Bye-bye barf: whale vomit no longer necessary to make perfumesambergris-the technical term for hunks of sperm whale vomit-has long been a component in high end perfumes.
The whales eat all kinds of things, including shells, bones and other hard or sharp objects that it can't digest.
Instead of trying to pass the spiky bits, the whales coat them in this sticky substance and cough them back up like cats cough up hairballs.
When that hunk-o-junk meets the seawater, a chemical reaction happens that turns the slimy mass into a little rock-like object that can be collected from the beaches.
It might seem like an unlikely candidate for perfumes since the stuff apparently smells about as gross as it sounds.
Ambergris critics argue that it endangers the already vulnerable sperm whale from which it comes. Others dislike the use of animal products in their cosmetics in general.
So now, rather than crawling the beaches for little hunks of whale vomit, researchers could manufacture a similar compound in the lab. Ambergris in a bowl Before you go check your perfume bottles,
It's also worth noting that no one has seen ever actually a sperm whale vomit up ambergris. Some think it might come out the other end.
Sperm whale by Archibald Thorburn, Wikimedia Commons Ambergris by Peter Kaminski, Wikimedia Commons
California company offers sustainable packaging for meat, fishit may be an obscure biblical reference, but I have to admit that the first thing
Inside the container are two large vats and a fish tank, which looks barely large enough to hold the dozens of tilapia squirming around inside.
aquaponic food won't be allowed to carry either the German or the European union's organic seal on supermarket shelves.
(which include foxes and porcupines) to pass through the community, and a rooftop pool. And again, the designers propose a mix of live-work spaces.
or dust mulch, that seals in the moisture against evaporation. Crops planted in the water-saving soil live off this reserved moisture instead of irrigation.
Changing elephant poo to green paperjaipur/DELHI--The elephant ride up the stone pathway of the medieval Amber fort outside Jaipur is designed to make tourists feel like Rajput warriors returning from battle-or something on those fantastical lines.
stared at the mounds of dung plopping out at regular intervals as the elephants ambled up to the sandstone and marble palace.
 Much to the horror of his family, Shekhawat returned home with sacks of elephant poo to experiment
 The poo source Thrice a month, the two brothers set out on a motorbike to collect 1000kgs of dung from the elephant quarters behind the Amber fort.
Abdul Lateef, owner of four elephants rebuffed concerns that it is cruel to have chained elephants in small quarters
and then paraded out on stones that heat up in the sun. Å I treat them like my children,
Two female elephants stand in a shed surrounded by fodder and cocky monkeys. Despite being chained at the foot,
One elephant poops about 12 times everyday, which is around 180 kgs of dung that can produce 265 sheets of paper (an average size of 30x25 inches).
which begins in the elephant sheds behind the Rajput fort, leads to an ethnic market called Dilli Haat, a hugely popular hangout in the capital city.
But one sign catches the eyes a big elephant bottom with a cute curly tail that reads Å made using only the finest dung available in India.
 The shop contains various elephant poo products like paper, notepads, handicrafts, photoalbums and clocks.
elephant poo is like the cow dung, which is worshipped by millions of Indians. Even his elderly mother has made peace with the poo.
The company has taken pains to make sure its materials are sourced from places in China where harvesting the bamboo won't be harmful to panda habitats,
of course--but the major environmental pollution problem at the turn of the century was the millions of pounds of manure in city streets produced by horses used for transport.
It may not be quite as visible or an assault on our senses as horse manure but it's just as significant.
Scientific efforts to resurrect mammoths and other extinct species through cloning technology point toward a cheaper solution,
Joseph Wolf (1898), via Wikimedia) But returning to the merits of Mulligan's proposal, remember that resurrecting dead
Russian and Japanese scientists announced early in December that they hoped to clone a mammoth within five years,
(which have been cloned common among animals to date). Moreover, all those cloning efforts crucially relied on the use of egg cells
Many animal species learn essential survival behaviors from their parents, for example. Bereft of good role models and the ecological interactions they would have had naturally,
It goes without saying that Mulligan's idea also ignores the actual services that various ecosystems render to us humans refreshing the air, cleaning water, reducing pests, and so on.
Since 1976, the Frozen Zoo at the San diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research has collected cell specimens form more than 800 animal species and subspecies.
