Autumn Harvest Basket wallpaper, Wildlife education boosts math scores, Mars lander finds minerals suggesting past water

Autumn Harvest Basket wallpaper

National Wildlife Federation’s Program Boosts Student Math Scores

Environmental education, defined as any educational activity that had a goal of producing citizens who had knowledge of the environment and its problems, as well as a motivation to solve those problems, is rooted in integrated education. It has become a popular and relevant addition to K-12 classrooms throughout the world. One example of an integrated environmental curriculum used in K-12 schools is the National Wildlife Federation’s (NWF) Schoolyard Habitat Program (SYHP). The SYHP grew out of an already existing NWF program called the Backyard Wildlife Habitat program that fostered the creation of backyard wildlife habitats by private landowners. In the SYHP, backyard wildlife habitats must also be used as an educational teaching resource.

Wildlife awareness and education is probably thought of as nice, but since schools are under the gun to produce results on standardized tests programs like SYHP aren’t thought of as a priority. But what if programs that include integrated curriculum strategies like SYHP helped with math scores,

Study results showed that students who participated in SYHP had significantly increased math scores when compared with peers from schools that used a more traditional curriculum.

Mars lander finds minerals suggesting past water

NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft has discovered evidence of past water at its Martian landing site and spotted falling snow for the first time, scientists reported Monday. Soil experiments revealed the presence of two minerals known to be formed in liquid water. Scientists identified the minerals as calcium carbonate, found in limestone and chalk, and sheet silicate.

But exactly how that happened remains a mystery.

That’s nice and all, but until they serve deep dish pizza I’m styaing right here.

Echeveria Cactus wallpaper, Arctic ice still below average minimum

Echeveria Cactus wallpaper

Sometimes called rosette cactus Echeveria are fairly common at plant nurseries. The ones pictured have either just gotten a little rain shower or have been watered. The drops look pretty for the photo, but generally watering over the plant rather then into the soil will leave unattractive water spots from minerals in the water.

NASA Data Show Arctic Saw Fastest August Sea Ice Retreat on Record

Following a record-breaking season of arctic sea ice decline in 2007, NASA scientists have kept a close watch on the 2008 melt season. Although the melt season did not break the record for ice loss, NASA data are showing that for a four-week period in August 2008, sea ice melted faster during that period than ever before.

Each year at the end of summer, sea ice in the Arctic melts to reach its annual minimum. Ice that remains, or “perennial ice,” has survived from year to year and contains old, thick ice. The area of arctic sea ice, including perennial and seasonal ice, has taken a hit in past years as melt has accelerated. Researchers believe that if the rate of decline continues, all arctic sea ice could be gone within the century.

“I was not expecting that ice cover at the end of summer this year would be as bad as 2007 because winter ice cover was almost normal,” said Joey Comiso of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “We saw a lot of cooling in the Arctic that we believe was associated with La Niña. Sea ice in Canada had recovered and even expanded in the Bering Sea and Baffin Bay. Overall, sea ice recovered to almost average levels. That was a good sign that this year might not be as bad as last year.”

The 2008 sea ice minimum was second to 2007 for the record-lowest extent of sea ice, according to a joint announcement Sept. 16 by NASA and the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colo. As of Sept. 12, 2008, the ice extent was 1.74 million square miles. That’s 0.86 million square miles below the average minimum extent recorded from 1979 to 2000, according to NSIDC.

I’m not going to link to to one of them, but there is a “news” article floating around the web that says the Arctic has had a net gain of ice this year. This false news story is worded similarly to the one above from NASA with a few important differences. The summer has ended for the Arctic so it would be only natural that ice melting would ease from summer levels and we would see a net gain, especially of what is termed new ice. Kind of difficult to have an honest debate about global warming and Arctic ice melting if people are going to put out spurious data masquerading as news.

From the U.K. McDonald’s trims its waste line

The fast-food giant will take waste food, paper and cardboard to be converted into compost for agricultural use on farms – rather than dumping it in a landfill.

About 40 tonnes (British tons) of waste is expected to be saved during the two-week test.

If all the McDonalds in Britain participate in the project it is estimated they would recycle 90,000 tonnes(90 million kg) of refuse a year.

Antarctic Ice Breaker wallpaper, Geese With Bony-teeth Once Roamed Across SE England

Antarctic Ice Breaker wallpaper

Giant Ocean-going Geese With Bony-teeth Once Roamed Across SE England

A 50 million year old skull reveals that huge birds with a 5 metre wingspan once skimmed across the waters that covered what is now London, Essex and Kent. These giant ocean-going relatives of ducks and geese also had a rather bizarre attribute for a bird: their beaks were lined with bony-teeth.

If you live in the city and think the pigeon droppings are bad, imagine what it would have been like with these giant Bony-teeth Geese flying around the park on your lunch hour.

Renewal: California Academy of Science re-opens

The interior is decked out with a four story rainforest, a coral reef, a swamp, a natural history museum, and a colony of south African penguins. But the part that I am excited about is outside and literally above all that. The roof is a living green roof

Photo by Tim Griffith

Greyhound Rock Beach wallpaper, Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens, Another e. coli outbreak

Greyhound Rock Beach wallpaper

Native plants help sustain wildlife

In his book, “Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens” (Timber Press, $27.95), he writes of the unbreakable link between native plants and native wildlife.

The bugs, birds and other fauna are hard-wired to seek food and shelter from native plants or to use them for laying eggs. The relationship is crucial to their survival, and as we sprawl into the suburbs, we destroy or disrupt the natural habitat of birds, butterflies and other creatures.

Making major changes to the way we do our landscaping is a subject that just will not go away. Since its not an obvious tragedy like a car wreck the implications of continuing to have hundreds of thousands of acres of lawns that are in the tradition of 19th century royalty, makes naturescaping a difficult issue for some to get passionate about. What we have in some ways are big green deserts. Lawns that don’t support birds, moths, rabbits and other native species. In fact they’re a drain on our resources, requiring fuel, synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.

E.coli outbreak linked to bulk lettuce

State health officials believe the source of the E.coli outbreak that has now sickened 26 people state-wide – including 17 in Southeast Michigan – is industrial-size bagged iceberg lettuce.

Chinese astronaut walks in space

Astronaut Zhai Zhigang became the first Chinese man to walk in space Saturday…

We Can’t Afford McCain and Palin’s Anti-Science Beliefs

The Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent watchdog group, has documented dozens of cases where the U.S. government has interfered with, undermined, or falsified science in public policy over the last seven years.

Starfish at low tide

Heather and Sunflower wallpaper, Granite head of Ramses II found, Oldest rocks on Earth found

Heather and Sunflower wallpaper

Egypt unearths granite head of Ramses II

CAIRO, Egypt – Egypt’s antiquities council says that archaeologists have unearthed a 3,000-year-old red granite head believed to portray the 19th Dynasty pharaoh Ramses II.

…The council’s statement Thursday says the 30-inch high head belonged to a colossal statue of Ramses II that once stood in the area. Its nose is broken and the beard that was once attached to the king’s chin is missing.

The Ramses II entry at Wikipedia.

Oldest rocks on Earth found

Scientists have found the oldest known rocks on Earth. They are 4.28 billion years old, making them 250 million years more ancient than any previously discovered rocks.

Earth formed about 4.6 billion years ago from a disk of gas and dust circling the sun. Remnants of crust from Earth’s infancy are hard to come by because most of that material has been recycled into Earth’s interior several times by the plate tectonics that continue to shape our planet’s surface.

The rocks come from the Acasta Gneiss in Canada’s Northwest Territories.