The remains of a carved turkey's carcass on a cutting board

It’s Time to Reinvent Food Waste!

Startups worldwide convert refuse into energy, biomaterials, and more food.
fruit fly

New Study Finds Insects Speak in Different “Dialects”

Different fruit flies species can learn each other’s language to warn against parasitic wasps.
dna illustration

A Primer on e-DNA

eDNA is DNA that an animal sloughs off into its environment through feces, shedding, or lost skin. The technology can detect invasive species.
Online distress

The Internet Needs a “Handle With Care” Protocol

Emotion can be difficult to parse online. Why not adopt a common protocol that lets our fellow internet citizens know our emotional state?
Japanese tsunami debris

Marine Debris and Its Dangerous Hitchhikers

Larger pieces of floating debris, like that caused by the Japanese tsunami, may carry hitchhikers in the form of organisms native to their place of origin.
Hypsilurus papuensis Papua Forest Dragon

Reptiles Need Your Love, Especially Now

A new study from Oxford and Tel Aviv universities found reptiles are underrepresented in conservation efforts, just in time for Reptile Awareness Day.
Origins of speech crow

The Origins of Human Speech: More Like a Raven or a Writing Desk?

Language is the cognitive faculty that separates humans from other animals, but interjections have often been equated with the primitive cries of animals.
acorn lyme disease connection

Can the Acorn Crop Predict Lyme Disease?

Will cutting fewer forests, where tick hosts and their predators live, help curb Lyme disease? Scientists debate.
Smokestacks with pollution

Plastic in Your Beer, Toxins in Your Air, and Heavy Metals on Your Doorsteps

From household plastic to industrial waste, anthropogenic activity has created compounds that poison ecosystems from water to air.
Restoration of an American mastodon herd by Charles R. Knight

This Week in Sustainability: From Ice Age to Internet Age, Scientists Look for Clues to Species’ Extinctions

Scientists explore the causes--climate change, habitat destruction, and more--that decimated animals and humans alike, from Ice Age to Internet Age.