So we're using cellulosic biomass waste streams--corn cobs, treetops and limbs, dead pine trees from pine beetles.
The emerging trends are corn cobs--that's what Dupont, Denisco and Verenium are using.
Corn cobs are easy to break down into sugar. But that's not a solution to the cellulosic fuel problem.
Practical application in Corporate Water Stewardship, drills down more deeply into three specific examples of how Coca-cola is working on this problem.
and plants to control pests while reducing risks to human health. There has been some wonderful coverage of sustainable agriculture recently
The blight, Phytophthora infestans, is considered now a water mold, more closely related to the malaria parasite. It thrives in cool,
Dissolving fruit stickerstraditional fruit stickers seem destined to go the way of the mouse pad.
Drugs-on-the-cob: growing new meds in cornscientists have found a way to use maize to produce an expensive drug.
A lack of grass is also dramatically raising the costs to farmers in animal Feed in addition, cities with seemingly endlessly-growing levels of pollution, like Madrid, Barcelona,
He is a board member of the Ohio Environmental Council and the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.
For yet another year, nearly one-third of U s. honeybee colonies didn t make it through the winter
Honeybee colony numbers are stable; they have been since before CCD hit the scene in 2006.
After sifting through economic measures on the state of honeybees, economists Randal Rucker and Walter Thurman arrived at this conclusion:
Commercial queen breeders can rear large numbers of queen bees quickly, putting little to no upward pressure on bee prices following CCD.
The cost of CCD on almonds, one of the most important crops from a honeybee pollinating perspective,
Sometime this summer or soon after, the federal Food and Drug Administration may finally approve the first-ever genetically modified animal for human consumption--a fast-growing Atlantic salmon that has taken 17 years to reach the threshold of American consensus. The man to thank
I have no doubt the FDA will approve a genetically modified animal at some point, says Kakha Bendukidze,
Whether it's this fish or some other animal, it has to do this, or it risks America losing its biotechnology edge to countries like China.
Aquabounty is the only animal biotechnology company in the United states trying to gain approval for a gene-altered animal to enter the human food chain.
if the United states can't approve a gene-altered animal for consumption, U s. industries will lose out to nations that will.
has said one factor in moving the study was that it took the FDA a decade just to decide how to regulate bioengineered food and dairy animals.
whose San diego lab scientists are genetically engineering zebra fish to try out other alterations in commercial seafood,
and have less fear of predators. The FDA drew their assessment on the narrow grounds of containment in Panama
says Patty Lovera, assistant director of the consumer watchdog group Food and Water Watch, just one of the 300 groups that oppose the fish.
is try to make a more efficient animal, Bendukidze says. Itã¢â â¢s like selective breeding in cattle to increase milk production or produce more beef per pound.
and being weakened by drought or insect infestations, such as the mountain pine beetle. These circumstances, the researchers said,
An electric airplane for only $34, 000 Flyboard jetpack lets you perform dolphin aerial tricks video Futuristic motor home is ultra luxurious,
Fruit-bat colony forces architects to change building designa v-shaped walkway was designed around the trees housing rare bats HONG KONG
A group of endangered fruit bats had taken up residency in the trees where the designers wanted to build a covered bridge to connect two of the buildings.
I call it the million-dollar fruit bat, he said, referring to the added cost of the new bridge design to accommodate the critters.
When asked about his thoughts on having to keep the fruit bats happy, Williams pointed out that there were also activists who demanded that most of the trees be preserved, all of
That s what the UK-based Energy Saving Trust concludes in its freshly minted report, The Elephant in the Living room:
Even if British utilities were to hit a 2020 goal of generating more electricity from renewable sources, consumers compulsion to view screens, click mice,
notebooks, tablets, smartphones, e-readers may mean more energy used by chargers. Not all sectors of domestic use are rising.
They have the lion's share of water rights. With low-flow irrigation and other off-the-shelf devices, we're reducing it by 50 to 70 percent.
