A winter panorama of 4,250-foot high Mount Index in the central Cascade Range of Washington state. Photo: John Ring/DNR.
Science Daily: Social Networking Elephants Never Forget
New research shows that while Asian elephants in Sri Lanka may change their day to day associations they maintain a larger, stable, network of friends from which they pick their companions. The ‘herd’ of elephants one sees at any given time is often only a fragment of a much larger social group
Science Daily: Carbon Sink: Up-And-Coming Forests Replacing Aging Forests of Upper Great Lakes
The decline of trees in the Upper Great Lake has been a cause for concern among policymakers and ecologists who wonder whether the end of the forests’ most productive years means they will no longer offer benefits such as cleansed air, fertile soil, filtered water and carbon storage to offset greenhouse gas emissions. Now researchers say that coming up right underneath the old forests is a new generation of native trees that are younger, more diverse and highly competitive.
Scientific American: Garbage in, Energy out: Turning Trash into Biofuel
As Canada’s chief oil city in the province that hosts the bulk of the country’s tar sands, Edmonton is not the firest place you’d look for alternative fuels. Nevertheless, in 2012 Edmonton will host a chemical plant that will turn garbage into 36 million liters of ethanol and methanol per year.
Short Sharp Science: Mapping the most complex object in the known universe
At the Max-Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany, researchers have devised a faster way of computing the neural connections that make up the brain. No computer was powerful enough to handle the brain’s complex network of 70 billion neurons and thousands of kilometres of circuits so they found another way to compose a visual map.
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Tags: DNR, environment
