World

China’s long-running effort to restore the degraded Loess Plateau has revealed a difference between forests planted by people and those allowed to regenerate naturally. Researchers spent 18 years monitoring four forest types in the region, comparing plantations of Pinus tabuliformis, Platycladus orientalis and Robinia pseudoacacia with a natural secondary forest. The results showed that the…

Malone Lam flashes bundles of cash while partying at a Miami nightclub in September 2024. (Photo: United States Department of Justice) A 22-year-old Singaporean man has pleaded guilty to his role in an international cryptocurrency racketeering operation that prosecutors say stole and laundered more than $245 million in digital assets. Malone Lam, an eighth-grade dropout…

An 18-acre stretch of Arizona desert that was once heavily disturbed and overrun by invasive buffelgrass has been transformed through 16 years of sustained restoration work by volunteers and conservation partners. The Waterman Restoration Project, located on Bureau of Land Management land within Ironwood Forest National Monument near Marana, began in 2010 after earlier attempts…

Water trapped deep beneath Gateshead is now helping heat hundreds of homes and public buildings, turning former coal mine workings into a source of heat for the city. The water lies around 150 metres below Gateshead town centre, where a 6-megawatt water-source heat pump extracts its heat and feeds it into an existing district heating…

Lead contamination in water is being studied through different approaches, including the use of waste materials that can help remove metal ions from water. Apple pomace, the residue left after juice production, was among the waste materials researchers examined for its ability to remove lead ions from water in laboratory experiments.Researchers compared untreated raw apple…

Rocky Fernandez’s life took an unexpected turn when a car crash left the Army veteran paralysed, forcing him to rebuild plans that had once seemed straightforward. Recovery brought hospital stays, rehabilitation and medical setbacks, but his ambitions did not disappear. As reported by the US Department of Veterans Affairs, with support from the Houston VA…

An international team of biologists, chemists and physicists has used sophisticated 3D X-ray technology to investigate the tooth at an unprecedented level. A unicorn may be a mythical creature, but nature made something very similar under the Arctic ice. Wondering what? Well, the narwhal has a strange tusk that can reach nearly 10 feet long…

What began with a $40 cleaning kit and one littered New York City block eventually turned into a neighbourhood effort to clean, garden and reclaim public space. David Clarke, a 24-year-old New Yorker behind the grassroots project Trash Talk NYC, spent 100 days cleaning the area around West 171st Street between Broadway and Fort Washington…

Roundthwaite Common, Tebay An ambitious upland restoration project in Cumbria has turned a once-bare area of sheep-grazed fell into a thriving habitat, bringing back lost native woodland and attracting 11 new breeding bird species since 2016. The project at Tebay Common began in 2012 through a partnership between local farmers, landowner Lonsdale Estates, and the…