Santanu

A rotating ‘garbage island’ spreads over 1.6 million sq km in the Pacific: Plastic averages 50 kilograms per square kilometre, and 75 to 86% of the debris comes from fishing gear

Santanu3 weeks ago05 mins

A floating and rotating ‘garbage island’ of an estimated area of 1.6 million square kilometres lies between Hawaii and California, according to a scientific estimate published in 2018. The area of the island is said to be larger than Para and nearly three times the size of metropolitan France. What exists here is a plastic…

Meet Tina Jin, the 15-year-old Massachusetts student who turned animal bones into a new material for cleaning polluted water |

Santanu3 weeks ago06 mins

A 15-year-old Massachusetts student is exploring an unusual way to make polluted water cleaner: using discarded animal bones. Tina Jin, a student at Phillips Academy in Andover, developed a filtration system that uses ground cow, lamb or pig bones arranged in multiple layers to target different contaminants in water. Her research focuses on places where…

Meet Zainab Nathani, the Illinois student who designed a material that can pull water from humid air using sunlight |

Santanu4 weeks ago04 mins

Zainab Nathani, a high school junior from Niles, Illinois, has designed a material that can pull drinkable water straight out of humid air, powered entirely by sunlight. Studying at Niles Township West High School, she built her project around emulsion-templated composite biogels, porous, bio-based structures engineered to trap moisture from the atmosphere and release it…

African honeyguide birds recognise local calls from honey hunters to help find hidden bee nests |

Santanu4 weeks ago04 mins

Deep in the forests of Mozambique, finding a wild bee nest can begin with a sound. Yao honey hunters use a distinctive call to attract greater honeyguides, small birds capable of leading people towards bee colonies hidden inside trees. The relationship has been passed down for generations, but new research suggests the birds are not…

Coffee beans found in Civet poop used to make one of the world’s most expensive Kopi Luwak coffee which costs thousands of dollars per kilogram |

Santanu4 weeks ago06 mins

Asian palm civet. Image Credit: Bernard DUPONT/Wikipedia Kopi luwak is one of the world’s most unusual coffees because its production begins inside the digestive system of an animal. The coffee is made from beans eaten and later excreted by the ‘Asian palm civet,’ a small mammal found across parts of South and Southeast Asia. The…

Meet Arya Gurumukhi, the Texas student developing a ‘Bionic Leaf’ that uses sunlight, water and bacteria to make fuel |

Santanu4 weeks ago05 mins

A power cut in Texas left Arya Gurumukhi and her family without heat for days during the severe winter storm of 2021. She was young, but the experience stayed with her. The problem was no longer an abstract question about climate or energy systems. It was something she had experienced inside her own home. Gurumukhi…

In the 1990s, a predatory flatworm was released in Samoa to control giant African snails; it later became linked to the decline and extinction of native island snails

Santanu4 weeks ago04 mins

In the 1990s, a predatory flatworm was released in Samoa to control giant African snails An aggressive predatory flatworm introduced to Pacific islands during the 1990s to control agricultural pests has pushed native land snail species toward extinction, turning a planned biological control program into an ecological disaster. The New Guinea flatworm (Platydemus manokwari) was…

Meet Finnegan McGill, the 18-year-old Arizona student who spent four years building an AI device that can identify birds from their calls and pinpoint where they are |

Santanu4 weeks ago05 mins

Finnegan McGill. Image Credit: Chris Ayers/Society for Science Finnegan McGill has spent more than four years turning a concern about declining bird populations into a working piece of technology. This 18-year-old student from Tucson, Arizona, developed a device known as ‘A-BiRD’ (Automated Bird Recognition Device) which could help in identifying birds by their calls and…

In 1937, Australian scientists released infected rabbits on an island to test a virus that would later transform rabbit control across the continent |

Santanu4 weeks ago06 mins

A European rabbit in Tasmania. Image Credit: JJ Harrison/Wikipedia In 1937, Australian scientists took an unusual step in the fight against one of the country’s most destructive pests known as ‘rabbits.’ They released rabbits carrying ‘myxoma virus’ on Wardang Island, off South Australia, to see whether the disease could spread naturally. The experiment was part…

Meet Ankan Das, the 15-year-old Florida student who built a shape-shifting robot that crawls on Moon soil and squeezes through tight spaces |

Santanu4 weeks ago05 mins

Representative Image of a tensegrity robot navigating obstacles during a search-and-rescue mission (AI-generated image) Ankan Das is a 15-year-old sophomore at Oviedo High School in Florida, but his latest science-fair project looks more like something from a robotics laboratory than a school classroom. For his Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair project, Das built a…

Underwater sensors caught a rare event off Cornwall: one porpoise became trapped in a net while two animals exchanged possible distress calls

Sea otters returned to a polluted California estuary in 1984; eelgrass expanded 600%, while marsh-edge erosion later slowed by 69% on average

Brazil restored a former cattle landscape with native trees; decades later, lowland tapirs returned after disappearing for 100 years |

Quote of the day by Isaac Newton: “Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things” |

A Scottish river project set out to revive oysters that once covered an area the size of Edinburgh; now, 60,000 have been returned |

In 2015, Canada sank a 113-metre retired warship off British Columbia; five years later, monitoring had recorded more than 170 marine species on the wreck

Human hair, receipts, fishing nets, and eggshells were among 17 waste materials tested to create stronger, lower-carbon cement building products |

Meet Franklin Howley-Dumit Serulle, the amateur naturalist whose online insect photo helped reveal a new hoverfly species |

Meet Naidely Valeria Vidaurre-Quesada, the scientist who helped uncover a ghost shark species hiding in Costa Rica’s dark waters |

From 2012 to 2022, nearly 30,000 commercial vessel arrivals brought 430 sq km of submerged hull surface to Alaska; biofouling habitat grew 50%, increasing invasive-species risk

A rotating ‘garbage island’ spreads over 1.6 million sq km in the Pacific: Plastic averages 50 kilograms per square kilometre, and 75 to 86% of the debris comes from fishing gear

Meet Tina Jin, the 15-year-old Massachusetts student who turned animal bones into a new material for cleaning polluted water |

Meet Zainab Nathani, the Illinois student who designed a material that can pull water from humid air using sunlight |

African honeyguide birds recognise local calls from honey hunters to help find hidden bee nests |

Coffee beans found in Civet poop used to make one of the world’s most expensive Kopi Luwak coffee which costs thousands of dollars per kilogram |

Meet Arya Gurumukhi, the Texas student developing a ‘Bionic Leaf’ that uses sunlight, water and bacteria to make fuel |

In the 1990s, a predatory flatworm was released in Samoa to control giant African snails; it later became linked to the decline and extinction of native island snails

Meet Finnegan McGill, the 18-year-old Arizona student who spent four years building an AI device that can identify birds from their calls and pinpoint where they are |

In 1937, Australian scientists released infected rabbits on an island to test a virus that would later transform rabbit control across the continent |

Meet Ankan Das, the 15-year-old Florida student who built a shape-shifting robot that crawls on Moon soil and squeezes through tight spaces |