Officer rescued from floodwaters in Sachse

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Soccer ball armadillo

Biologist Rodrigo Cerqueira holds an armadillo, named Ana Botafogo in honor of the Brazilian dancer, at the Rio Zoo in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on May 21, 2014. The three-banded armadillo is in danger of extinction, largely because of deforestation and hunting in its habitat in the shrub lands of northeastern Brazil. Those risks in large part are why the armadillo was chosen as the World Cup mascot. Another is that when it's frightened, it rolls up into a ball small enough to fit into one hand.
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Massive triumphal marble arch built by Romans to honour Emperor Titus discovered

Archaeologists in Rome discover, at one end of the Circus Maximus chariot racing arena, the foundations of a huge triumphal arch built for the Emperor Titus.
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2,400-year-old gold bongs discovered in Russia

The “once-in-a-century” discovery of a set of solid gold bongs has offered a glimpse into the little-understood lives of Scythians, who ruled vast areas of Eurasia for a thousand years 2,400 years ago.
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Black Widows' Bad Rap: 4 Misconceptions About the Spider

One woman's snack break turned sour this week when she reached into a bag of grapes and felt the bite of a venomous black widow spider. But black widows aren't as horrifying as you might think.
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Why Are Some Glaciers Blue?

One of the most amazing sights in Antarctica is its stunning blue ice, rippling like a frozen sea. Patches of blue-hued ice emerge where wind and evaporation have scoured glaciers clean of snow. The translucent, wind-polished surface reflects a stunning turquoise color when the polar sun peeks above the horizon. Antarctica is the only place on Earth with these incredible stretches of blue ice.
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Saigas, an Endangered Antelope, Dying of Mystery Disease

In the past two weeks, more than a third of all saigas have been killed, conservationists have found.
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New Gardening Books

Gardeners have active fantasy lives to keep us going despite constant setbacks. Fifty shades of green don’t begin to capture what’s looping through our brains. This season, a few glorious new books are sure to ignite further desire.
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The Intelligent Plant

Depending on whom you talk to in the plant sciences today, the field of plant neurobiology represents either a radical new paradigm in our understanding of life or a slide back down into the murky scientific waters last stirred up by “The Secret Life of Plants.” Its proponents believe that we must stop regarding plants as passive objects—the mute, immobile furniture of our world—and begin to treat them as protagonists in their own dramas, highly skilled in the ways of contending in nature.
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Japan Earthquake: Magnitude 8.5 Quake Strikes off East Coast

A magnitude 8.5 earthquake struck off the east coast of Japan on Saturday, shaking buildings in Tokyo, but there was no danger of a tsunami and no immediate reports of damage since the quake was extremely deep.
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Bird accused of working for Pakistani intelligence placed in custody

With a wire-like object on its body and a mysterious stamped message on its tail, it's no wonder the bird had security services in a flap. A pigeon was been arrested and jailed in India on suspicion of being a 'spy' after it landed in Manwal village, around two and a half miles from the Pakistan border. It was discovered on Wednesday by a 14-year-old boy whose suspicions were aroused when he spotted a stamped message in Urdu on its tail that read...
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Dinosaurs Were Warm-Blooded, Scientist Suggests

In a 2014 study, a team of scientists led by Dr John Grady of the University of New Mexico suggested that non-avian dinosaur metabolism was neither endothermic nor ectothermic (cold-blooded) but an intermediate physiology termed ‘mesothermic.’ Based on his knowledge of how dinosaurs grew, Dr D’Emic re-analyzed that study, which led him to the strikingly different conclusion that dinosaurs were more like mammals than reptiles in their growth and metabolism.
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Modernity Has Come to China’s Countryside. Modern Garbage Disposal Hasn’t.

