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In the largest watershed study of its kind, Michigan State University researchers have sampled 64 river systems in the state for E. coli and the human fecal bacteria B-theta and found that, in a nutshell, septic tanks aren't working. At least not as well as experts thought. The researchers say that "sample after sample" shows bacterial concentrations are "highest where there were higher numbers of septic systems in the watershed area," water expert Joan Rose tells Phys.org.

The head of the Sicilian Mafia, on the run for over 20 year, has been using "sheep code" to communicate with allies, the BBC reports. Eleven men associated with mob boss Matteo Messina Denaro were arrested recently, and according to the Italian police, Denaro communicated with them by leaving bits of papers under a rock in a field near a farm in western Sicily. The communication method called "pizzini" includes writing the messages in a secret code, according to AFP. Among the men arrested during raids across Sicily on Monday, two were over 70 years old, one of them, Vito...

A cache of internal memos that federal regulators intended to keep private reveals a culture of secrecy, falsehood and dysfunction that permeated the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Waters of the U.S. rulemaking process. - See more at: https://www.michfb.com/MI/Farm_News/Content/Politics/EPA_accused_of_misconduct/?utm_source=Informz&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Michigan+Farm+Bureau#sthash.17ZGyujv.NNtFRYnn.dpuf

Workers digging a well for underground water are dwarfed by the sand dunes of the Taklimakan Desert, 13 September 2003, outside of Tazhong, in China's northwest Xinjiang province. ================================================================================================================== Chinese scientists have discovered what could be a huge hidden ocean underneath one of the driest places on earth, the South China Morning Post reported on 30 July. The Tarim basin in northwestern Xinjiang, China, is one of the driest places on Earth, but the vast amount of salt water concealed underneath could equal 10 times the water found in all five of the Great Lakes in the US. "This is...

This python, captured in Shark Valley, in Everglades National Park, may be the second-largest python ever caught in Florida. USGS ======================================================================================================================== A python researcher working in Everglades National Park has captured what may be the second-largest Burmese python in the state of Florida, CBS Miami reports. The snake was captured on July 9 in the park's Shark Valley and was documented at 18 feet 3 inches long. It's just 4 inches shy of the state's record 18 foot 7 inch python caught in Miami-Dade, CBS notes. Whether it's indeed the second-largest, officially, remains unclear, due to differences in record-keeping in...

Not content with having the best whisky in the world, Suntory Holdings Ltd. plans to take its whisky out of this world and into space. The Japanese brewing and distilling company said this week it would send a total of six samples of its whiskies and other alcoholic beverages to the International Space Station, where they will be kept for at least a year to study the effect zero gravity has on aging. According to a spokesman at the company, the samples, which will be carried in glass flasks, will include both a 21-year-old single malt and a beverage that...

The giant African land snail is causing problems for Floridians. Wikimedia Commons/Sonel.SA ========================================================================================================================= Florida plant detectives are on the trail of a slippery foe, an invasive African land snail that is wily, potentially infectious, and can grow as big as a tennis shoe. Play Video 8 Animals That Can Regrow Their Body Parts While humans are working on robotic arms and new limb technology, some animals can regrow their limbs on their own. How do they do this? DCI In the four years since Giant African Snails were discovered in Miami, they have slowly but surely spread to new territory,...

A startup team calls their work a product. They also call it a social movement. Many people in the over-7,000 islands in the Philippines lack access to electricity .The startup would like to make a difference. Their main ingredient is salt. Their product is a lamp that takes two tablespoons of salt and a glass of water in order to work. This is from the Sustainable Alternative Lighting, or SALt Corp. This is a startup focused on delivering a cost effective, environmentally safe lamp that runs on salt water. Their lamp could be an alternative to kerosene/battery powered lamps and...

A 16-year-old French volunteer archaeologist has found an adult tooth dating back around 560,000 years in southwestern France, in what researchers hailed as a "major discovery" Tuesday. "A large adult tooth—we can't say if it was from a male or female—was found during excavations of soil we know to be between 550,000 and 580,000 years old, because we used different dating methods," paleoanthropologist Amelie Viallet told AFP. "This is a major discovery because we have very few human fossils from this period in Europe," she said. The tooth was found in the Arago cave near the village of Tautavel, one...

I'm not going to keep quiet about this. Last November Florida residents defeated the medical marijuana bill at the polls. A Pyrhhic victory at best. On July 19 I wrote a detailed report and submitted it online at the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office website. This is the Tampa area of Florida. My report documented the suspected existence of a single family detached residence rental home in our subdivision being used as a marijuana grow house by a drug gang. A tax search disclosed that the property is listed to an Oakland, California real estate management firm known as FETLAR LLC....

