Water Smart Ambassadors are now in 12 communities across the Basin, educating residents about water conservation and offering free residential landscape and irrigation system audits. The Columbia Basin Water Smart Initiative (Water Smart), developed by Columbia Basin Trust (CBT), helps local governments assess their water conservation needs and develops plans to reduce community water consumption. […]

By Tracy McVeigh, guardian.co.uk Global warming has long been blamed for the huge rise in the world’s jellyfish population. But new research suggests that they, in turn, may be worsening the problem by producing more carbon than the oceans can cope with. Research led by Rob Condon of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in […]

Tweets and “likes” are becoming more beneficial to business, a new Robert Half Technology survey suggests. More than 44 per cent of chief information officers (CIOs) surveyed said they permit employees to use social media sites like Twitter and Facebook on the job as long as it’s for business purposes. This is up from 22 […]

By Sunshine Lichauco de Leon, guardian.co.uk A shark whose markings make it appear camouflaged for the desert and “laughing” cicadas are among 300 new species discovered by scientists in the Philippines. The six-week expedition of 35 US and Filipino experts led by California Academy of Sciences discovered 200 new marine invertebrates, 11 new fish, and […]

By Andy Soos, ENN The potential for mineral, oil and gas deposits in the Arctic Ocean is not clearly known, but that doesn’t stop the countries that border the area from fighting over it. Russia, Canada, Denmark, and Norway are heating up discussions as ice melting in northern areas reveals more and more, allowing readier […]

The largest forest carbon project in North America has a Kootenay original at its heart. The 55,000-hectare Darkwoods forest southeast of Nelson is helping the Nature Conservancy of Canada raise $4 million by selling carbon credits from it to protect the land. This sale of carbon credits is raising the bar for conservation in Canada, […]

During the reading of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s throne speech last Friday , a young page was yanked from the Senate Chamber as she tried to hold up a stop sign placard reading  “Stop Harper.” “Harper’s agenda is disastrous for this country and for my generation,” Brigette Marcelle says. “We have to stop him from wasting […]

By David A Gabel, ENN It started with a few deaths in Germany from what were thought to be Spanish cucumbers. Then more people in Germany and around the continent got infected. Trade tensions mounted and vegetable producers from various other countries became affected by the new outbreak. Now there have been cases reported in […]

By Gaia Vince, guardian.co.uk These are epoch-making times. Literally. There is now “compelling evidence”, according to an influential group of geologists, that humans have had such an impact on the planet that we are entering a new phase of geological time: the Anthropocene. Millions of years from now, they say, alien geologists would be able […]

By Michael Jessen English speaking humans communicate using at least 250,000 distinct words. By contrast there are only 10 individual numbers – larger numbers being combinations of zero to nine. To put our thoughts into words, we have an unlimited capacity to produce vocabulary.  We will coin no new numbers.  Language is a highly elaborate […]