In fact, the botanists speculate that one possible explanation for the fern's arsenic storage ability is to discourage animals from dining on fern salad.
reflecting not only the alarming numbers of elephants slaughtered but also the great demand in Asia that still fuels the international trade after it was outlawed in 1989.
since 2008--a massive stack belonging to about 1, 800 elephants and worth around US$90 million, based on recent valuations.
creating a habitat for animals and better quality water for residents. Scientists are recreating natural elements, such as riffles and pools,
If all of that oil were sold at current Brent benchmark prices (it wouldn't be but just as a point of reference), that's $115 million a day in lost revenue, just to make fresh water.
says Tim Fox, IME's head of energy and environment. This is food that could be used to feed the world's growing population-as well as those in hunger today.
Fox says. Consider IME's report as food for thought the next time you reject a crooked carrot or a lumpy apple.
Getting rid of pests can be the biggest challenge in organic farming, which is done entirely without pesticides or insecticides.
Mathur uses pheromone traps and sticky traps as well as a garlic and red chili paste to get rid of the bugs.
Still, rats can be a menace. So why go through all this trouble? For Mathur, it s been a lifelong dream to spend her time growing flowers and vegetables.
Honeybee decline spells trouble for our food supplybillions of honeybees have died worldwide since 2006. Coined the colony collapse disorder (CCD),
Honeybees pollinate close to 90 crops such as avocados, cucumbers, sprouts, apples, onions, broccoli, coffee and tomatoes.
Foods and beverages produced with the help of animal pollinators include almonds, apples, blueberries, coffee, melons and soybeans.
So what exactly is making the honeybees disappear? New research out of the University of Montana suggests there's a link between the CCD
German airports use honeybees to sniff out air quality
Hong kong cracks down on trade in baby formulamilk formula is sold alongside Chinese herbs. HONG KONG--Hong kong parents have been contending with a frustrating shortage of infant milk formula.
and the bug that lands on your arm isn t a fly but something green and a little fuzzy.
Chan says, a source of enjoyment for the three guard dogs. Electrified wires one foot off the ground ward off the countryside s main intruders at night.
Vanessa Ko Composting with earth worms
'House of Water'taps market for designer aguamexico CITY The sign outside reads Casa del Agua and below it, el agua local:
Flamingoes really do turn pink from eating shrimp(#11. Human brains do in fact weigh about three pounds(#55.
A mosquito doesn t really have 47 teeth(#50; it has serrated a proboscis. Pennsylvania isn t really misspelled on the Liberty bell(#300)
because Pensylvania was accepted an spelling in the 18th century. Some are contradictions. In two separate Real Facts, Manhattan(#339) and Philadelphia(#662) were the first capital of the U s
Elephants actually sleep three to seven hours a night, not two(#35. The Statue of liberty wasn't the first electric lighthouse(#179.
They ve also incorporated sustainability into every aspect of people's lives, down to chickens and beehives in people's backyards.
it's like putting a sponge in the soil. Biochar has very high surface area, so it soaks up everything around it.
With 1. 2 billion methane-burping animals on the planet today, the digestive systems of livestock are worthy of examination.
By dropping electronic devices into cows stomachs, researchers hope to monitor what it is that makes the animals so gassy
and stops it from moving beyond the rumen-the chamber in a cow or sheep's stomach where much of the gas production occurs.
scientists hope to alter the cows diets to produce Šlow methane  animals. CSIRO is also researching exactly how diet
or cardigan ensemble, doff the bold rings adorning her expressive fingers, toss back her signature blonde blowout and commune with the plants.
dozens of angry ants were scuttling furiously around the top of an anthill when a young Irish chef named Trevor Moran said,
and let the tiny ants rush to the attack, climbing onto my skin and pricking me with their minuscule pincers.
A couple of times a week from spring through fall, Moran and a Danish colleague, Thomas Paulsen, forage for ants for Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant where they work (often named the world's top table by food critics
attract the bugs onto rolled up pieces of waxed paper and pour them into a plastic container--all the
Over the past year or so, Noma's chef and co-owner, Renã Â Redzepi, has become a leading proponent of insects as food.
Now one of the lab's principal activities is exploring the gastronomic qualities of insects.
Nobody knows exactly how many people around the planet think of bugs as lunch. Some estimates say that 70 percent of the world's cultures have a tradition of eating insects
from Cambodia to Nigeria to Mexico--practically everywhere outside the modern West. One reason for this cultural disparity is that insects are larger,
more available and easier to harvest in tropical zones. But as the global population explodes, edible insects could become big business worldwide.
