preserving

By Protecting the Planet, We’re Protecting People, TooBoundaries for preserving fresh water, biodiversity and other planetary resources tighten when they must also protect peopleBy Joyeeta Gupta & Angela Morelli and Tom Gabriel Johansen/InfoDesignLabA woman in Kenya tries to collect some of her belongings after torrential rain led to heavy flooding. Credit: Luis Tato/AFP via Getty ImagesThere are limits to our natural resources. At some point they run out, or we ruin them. When either happens, both the physical system…

Anne Heggli inside a snowpit at the Central Sierra Snow Lab on Donner Pass. Credit: Anne Heggli/DRI At the dawn of the new year in 1997, the Truckee River transformed. The winter season had thus far been great for snow, but when a subtropical storm from near the Hawaiian Islands rolled in, it carried with it unseasonably warm rain. The warm rainfall combined with snowmelt to swell the rivers, with the Truckee burying much of…

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. —  Kenji Kawano was hitchhiking on the Navajo Nation when Carl Gorman pulled over to give him a lift. During the drive, Kawano, then 23, explained that he’d arrived in the U.S. two years earlier with plans to travel the country taking pictures, hoping to build a portfolio that could land him a gig as a professional photographer.“Where you from?” Gorman asked.“Japan,” Kawano replied.Then Gorman asked if Kawano had ever heard of the Navajo code talkers. Kenji Kawano at Arizona’s Monument…

Researchers propose that a taste for fermented morsels may have triggered a surprising jump in the growth rate of our ancestors' brains.In fact, a shift from a raw diet to one that included food items already partially broken down by microbes may have been a crucial event in our brain's evolution, according to a perspective study by evolutionary neuroscientist Katherine Bryant of Aix-Marseille University in France and two US colleagues.Human brains have tripled in size over the last two million years of evolution, while…

Why does the giant squid have eyes as large as a football? Why do more than 350 species of fish produce their own electricity? Why do dogs become more optimistic after two weeks of plentiful sniffing?The mysteries and miracles of animal senses are revealed in this year’s winner of the £25,000 Royal Society Trivedi science book prize, which was announced on Wednesday.An Immense World by Ed Yong.An Immense World by Ed Yong is an epic exploration of the unique “umwelt” of other creatures, from tree hoppers to singing frogs,…

When I ask Frank Cifaldi, the founder and director of the Video Game History Foundation, to explain the importance of preserving and maintaining old video games, he answers with a movie analogy. Imagine, he said, “if movies were only released on, like, VHS, ever. You want to watch Back to the Future? All right, you have to go on eBay, and you have to find an antique VHS copy that’s degraded a bit from use. You have to find a VCR that works, a TV that it plugs into — or the external scalers that make it look correct on…

When I write “cooking game,” I’d bet a pretty specific image comes into your head. Your brain might go straight to something like Cooking Mama, where you need to assemble several random recipes through a series of tactile minigames. That’s become a go-to format for developers looking to adapt cooking into a game, but it’s not exactly what developer Visai Games wanted to do for Venba. Venba - Announcement Trailer - Nintendo Switch Set to launch on July 31, Venba is an era-spanning narrative cooking game about a family…

Harrison Ford showcases his fearless spirit in the upcoming film, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. This time, the actor takes on a stunt involving a fleet of rickshaws. Directed by James Mangold, the latest instalment of the Indiana Jones franchise claims to deliver an exhilarating adventure like never before. One scene that particularly stands out is when Ford’s Indiana Jones races through the bustling streets of a city, pursued by a relentless enemy. The sequence culminates with Indy and his companions…

Earlier this week, Google announced its intention to start deleting personal accounts that haven’t been active in over two years in December. Photos, emails, and docs attached to inactive accounts will all be eradicated. The announcement follows a similar one from Twitter last week, pledging to purge accounts that have been inactive for several years. It caused an uproar among people who don’t want their deceased loved ones’ accounts to be deleted.  With developments like cloud storage, we’ve developed an expectation,…

Each year, hundreds of mountaineers camp at the South Col on Mount Everest's southern side in preparation for their attempt to reach the roof of the world.While these adventure seekers may be taking home some well-deserved bragging rights, a new study shows they may also be leaving behind some tenacious microbes that seem capable of bunkering down to survive on the icy, desolate outcrops.Despite the extreme conditions on Everest, researchers have been able to cultivate bacteria and fungi isolated from the mountain's…