rampant

“Degradation means that you still have standing forest, but you are losing some of the structure, some of the functioning,” says Armenteras Pascual. “You might even look and think it’s really a beautiful forest, but it’s not so healthy.”Being degraded also makes a forest more prone to wildfire. And once a part of the Amazon burns, it’s more likely to catch fire again. “When a forest burns, trees die, releasing organic matter above the soil and opening the canopy,” says Flores. “Hence, more fuel is available and more…

For four years now, either as a physical virus or as a looming threat, the COVID-causing pathogen SARS-CoV-2 has been the elephant in every room—sometimes confronted and sometimes ignored but always present. While once we dreamed of eradicating COVID, now much of society has resigned itself to SARS-CoV-2’s constant presence—a surrender that would once have been unthinkable.Worldwide, there were more than 11,000 reported deaths from COVID between mid-December 2023 and mid-January 2024, and more than half of those deaths…

McAfee antivirus is one of the most popular antivirus software offerings out there. With that in mind, someone created a scam that is using McAfee as a front, a pop-up scam, if you will. This malicious software pops up while people are using their computers, and claims that your device is infected. On top of that, it claims that your McAfee subscription has expired. McAfee pop-up scam is making the rounds, be careful Now, many of you will probably think to yourself, well, I never had a McAfee subscription. Or you’ll be…

Copper wire thefts have plagued Los Angeles for years, posing safety hazards and costing the city millions of dollars. The incidents have surged this last year, according to city officials, who in the past few months have escalated their efforts to curtail both the thieves and the buyers of the stolen wires.In the latest move, City Councilmembers Kevin de León and Traci Park put forward motions this week to combat the “sheer magnitude of thefts,” which they say have resulted in citywide repair costs exceeding $17…

Slow Horses is officially the first Apple TV Plus Original to get renewed for a fifth season after huge success following the release of season 3 in December. The season 3 finale aired on December 27, and Apple has been quick to announce that the Golden Globe-nominated series is coming back for not only season four but season five, too.Starring Academy Award winner Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb, the boss of a dysfunctional team of MI5 agents, Slow Horses is one of the best shows on Apple TV Plus thanks to its excellent…

Credit: CC0 Public Domain The global anti-vaccine movement and vaccine hesitancy that accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic show no signs of abating. According to a survey of U.S. adults, Americans in October 2023 were less likely to view approved vaccines as safe than they were in April 2021. As vaccine confidence falls, health misinformation…

With less than a year to go before the 2024 election, Democratic leaders and pundits are constantly telling us that we are facing unprecedented threats to our democracy. They frame the stakes of the election as a last stand against authoritarian takeover. They’re not wrong about the threat. But some Democrats in Congress are recklessly pushing into the hands of the next president the renewal of dangerous spying powers that even the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court admits are already abused on a “persistent and…

Credit: Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels Information warfare abounds, and everyone online has been drafted whether they know it or not. Disinformation is deliberately generated misleading content disseminated for selfish or malicious purposes. Unlike misinformation, which may be shared unwittingly or with good intentions, disinformation aims to foment…

A new study has found that the impending peak in the Sun's activity cycle will likely arrive significantly sooner than previously predicted.According to an analysis by astrophysicists Priyansh Jaswal, Chitradeep Saha, and Dibyendu Nandy at the Center of Excellence in Space Sciences India, solar maximum is likely to hit in January 2024.This is much, much sooner than the initial official prediction, which found solar maximum would take place in July 2025.The finding suggests that there may be better ways of predicting the…

The odds of Christopher Nolan making a fourth Batman film are very low, but never zero, it will probably never happen but sometimes it’s nice to just let yourself live in a daydream. That is exactly what fans of the director and The Dark Knight are doing over on the DC Cinematic subreddit where one fan dared to ask what would happen if “Nolan woke up (post-strike, of course) and decided to revisit his Batman Trilogy with a 4th and final film.” Whilst they admit, there “was a general sense of finality in TDKR,” they feel…