When I first rode into rural areas in northern Hebei province, I was immediately impressed with the scenery. It was not flashy, like Guilin, or some such mountainous region covered by mist. Instead, it was wide, flat, and empty. There were a few skinny...
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Lighting Indoor Plants

Houseplants are popular indoor decorations. Attractive and constantly changing, they add a softness of line and provide a bit of nature indoors. However, the ideal location of a plant for decoration may not be the ideal spot for plant growth. Lack of adequate light is the most common factor limiting the growth of plants in many areas of the home.
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This has Been a Month of Extreme Weather Around the World

Even for a world getting used to wild weather, May seems stuck on strange.
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Your Brain Can’t Handle the Moon

What is this new theory?” the long-retired New York University cognitive psychologist, Lloyd Kaufman, asked me. We were sitting behind the wooden desk of his cozy home office. He had a stack of all his papers on the moon illusion, freshly printed, waiting for me on the adjacent futon. But I couldn’t think of a better way to start our discussion than to have him respond to the latest thesis claiming to explain what has gone, for thousands of years, unexplained...
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California Set To Give Solar Panels To Low-Income Families For Free

California is the best state in the country if you want to go solar – but only if you’re rich enough. Due to the steep upfront costs of around $15,000, only those from middle- to upper-income families can afford to install solar arrays. A novel initiative is, however, looking to change that. This new project hopes to help disadvantaged communities see the sun in a different light.
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Parasites Are Wiping Out Entire Honeybee Colonies. Threat Magnitude Much Higher Than Previously Expected

Bees around the world are at risk from a number of threats including habitat loss and the effect of pesticides, plus bacterial disease like American foulbrood. Bee colonies are also at risk from mites (especially Varroa mite parasite) and parasites. Although parasites have long been associated with “colony collapse disorder”, where entire hives are wiped out, it is only recently that the magnitude of the threat has been fully realised.
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Tropical Storm Andres Forms in the Northeast Pacific; Not a Threat to Mexico

The Northeast Pacific's first named storm of 2015 is here.
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The Dragon Autopsy

Try to imagine how hard it would be to skin a Komodo dragon. It is harder than that. The problem is that the giant lizard’s hide is not just tough and leathery, but also reinforced. Many of the scales contain a small nugget of bone, called an osteoderm, which together form a kind of pointillist body armor. Sawing through these is tough on both arms and blades.
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Conan Doyle’s Poison Pen and “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot”

Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot,” published in 1910, pivots on a fictional poisonous plant, radix pedis diaboli. As a third-year medical student at the University of Edinburgh, Doyle embarked on his own experiment with a toxic root, gelsemium.
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Insect Men

The Art of Pochoir and the two Messieurs Séguys
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Birds of a feather: Elegant Close Ups Amplify the Beauty of Bird Plumes

A fashion photographer spreads his wings from photographing models to looking intimately at the elegance of bird feathers.
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Earthworm Herds

Rangers at Eisenhower State Park near the Oklahoma border found these clumps of earthworms in the road. Recent flooding may have brought out this herding behavior.
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Wasting water is a luxury we can no longer afford

Worrying about how much water to drink each day is misleading – our real problem is the growing shortage that threatens four billion people on Earth
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Tesla Ownership Vignettes

We've owned our 2013 P85 Tesla Model S since December, putting maybe 3,000 miles on it, so I thought readers would appreciate a long-term update. Overall it'€™s still the grin-inducing ride that all owners like to be smug about. That said, there have been more than a few unusual experiences.
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New study links 'unprecedented' dolphin deaths with 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was back in 2010, but the effects are still being understood. A new NOAA study finds the spill is directly linked to the deaths of an "unprecedented" number of bottlenose dolphins — a link that BP denies. It appears that no amount of cleaning can fix the long-term effects of oil contamination in fragile coastal habitats. It appears that no amount of cleaning can fix the long-term effects of oil contamination in fragile coastal habitats.
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Bird Feeders

Abderazak Tissoukai was near Xingping in China’s Guanxi region when he captured this picture of a cormorant fisherman on the Li River at sunset. “Xingping is definitely one the most beautiful places in China, with its scenic karst landscapes [and] traditional and genuine people,” he writes. (See more at source links.)
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Gorgeous 19th-Century Illustrations of Owls and Ospreys

Nowhere does the transcendent magnificence of birds of prey come more fully alive than in the fourth volume the the six-volume masterwork "The Royal Natural History" by English naturalist, geologist, and writer Richard Lydekker, originally published in 1893.
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Portable, solar-powered ecocapsules mean you can live rent- and electric-bill free, globally