This image shows mammoth vertebrae in ice, Yukon Territory, Canada. Credit: Photo Kieren Mitchell, University of Adelaide ******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************* New research has revealed abrupt warming, that closely resembles the rapid man-made warming occurring today, has repeatedly played a key role in mass extinction events of large animals, the megafauna, in Earth's past. Using advances in analysing ancient DNA, radiocarbon dating and other geologic records an international team led by researchers from the University of Adelaide and the University of New South Wales (Australia) have revealed that short, rapid warming events, known as interstadials, recorded during the last ice age or Pleistocene...

The image of a polar bear floating on a single sheet of ice has become synonymous with the discussion of climate change. As the polar bear’s habitat literally melts before our eyes, we are starting to recognize the direct impact that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are having on the other species we share the world with. The polar bear’s Arctic habitat is quickly diminishing, in fact, an estimated 8.6 million acres of ice disappear a year and this rate is only expected to increase along with the temperature of the planet. With this in mind, many conservationists have begun to...

<p>In the backyard of a Tudor home on a leafy street in Queens live four tenants who pay their rent in companionship, pest control, and fresh eggs.</p> <p>"Our 9-year-old daughter wanted a dog for her birthday and we surprised her with chickens instead. She was at first disappointed," said Ruth Harrigan. "They're very independent. It's almost like having a cat."</p>

He chased them for hours before shooting themA Saudi farmer in his 70s got into his four-wheel car and chased three wolves for hours before shooting them with his machine gun after they killed his sheep. Mohammed Al Sandali chased the wolves into hills and valleys before spotting them resting after a raid on his sheep and nearby farms in the Western town of Raniyah. “He got out of his car, stalked the wolves and shot them…he then brought them dead to his village to show them to the farmers,” ‘Sabq’ daily said.

Earlier this week, USDA secretary Tom Vilsack met in Washington with representatives from the British government. Atop the list of issues UK environment secretary Owen Paterson was to bring up in his meeting with Vilsack is the continuing US ban on the sale of authentic Scottish haggis. Haggis, Scotland’s national dish, has been unavailable in the United States since 1971, when the USDA issued a succinct rule: “Livestock lungs shall not be saved for use as human food.” But sheep lungs are a key ingredient in haggis. The reasoning behind the USDA’s ban on lungs is generally couched in terms...

While we're taught that food that smells rotten should be thrown away, there are actually many foods that you eat whenever they've just started rotting. Of course, it's not pleasant to call these foods rotten, so we refer to them in different ways instead. Cheese Making cheese comes down to your ability to control rot. This is because milk is treated with bacteria and enzymes causing it to curdle. The curdles are then cut, formed and ripened into cheese. Stinkheads Another native Alaskan delicacy is what's known as stinkheads. These are King Salmon heads that have either been buried in...

Bumblebees, a linchpin of the global food supply, are vanishing across huge swaths of North America and Europe as a result of climate change, a new study says. The findings, published Thursday in the journal Science, apparently solve a mystery that's alarmed farmers, experts, policymakers and environmental advocates worldwide, as well as bedeviled researchers. While habitat destruction and potent pesticides known as neonicotinoids have destroyed some bumblebee populations, researchers concluded climate change has played the greatest role in the mass disappearance of bumblebee species, which pollinate plants and crops that are part of the food supply for both animals and...

A Bug’s Life 07.07.156:05 PM ET Breaking News: Worker Ants Really Lazy A new study out of the University of Arizona finds that ants specialize in inactivity. Good news for slackers! Turns out nature’s archetypal busybodies, worker ants, are lazy too.Researchers have actually been aware of ants’ slacker habits for a while, but they didn’t know whether the sluggish members of the Temnothorax rugatulus species of western North America were inactive or rather just taking a break.“It’s just the sort of a thing that anyone who’s ever worked on social insects has noticed: ‘Oh look, half of them are standing around...

How to Prepare for a Collapse in 9 Steps – a Case Study with David Holmgren By William Horvath It’s 2025, the long troubled financial markets have finally crashed the overleveraged banking system and the world is experiencing global depression on a massive scale. Precipitated by environmental destruction, heatwaves are scorching the planet, destroying the monoculture food crops, and there are food riots in every major city. In order to maintain the social order upon panicked and desperate populations governments are forced to introduce a command economy, issuing people supermarket food stamps.But for you and your family nothing has changed,...

The Entomology Research Museum at the University of California, Riverside today announced the discovery of a new species of firefly from Southern California, collected by an undergraduate student as part of his semester's insect collection. Doug Yanega, senior museum scientist, said the student, Joshua Oliva, obtained one specimen of the new species while collecting near Topanga, Calif. "He wasn't 100 percent certain it was a firefly, and brought it to me for confirmation," Yanega said. "I know the local fauna well enough that within minutes I was able to tell him he had found something entirely new to science. I...