What interests Redzepi is their potential as a new source of deliciousness, especially since he restricts his cuisine to indigenous products in a place where variety is hard to come by.
the Brazilian chef Alex Atala showed up with Amazonian ants to try. Redzepi said the taste was explosive
while foraging for herbs, Moran met a Danish schoolteacher who had been serving local ants to his students,
when do we get past the point of seeing it as a bug rather than an ingredient?
In the spring of 2012 he added Danish ants to his tasting menu, served live,
Nonetheless, very few clients rejected the bugs. In fact, many showed up asking for them. But Redzepi has been disappointed by the reaction of others,
he is fed up with eating the same animals day after day. Everywhere I travel it's the same.
Right now, these three ants we've found are making our food better. And ants are only the beginning--the earth hosts at least 1
900 species of edible bugs just waiting for a creative hand in the kitchen. Every morning before work, Redzepi stops in at the Nordic Food Lab, a roomy houseboat docked in the harbor steps from Noma.
He conceived the foundation, sits on its board, and shares some of his kitchen staff, but makes clear the lab is a completely independent entity from the restaurant.
and explained to me that the primary focus of the insect project is what they call the hedonic factor.
It doesn't matter how nutritious insects might be or how impressive their food conversion rate--if they don't taste good,
The Food Lab receives the bugs in different stages of development: older pupae with the beginnings of a differentiated thorax and abdomen,
Reade explained that bee larvae were an excellent gateway insect for breaking down the mental barriers people have to ingesting bugs.
He said the first time you eat an insect is generally the hardest, but a positive experience can quickly change attitudes:
But if you say'all this animal has eaten ever is honey, 'it can be a real game changer.
The staff at the Nordic Food Lab say there are many reasons for convincing Westerners to add insects to their diet.
But bugs should not be considered the sole solution to the problem of feeding a growing planet.
Insects emit less greenhouse gases, can often be grown on organic waste, frequently prefer to be packed together,
grasshoppers, for example, provide the same protein content as beef with less fat. They have a high food conversion rate--according to the U n. Food and agriculture organization,
crickets need six times less feed than cattle to produce the same amount of protein. With these facts in mind, the European union is investing some 4 million euros in a feasibility study of insects as protein in animal feed.
An important aspect of any such study is pathology: knowing which insects are safe to eat and
which might make us sick. At the Food Lab, the staff use cultural practices as a starting point.
If a certain insect is part of a human diet somewhere in the world, it is more likely to be pathogen-free.
Once they are convinced that a bug is safe, they search for the best ways to uncover its deliciousness,
The first time the grasshoppers arrived, Reade immediately thought of turning them into a garum, using a fermentation technique going back to Roman times.
they had made already a garum with grasshoppers and wax moth larvae, with excellent results. On this day they decided to try it with bee larvae.
pureed grasshoppers and added it to the blend. One main obstacle to eating insects is the exoskeleton,
but the food processor quickly solves the problem. Reade whizzed the mixture together until it turned the color of chocolate mousse with little brown specks.
It smelled sweet like the koji with an earthy, toasted note from the grasshoppers. Crickets don't taste like much to start,
he said. They're not flavor-rich like ants. But they are protein-rich so the flavor comes from fermenting.
The mix would sit for six weeks at 42 degrees celsius, during which time it would darken,
The fermented cricket paste was the first of the Food Lab's insect-based creations to make it onto the menu at Noma.
me a sorrel leaf folded around a bit of cricket miso, beet reduction and lacto-fermented red currants.
The grasshopper smear had a pungent umami flavor that contrasted with the tart greenness of the leaf.
Redzepi was careful to point out that insects are only a small fraction of what Noma serves.
The Danish wood ants, for example, are milder in spring and sweeter in summer. Sometimes when they have eaten just,
The ants have become an ingredient in two new dishes at Noma, ground into paste with a bit of thyme oil as a binder (and less recognizable than when served alive).
The insects added a bright citrus note, followed by an aftertaste of something wild and alien--an almost aggressive flavor
governments are trying to implement  20 targets to save the world's fast disappearing flora and fauna.
