By Lois Beckett in ProPublica.By the end of this year, the State Department will decide whether to give a Canadian company permission to construct a 1,700-mile, $7 billion pipeline that would transport crude oil from Canada to refineries in Texas.  The project has sparked major environmental concerns, particularly in Nebraska,...

By ClickGreen An international team of scientists has proposed a five-point plan for feeding the world while protecting the planet. The research concludes that “feeding the nine billion people anticipated to live on Earth in 2050 without exhausting the Earth’s natural resources is possible, provided that we adopt a more sustainable food production approach.” The […]

Blog by Trish Hennessy Occupy Wall Street is shining new light on the question of how to frame income inequality. Five years ago, when the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives launched its growinggap.ca project, the team of researchers put considerable thought into how we talk about things. We engaged Environics Research to conduct a series […]

On Tuesday October 11, Conservative politician Enrique Gómez Hurtado [es] surprised a lot of Colombians when he expressed his controversial stance on abortion during an interview on La W, an influential morning radio show broadcast nationally on W Radio. Gómez, 84, is the youngest son of former President Laureano Gómez (tenure...

Last week, Nature Genetics carried twin studies into the genetics of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. This special report examines the month's research into the illnesses in detail, with Wikinews obtaining comment from experts based in Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom ahead of the U.S. Mental Illness ...

By Jeremy Hance, MONGABAY.COM A conference has announced that given recent evidence they are 95 percent convinced the yeti, a mythical or perhaps actual primate, exists in the cold wilds of Siberia. Scientists and cryptozoologists (those who have a fascination for the ‘study of hidden species’ such as Bigfoot) met in the Kemerovo region of […]

By Reuters, Wellington, NZ An oil spill from a container ship stricken off New Zealand is growing as the weather deteriorates, sending clumps of thick fuel oil on to nearby beaches, officials said on Tuesday. The 47,230-tonne Liberian-flagged Rena has been stranded on a reef about 12 nautical miles off Tauranga on the east coast […]

In any given room, even the most sterile scientific cleanrooms, there are dust particles in the air and coating every surface. If allowed to go uncleaned, the dust will accumulate to eventually cover every surface. But what exactly is the dust in the air and on our tables and shelves? A chemistry research team at […]

Of all our sensory organs, the sense of smell is often overlooked. While visual, auditory, and tactile perception are important, the olfactory sense also plays a subtle yet meaningful role in our daily lives. The animal brain has an amazing ability to recognize and associate smells entering the nostrils. However, according to a research study […]

Ada Lovelace Day (7 October) aims to raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering and maths by encouraging people around the world to talk about the women whose work they admire. Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) was an English female writer and mathematician, widely held to have been the first computer programmer.Our...