If you’ve just had it with taking the subway, or sitting in an office, or just generally being around other people, you may be in luck. Slovakian firm Nice Architects has built an egg-shaped “Ecocapsule” that runs entirely on solar and wind energy, allowing its dweller(s) to live both literally, and figuratively, off the grid. The completely self-sustaining portable home contains a 9,744 watt-hour battery, a 750 watt wind turbine, and high-efficiency solar cells that can support...
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Alberta creationist Edgar Nernberg digs up what scientists are calling the most important fossil finds in decades

The Lord works in mysterious ways — and apparently, He has a pretty ironic sense of humour, too.
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Ben & Jerry's made a new flavor to raise global warming awareness

Ben & Jerry's wants ice cream lovers to know their dessert isn't the only thing in danger of melting. They announced new flavor Save Our Swirl, or SOS for short, to draw awareness to December's UN Climate Summit in France.
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Facing Fear

By J.B. MacKinnon.
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Newfound human ancestor may have lived alongside Lucy

Australopithecus deyiremeda, which lived about 3.4 million yeas ago, suggests our ancestors were more diverse than we thought
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The EPA Just Protected Drinking Water For Millions Of Americans

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will have an easier time regulating water pollution under a new rule released Wednesday.
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Poisonous cane toads: Researchers discover the most humane way to kill the pests

A team of Sydney researchers has discovered a two-step process that is the most humane way to kill cane toads. And it was a practice banned 20 years ago by animal ethics committees.
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Holy Crop: How Federal Dollars Have Made America’s Drought Crisis Worse

The federal subsidies that prop up cotton farming in Arizona are just one of myriad ways policymakers have refused to reshape laws to reflect water shortages throughout the Colorado River Basin states.
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If You’ve Wondered Why So Many Politicians Deny Climate Change, Science Has Your Answer

Echo chambers: They're always bad, but worse when they're wrong.
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Scientists find way to create supersized fruit

When Spanish explorers first brought domesticated tomatoes to Europe 500 years ago, the fruit was already gigantic compared with its olive-sized wild counterparts. Researchers trying to understand the genetic basis of this girth have uncovered a way to make other fruits larger as well. The team discovered this secret by studying two mutant tomato strains that had many branches coming off the upper part of the stem and that produced unusually fecund fruit.
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Torrential Floods in Texas

Images of the Torrential floods in Texas
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How spiders create the sounds of love

Purring spiders use leaves as microphones and speakers to transmit their purring courtship song to a female, scientists find.
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Tracking Honeybees to Save Them

Can outfitting bees with tiny radio transmitters solve colony collapse disorder?
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Heat wave kills more than 1,100 in India

Stifling heat has killed more than 1,100 people in India in less than one week. The worst-hit area is the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh, where authorities say 852 people have died in the heat wave. Another 266 have died in the neighboring state of Telangana. India recorded its highest maximum temperature of 47 degrees Celsius -- 117 degrees Fahrenheit -- at Angul in the state of Odisha on Monday, according to B.P. Yadav, director of the India Meteorological Department.
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How spiders create the sounds of love

Purring spiders use leaves as microphones and speakers to transmit their purring courtship song to a female, scientists find.
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Crossrail's excavated earth used to make nature reserve

Where do the millions of tonnes of earth go that have been excavated during the cross rail project?
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Did This Map Guide Columbus?

Researchers decipher a mystifying 15th-century document
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Heat Wave Kills More Than 700 in India

More than 700 people have lost their lives in the past week in a sustained and severe heat wave in India.
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Gold Artifacts Tell Tale of Drug-Fueled Rituals and “Bastard Wars”

Vessels discovered in a Scythian grave mound contained traces of opium and marijuana, confirming the claim of an ancient historian.
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The Death of Botany? Fewer Students Means Fewer Researchers, Less Understanding

Scientists are warning that the plant world could become a virtual mystery in the coming decades as college students increasingly shy away from studying botany and universities across the U.S. shutter their long-standing collections of plant species.
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Creating a Rest Stop for the Monarch

One of the reasons that the monarch has become the butterfly poster child is the clear link between this particular butterfly and the host plant for its larvae. The monarch butterfly can sup nectar on hundreds of different blooms, but its caterpillars have to eat at one table: a milkweed plant.
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