But with loud screams or shouts, the tree will then adopt the behavior of a skittish animal,
maybe Angry Birds is good but something medical might actually change the world. From NPR and Wired.
and black sugarcane are just a few of the crops Keshav Tavre grows on his suburban plot on the outskirts of Mumbai--all of it from a supply of untreated sewage that snakes past his land.
With Studio Visualizer, the 3-D bottle is turned from side to side and upside down with the move of a computer mouse.
Jack Hanna on the one word in global warming that everyone's avoidingjack Hanna is an animal expert, director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium,
ŠJungle Jack  and his animals are regular guests on The Late Show with David Letterman, Good morning America, Larry king Live, The Ellen Degeneres Show and The Maury Povich Show.
 I spoke with Hanna recently about zoos conservation, and the obvious cause of global warming that he said no one wants to discuss.
When you arrived at the Columbus Zoo in 1978, what did the habitats look like? It was on the verge of being closed,
like a lot of zoos. A lot of the animals were in cages, and it didn t resemble natural habitats.
This is totally a conservation field that has turned around a million percent. Last year, 182 million people went to zoos and aquariums.
It s the largest recreation activity in America not NASCAR, not football. Today, in some cases the habitats are built better than
We just opened a polar bear and grizzly bear habitat. The water for the polar bears is 54 degrees
they have salinated water with fish, and it s a good place for them to dive deep.
The grizzlies have a tide pool that goes up and down and a stream stocked with trout. You ve said that Baby boomers are the worst culprits in terms of animal conservation.
It s the human beings, not the animals. Is it not obvious or what? I tell people what happens to our resources water, air,
Why is educating people at zoos so important? Kids don t get outside anymore. When folks see the zoo;
they re calling giraffes camels and camels giraffes. You can t blame them for that.
Some kids are afraid to see the chickens in the petting zoo. Teachers ask what can we do,
and I say, Å How many of you go outside and take them into the woods?
That s why it s important for people to go to the zoo and see the elephant
and then grow up loving elephants and understand what s going on with elephants, which are the largest land mammal on earth.
When people go to the zoo, they learn things like the giraffe has the same number of vertebrae as a human being.
Zoos will play a major role in conserving the earth s wildlife
Japan to grow human organs inside pigsâ Japanese researchers are seeking less conventional methods to ensure transplant waiting list patients can receive the organs they need--by growing them inside pigs.
As reported by the BBC, Professor Nagashima has been conducting experiments on pigs. Female pigs have been injected with embryos containing genetic material from two different species,
in order for the piglets to grow into chimeric animals. The animals have been modified genetically to switch off natural genes with instructions to create particular organs.
Stem cells from other animals are introduced then to replace the missing instructions with organ growth from different pig species. For example
as a modified white pig grew, so did the animal's pancreas --which is genetically a black pig's. The ultimate objective of this research is to eventually develop a method for human organs to be grown inside pigs.
Not only this, but Professor Hiro Nakauchi from Tokyo University has taken things a step further. Nakauchi wants to be able to take skin cells from human adults
and change them into ips cells that can be injected into pig embryos. IPS cells are similar to embryonic stem cells,
and can grow in to any organ in an animal's body --and so it may be possibleâ to grow genetically identical organs for humans who need a transplant inside other animals.
So far the scientists has managed to successfully utilise IPS cells to grow a brown rat's pancreas inside of a white mouse,
showing the idea may have promise. If successfully developed to cater for human cells, the research could spell the end of donor organ rejection and waiting lists.
While this research could prove to be the solution to solving the problem of organ donation shortages,
the scientists have many obstacles to overcome. As pigs and humans are related only distantly, growing human organs inside the pigs is a massive step beyond current experiments.
So not only do the animals get the job done, but they are much less expensive to feed than a power mower is to fuel.
communities of plants and animals that exist in a specific climate. The report focuses on the temperate broadleaf forest biome
and animals coordinate resources and create redundant, distributed life-support systems. An oak tree and a jay, for example, have a strong alliance in
But the bird won't go back and find every cache, so some seeds will either become new oak trees or food for other animals.
Energy and nutrients are moved through the ecosystem this way, and the interspecies relationships evolve and adapt to variations in the climate.
On the other hand, the relationship between a yucca plant and a yucca moth is both efficient and highly vulnerable.
For example, bees, birds and some bats might all visit the same flower for nectar, but at different times of the day and year.
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