a board with which you can use magnets, post-it notes, or thumbtacks.

9 Things Extremely Successful People Do After Work 'Have No Regrets' --Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Group"The best advice I ever received? Simple: Have no regrets. Who gave me the advice? Mum’s the word. Scientists: Use animal manure's stinking wealth of resources Increasing demands for meat, milk and eggs across the world have prompted an explosive growth in livestock production with massive environmental consequences at local, regional, and global levels. A new textbook, ‘Animal Manure Recycling: Treatment and Management’, draws from Danish expertise and spotlights technologies that presents state-of-the-art knowledge in relation to recycling animal manure, writes Copenhagen University in a press release. Many people know that a steak's path to the dinner table has undesirable climatic and environmental consequences, and large increases in livestock production have given rise to enormous quantities of animal manure. This presents challenges in relation to waste management and environmental protection. Denmark is assuming a leadership role in both farming and environmental technology and we therefore want to disseminate this unique know-how and at the same time contribute to the export of Danish technology. Lars Stoumann Jensen

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