A Scottish restoration project has returned 60,000 native oysters to the Firth of Forth, reviving a species that once formed vast oyster beds across an area roughly comparable to the size of Edinburgh. The Restoration Forth partnership originally aimed to return 30,000 European flat oysters to the estuary, but the target was later doubled after…
Isaac Newton, one of history’s most influential scientists, spent much of his life trying to understand the laws governing the natural world. His work transformed physics, mathematics and astronomy, but his approach to discovery was rooted in careful observation, experimentation and the search for underlying principles. One of his enduring observations was that truth is…
PC: Swiss Academy of Sciences A photograph shared online has helped scientists identify a hoverfly species that had remained a mystery for years. The insect, named ‘Monoceromyia ndidiae’, was photographed in the Dominican Republic and posted on iNaturalist. Its unusual appearance caught the attention of an entomologist, who began asking whether the fly represented something…
The European turtle dove population in the United Kingdom had fallen to just 2 percent of its peak population in the late 1960s. The species is Europe’s only migratory dove and has become the fastest-declining bird species in the U.K. As the festive season approaches, a bird forever linked with love, devotion and Christmas is…
Quote of the day by Alexander Graham Bell (Image: Wikipedia) In an age of constant notifications, endless open tabs and competing priorities, Alexander Graham Bell’s words feel genuinely surprising in how modern they still sound. “Concentrate all your thoughts on the task at hand,” he said. “The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to…
Restoring grazing by native large herbivores such as bison can produce sustained increases in native plant diversity In 1987, 30 bison from the Fort Riley Military Reservation were brought to Konza Prairie in Kansas. Nearly three decades later, researchers found that native plant species richness had increased by 103% at the local scale and by…
Singapore has turned part of a reservoir into a giant renewable-energy installation, covering about one-third of Tengeh Reservoir with more than 122,000 floating solar panels spread across 10 floating islands. The 45-hectare Sembcorp Tengeh Floating Solar Farm has a capacity of 60 MWp and generates electricity used to support five local water-treatment plants. The project…
A fossil found in southern Brazil is giving researchers a closer look at the reptiles that lived near the beginning of the archosaur lineage, the group that would eventually include dinosaurs and crocodile-line animals. The animal has been named ‘Silescelida acristata’ and is identified as an early-diverging eucrocopodan archosauriform from the Middle Triassic. A recent…
Image Credit: Brad Leue/AWC Australia’s effort to bring digging mammals back to an 8,000-hectare wildlife sanctuary has produced changes below the surface. Researchers studying Scotia Sanctuary in south-eastern Australia found that 8 years after reintroduced mammals were given access to areas, the communities of insects emerging from the soil had changed. The mammals, including greater…
Nepal’s mid-hills are places where farming has long meant working with the landscape rather than against it. Terraces cut into steep slopes turn difficult ground into fields for maize, millet, rice and other crops, with generations of farmers maintaining the walls and soil that make cultivation possible. But the balance between people, farmland and wildlife…
Liquid hydrogen Tank at NASA Kennedy Space Center. Image Credit: US Department of Energy Scientists working on a cleaner way to produce hydrogen have discovered an unexpected second product which is high-quality graphite. The finding emerged from research into methane pyrolysis, a process that splits methane into hydrogen and solid carbon instead of producing CO2…
Restoring damaged land can look straightforward on paper: plant trees, repair soils and wait for vegetation to return. On the ground, the work is less predictable. Young plants have to survive drought, poor soils, fire, grazing and the other pressures that caused landscapes to deteriorate in the first place.Mexico’s National Forestry Commission, known as CONAFOR,…
