World

Representative Image (AI-generated) Los Angeles was drenched by historic storms, yet much of its lost groundwater stayed missing. Record-breaking rainfall in 2023 brought dramatic relief to drought-stricken Southern California, nearly restoring water stored in Los Angeles-area reservoirs and shallow aquifers. But the recovery was far less complete underground. A study published in Science found that…

Pee breaks are one of the most relaxing times in the office when you finally get to have some sane moments to yourself. Which is why most employees take numerous such breaks within a day. But what if your normal pee break had you secretly contributing to the generation of electricity?Two hundred and sixty men…

Image: Left/Carter in 1932; at age 7/Right/Official portrait, 1977/Wikipedia​ Well before he took office as the 39th president of the United States, Jimmy Carter spent many years on a Georgia farm, where mornings were usually before the break of dawn. Carter grew up in the small community of Archery, close to Plains, where he participated…

The trees that dominate one forest can be very different from those found just a few kilometres away. A study has mapped this variation across the country by examining 364 forest plots and nearly 59,000 trees representing 1,333 species. Researchers identified 495 dominant tree species that helped separate the forests into 10 distinct groups. Seven…

The exterior of Nitt Witt Ridge and cans of food in a kitchen cabinet. Once, along California’s rugged Central Coast, there was still room for people who wanted to live differently. Away from polished streets and grand estates, the landscape attracted eccentrics, dreamers and determined outsiders who built their own worlds with whatever they could…

Midpen staff had discovered purple martins nesting in holes inside similar poles near the mountain top while working on Mount Umunhum. California crews left old telephone poles standing while restoring about 40 acres of land at Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve because purple martins use holes in the poles as nesting sites. The decision came…

Representative Image (AI-generated) A routine blood sample contains a surprisingly detailed record of what the immune system is doing. Scientists have now demonstrated a way to read some of that information without adding fluorescent dyes or other chemical labels. The approach examines the natural light emitted by molecules inside immune cells, allowing researchers to assess…

South American tapir. Image Credit: Charles J. Sharp/Wikipedia A former cattle landscape in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest has been transformed into a thriving wildlife refuge through years of restoration and the planting of native trees. At the Guapiaçu Ecological Reserve in Rio de Janeiro State, land that was once cleared and used for grazing has gradually…

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…

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…