News from the beaches of Mexico have grandmothers and shepherds thinking twice about where they spin their wool, as the Mexican government drafts charges against a crocheter they’ve declared a vandal. Picking up popularity as a peaceful form of protest, or temporary graffiti as officers refer to it, “yarn bombing” has become a fairly common occurrence in Metropolitan life. Wrapped around phone polls, hung from trees, or even adorning a scantily clad historical monument, sweaters and other fibrous creations are spun and strung up throughout cities worldwide. But one such protest is causing a not-so-peaceful resolution as Mexican officials say they’re ready to prosecute.
With recent news of vampire-like parasitic plants and the West African outbreak of Ebola, it has become ever-apparent that disease and pestilence can take a serious toll on every species including humans. But have you given much thought to what could be threatening your morning cup of joe? Throughout most of Central America, in regions prime for coffee plantations, lies a fungus who also happens to love its morning brew. Thought to have originated in the coffee plantations of Africa, Hemileia vastatrix more commonly known as “roya” is a pestilent fungus known to cause disease in the species Coffea arabica—otherwise known as coffee.
As news of NASA’s plan to construct a permanent greenhouse on our local neighboring red planet Mars, other news comes from the red planet’s private sector—the newly funded “Mars One”. The independently crowd-funded Dutch company, Mars One is estimating that they can colonize Mars for human pilgrims as soon as 2023. And people are flooding in for a chance to explore the red planet.
Eight years after the return of NASA’s stardust space probe, whose primary mission was to collect dust off of nearby passing comets, astronomers reveal that they have discovered seven hair-length particles that are the first interstellar star fragments to ever be studied in labs here on Earth.
Hoping to enact a bit of change in the Kenyan plains to mark the observance of the Aug. 12 World Elephant Day, one conservationist waited out the clock, as she urged the nation’s top police officials to take action against someone she claims is the “Ivory Kingpin” of Kenya.
In the Brazilian state of Goias, situated in the center of the nation and home to the national capital of Brasilia, residents’ expressions in the sunbaked hills of Araras are all but non-existent. Blood-red eyes peer through twisted expressions, across faces scorched and scarred by the sun. Home to a very rare, and very dangerous genetic skin disorder, Xeroderma pigmentosum, the residents of Araras have become “children of the night” as they evade the excruciating effects that sunlight has on their dermal layers.
In the aftermath of the World Cup 2014 in Brazil, news of business transactions in the streets and not the stadiums has become quite a concern, as the oldest profession known to man has brought devastating crime and disease to a global level.
Looking to contextualize recent findings of the scientific journal Science, a group of international researchers found that current trends of loss in species abundance and diversity may signal a tipping point for the Earth’s sixth mass extinction event—one caused indirectly by humans’ presence here on the green planet.
