Three 16-year-old girls win Google’s global science competition with breakthrough project

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They started on the project after learning about the 2011 famine in the Horn of Africa. The girls came up with an experiment that resulted in seriously impressive results that are considered a breakthrough in crop yield technoology: When a gardening project went awry, they discovered a naturally occurring bacteria in soil called Diazotroph. The girls determined that the bacteria could be used to speed up the germination process of certain crops, like barley and oats, by 50 percent, potentially helping fulfill the rising demand for food worldwide.

Read more: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/26/1332621/-Three-16-year-old-girls-win-Google-s-global-science-competition-with-breakthrough-project?detail=email

World’s Biggest Ocean Reserve Established by Obama

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Originally, the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument was something that George W. Bush established during his last weeks in office. However, Obama has taken the symbolic ocean protection and turned it into something useful by growing the area to six times its original size.

Going forward, this nearly half million square miles of the Pacific Ocean will forbid commercial fishing, as well as deep sea mining. For the coral, dolphins, whales, sea turtles, manta rays and numerous fish and bird species that frequent this area, this decision helps to ensure their survival.

How The ‘Black Fingers Of Death’ Can Help Defeat Climate Change

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PROVO, UTAH — This small city on the Wasatch Front south of Salt Lake City seems an unlikely locale for what could turn out to be an important battle against climate change. But here, in a modest building housing the U.S. Forest Service’s Shrub Sciences Laboratory, research ecologist Susan Meyer and her colleagues are working laboriously to defeat a tenacious alien plant, cheatgrass, once dubbed the “invader that won the West.”

If they succeed and a broad effort is launched to restore millions of acres of degraded western land that have been profoundly altered by the invader, they may also be able to suck an enormous amount of carbon out of the atmosphere and store it below ground. There is “immense potential for increasing carbon sequestration through restoration of these degraded systems,” Meyer concluded in a 2012 research paper.

READ MORE   http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/09/09/3478143/black-fingers-of-death-climate-change/

1,000-Year-Old Viking Fortress Unearthed In Denmark

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“A military fortification from the Viking Age may shed more light on the links between Zealand, ancient Denmark and the Jelling dynasty — as well as teaching us more about the period during which Denmark became Denmark,” she said in the statement.

READ MORE   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/09/viking-fortress-denmark_n_5790788.html

12 Ecologically Sustainable Countries and Why They Should Be Admired

In the interest of curbing our own ecological overspending, here’s a list of 12 countries with ecologically sustainable policies.

READ MORE    http://www.alternet.org/environment/12-ecologically-sustainable-countries-and-why-they-should-be-admired?akid=12187.128915.I80Uab&rd=1&src=newsletter1017354&t=9

Plans to Slash Emissions Wind Up Paying for Themselves

Too often, the real financial benefits of emission programs are overlooked. The mistake that most carbon reduction plans make is failing to estimate the benefits and subsequent money that is saved through improved air quality.  … Pollution is responsible for plenty of health effects like heart disease, lung disease and asthma attacks. By cleaning the air, the government ends up making the money back by spending less money on medical care for the population and workers not having to take sick days.

We Are On The Verge Of An Electric Car Battery Breakthrough

The main reason for having a huge factory dedicated to building these batteries is the simple fact that a lot of people want electric cars, but automakers don’t have enough batteries to make them. Musk said the Gigafactory would be able to produce 500,000 vehicles every year. That’s a huge increase from current production rates — as Forbes notes, the batteries produced at the gigafactory in one year would be “more than the entire worldwide production of lithium-ion cells in 2013.”

READ MORE    http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/08/31/3476807/tesla-electric-car-battery-breakthrough/

Happy Accident With Garden Hose Leads To ‘Really Significant’ Stonehenge Discovery

An Aerial View of Stone Henge

A prolonged drought has revealed that the mysterious monument’s ancient stones, which currently arc in a semicircle, likely once formed a complete circle. The source of this discovery? A garden hose, used for watering the grounds, that was too short to reach the monument’s far side.

READ MORE  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/02/stonehenge-full-circle-stones_n_5752134.html