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Some people love them, some people could live without them. There are differing views on their benefit, but almost everyone is fond of the taste. From the honey and the smoke of the wood, to the highly nutritional flour made from the ground pods, they are a signature flavor here in the desert. The early start to monsoon this year affected the first mesquite harvest, with many finding unacceptable mold, which renders them inedible. However, the second harvest is looking better, and is in progress in parts of the county, although some altitudes have already peaked. “I heard rumor about...

Scientists are calling it an ecological breakthrough: Two adult wolves and five cubs were recently photographed in Siskiyou County, the first known wolves in California since 1924 (with the exception of the famous wandering OR7, who wound up settling in Southern Oregon).

BOISE, Idaho – If you're looking for milepost 420, you won't find it in Idaho. Idaho transportation officials say the mile marker has been replaced with 419.9 signs to curb thieves eager to own a number associated with marijuana enthusiasts. Turns out, Idaho isn't alone in this problem. States like Washington and Colorado have also replaced 420 signs with 419.9 after consistently having to replace them after thefts by supposed sticky-fingered stoners. Adam Rush of the Idaho Transportation Department says officials have replaced the old sign along U.S. Highway 95 with "MILE 419.9," just south of Coeur d'Alene. ~snip~ The...

Life altering true ice cream..... Homemade Vanilla.

A domestic pig on an organic farm in Solothurn, Switzerland. Image: Wikimedia Commons --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stories of people waiting for organ transplants that could save their lives are well known. The numbers, though, are not encouraging. The US Department of Health and Human Services has some data: 122,407 people need a lifesaving organ transplant (total waiting list of candidates). The agency said that the gap between supply and demand continues to widen. The total number of donors from January through May this year was 5,975. On average, 22 people die each day while waiting for a transplant. Here is another statistic:...

Paintings can be a window to more than the outmoded dress and strange customs of the past — sometimes, they have modern-day science lessons to impart, too. That's the case with Giovanni Stanchi’s 17th century still life of fruit, as Phil Edwards points out for Vox — just look for the watermelons. Stanchi’s work, painted between 1645 and 1672 (and now up for auction at Christie’s), includes strange watermelons that look so foreign they could be from outer space in the bottom right corner. If watermelons looked like that in the Renaissance, then why do they look so different today?...

"The reason the An-2 still flies is that there is really no other aircraft like it," says aviation writer Bernie Leighton, who has flown in an An-2 in Belarus. "If you need an aircraft that can carry 10 soldiers, people or goats, that can take off from anywhere and land anywhere — it is either that or a helicopter.

The death of a Danish backpacker who drank a brew of tea made from poppies has prompted a warning from a Tasmanian coroner about the dangers. Jonas Havskov Pedersen died on his 26th birthday in February 2014 as a result of morphine intoxication after drinking poppy tea. He was on a working holiday at the time he climbed a poppy field fence somewhere between Jericho and Oatlands and took some poppy heads. Mr Pedersen began to vomit several hours after drinking the tea and his travelling companion said he looked "scared" and did not "look right". Both men eventually went...

A man living in Phil Campbell has become Franklin County's first suspect under the state's bestiality law enacted last year. Franklin County deputies arrested Russell Joseph Meyers, 54, on four counts of bestiality, plus one count of second-degree possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. Franklin County Sheriff Shannon Oliver said Meyers admitted he had sexual relations with his female German shepherd on four occasions. Meyers got caught when he accidentally called someone while engaging in one of these acts, Oliver said. He said no one answered the phone, and the act was caught on the recipient's voicemail. This...

The history of a 390-year old bonsai tree at the National Arboretum that survived the Hiroshima atomic blast is being honored this week. Thursday marks the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. The Japanese White Pine is in the Arboretum’s National Bonsai and Penjing Museum. The tree was donated in 1976 by bonsai master Masaru Yamaki as part of Japan’s Bicentennial gift to the American people.

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....