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pollution

SCIENCE: Our Global Junk is Making Men’s Private Junk Shrink

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Man Tape Measure - Deposit Photos

As if forest fires and melting ice caps weren’t enough to keep you up at night, here’s a brand new nightmare: global warming is coming for your penis. According to leading epidemiologist and environmental scientist Dr Shanna Swan, penises around the world are shrinking, and pollution is to blame. Humanity is facing an “existential crisis”, she explains in her cheery new book Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperilling the Future of the Human Race. It all comes down to phathalates, a chemical used in manufacturing plastics that impacts … Read more

CO2 reaches Levels Last Seen Before Humankind Evolved

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pollution - Live Science

There is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than there has been for 800,000 years — since before our species evolved. On Saturday (May 11), the levels of the greenhouse gas reached 415 parts per million (ppm), as measured by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Scientists at the observatory have been measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide levels since 1958. But because of other kinds of analysis, such as those done on ancient air bubbles trapped in ice cores, they have data on levels reaching back 800,000 years. During the ice ages, carbon dioxide levels in … Read more

SCIENCE: Could Sticky Corn Fight Pollution?

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sticky corn

It probably doesn’t look like any corn you’ve seen. At 16 feet (5 meters), it stands about twice as tall as conventional corn. And sticking out of the stalks, high above the ground, are aerial roots, red finger-like protrusions coated in slime. But despite this alien-like goo, this species of corn — indigenous to the Sierra Mixe region of Oaxaca, Mexico, where the locals have long been cultivating and eating it — is remarkable for another reason. It’s the only corn that scientists know of that can take in nitrogen directly from the air and use it to grow. Nitrogen … Read more