All entries by this author

Mountaintop Coal

Nov 11th, 2011 | By Rebecca | Category: Video



One Giant Leap

One Giant Leap

Jun 1st, 2011 | By Rebecca | Category: Featured Articles, News

Fifty years after President Kennedy’s call to put a man on the moon, the space agency is at a crossroads.

NASA must look beyond the earthly demands of deficit cutting and politics to chart its course.



Earth-sized planets spied in ‘habitable zone’

Earth-sized planets spied in ‘habitable zone’

Feb 2nd, 2011 | By Rebecca | Category: News, Science

At least five Earth-sized planets appear to be orbiting their stars at just the right distance to host water.



Life on Saturn’s Moon Titan?

Jun 8th, 2010 | By Rebecca | Category: Blog

Life on Saturn’s moon Titan? Maybe. It seems like something’s happening there. If it’s life, it would be a very cold sort of gas-eating, “methane-based” life that does not require water. Such a life form has never before been identified.
Although Titan’s water is frozen as solid as granite, many other conditions conducive to life exist [...]



Agriculture’s Biggest Threat

May 4th, 2010 | By Rebecca | Category: Blog

The New York Times reporting today that Roundup-resistant superweeds may force farmers to go back to their pre-Roundup ways.
“It is the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have ever seen,” said Andrew Wargo III, the president of the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts.
Meanwhile, Businessweek notes a shift in focus for seed [...]



Green Energy First to Go?

Apr 30th, 2010 | By Rebecca | Category: Blog

Green investors who went in for Jimmy Carter-era tax incentives got burned in 1985, when the credits disappeared, taking renewable energy research projects with them.
Funny how people forget the day before yesterday but remember not to trust US clean energy opportunities. A Deutsche Bank study last fall found North America to be a relatively risky [...]



Steve Jobs Kills Flash? Can He Do That? (Guess So)

Apr 29th, 2010 | By Rebecca | Category: Blog

Apple’s CEO published a long (and probably compelling) letter today explaining why the iPhone and iPad don’t and apparently won’t deal with Flash, the Adobe format often used for Web video, animations and interactive games and graphics.
The decision demonstrates Apple’s power to change the nature of the Internet — and kill a format, though it’s [...]



Rethinking Coal

Rethinking Coal

Oct 25th, 2009 | By Rebecca | Category: Featured Articles, News, Trends

Mountaintop removal mining is just one facet of a debate that is gearing up to be as heated as health care reform, as lawmakers consider climate-inspired legislation that would fundamentally redefine the nation’s relationship with coal.

“The coal industry is under attack and West Virginia is ground zero for that attack,” an industry representative says.



Cambodia, Cambodian

Cambodia, Cambodian

Oct 9th, 2009 | By Rebecca | Category: Featured Articles, Special

A motorcycle taxi driver named Eagle introduced me to Cambodia when I visited Phnom Penh ten years ago. I went back and found him six years later.



Alaska Coast Eroding Fast

Alaska Coast Eroding Fast

Sep 25th, 2009 | By Rebecca | Category: Featured Articles, News

The Beaufort Sea’s coastline is disintegrating at alarming speed.

Permafrost cliffs are tumbling into the ocean and melting away, and now the process is caught on a new video of time-lapse photographs.

“It could be related to some of the changes that are happening and that have been reported in the Arctic, like declining sea ice in the summer and increasing sea temperatures,” says a scientist studying the coast.