Microleo attenboroughi was a tiny, marsupial Australian lion that lived some 18 million years ago. Paleontologists said they named it after the famed naturalist "for his dedication and enthusiasm."
meizzwang posted a photo:
This clone is the parent to some of the most stunning purple throated, heavily veined oreophilas in cultivation today. Interestinly enough, the offspring have even darker, more prominent purple throats. Late summer to early fall pitchers can be consistently produced if the plant is kept very happy all grow season long. These late traps are usually the most colorful and spectacular pitchers produced.
Dahlia was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was a toddler. This touching short documentary, Blood Sugar, is filmed from her perspective. Through the lens, we witness her world of blood, needles, and very youthful innocence.
This film comes to us from the Loading Docs initiative, which supports 10 filmmaking teams to create three-minute, creative documentaries that tell New Zealand stories. This year's theme is change.
Although a CDC study released today found that 80 percent of cases develop outside the hospital or at a nursing home, many people still don't know about this lethal medical condition.
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-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
Read more: New York City, Nature, Environment, The Nature Conservancy, Impact News
We're continuing this week's focus on urban planning with this Overview of Washington, D.C., USA. The city's L'Enfant Plan was developed in 1791 by Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant for George Washington, the first President of the United States. L'Enfant designed a compass-aligned grid for the city's streets, with intersecting diagonal avenues that were later named after the states of the union. The diagonal avenues also intersect with the north-south and east-west streets at circles and rectangular plazas in order to create more open, green spaces. Lastly, L'Enfant laid out a 400 foot-wide (122 meter) garden-lined “grand avenue” - what is now know as the National Mall that connects the US Capitol Building, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial (the latter two are visible at right in this Overview). /// Source imagery: @digitalglobe (at Washington, District of Columbia)
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Joseph Totten Scientist of the Day
General Joseph Gilbert Totten, an American civil engineer, was born Aug. 23, 1788.
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By Brian Richter, Chief Scientist, Water, The Nature Conservancy
Australia is one of the driest inhabited places on Earth. Yet nearly two-thirds of the country's land area is devoted to agriculture, generating 93 percent of the domestic food supply. The country is only able to sustain this level of food production through irrigation and an active water market—a system in which water-use entitlements can be bought and sold and water can be transferred from one user to another. The system is working for farmers, but Australia is still trying to figure out how to meet the needs of one specific water user—nature. One potential solution to balance the water needs of people and nature, though, may lie with the power of impact investment.
Around the world, more than 30 percent of all rivers, lakes and aquifers are being heavily tapped, mostly for irrigated agriculture. These sources are spread across 60 countries, and dependence on them continues to grow. But as use grows, so does the impact on people and nature. Since 1970, freshwater species populations have declined by an estimated 76 percent globally. And depletion of water sources leaves our communities and economies vulnerable to water shortages in drier times.
To date, our approach to overcome these water scarcity challenges has been to invest more in infrastructure to increase water supplies, such as large reservoirs that store river water, canals that import water from distant sources and wells that go deeper into our aquifers. But we can no longer build our way out of water scarcity—the cost of new infrastructure remains out of reach for many communities, and there are no new supplies to tap.
Water markets have proven immensely effective in many regions—from Australia to the western United States—for stimulating water conservation and enabling the transfer of saved water to other users who need more. By making water a tradeable asset, the system rewards those who can save some water and make it available to others. Furthermore, the cost of providing water to new users through markets is far less than the cost of infrastructure-based approaches and further damage to the environment can be averted.
Water markets can be especially effective when implemented in areas where water is mainly consumed for irrigation. If we can find ways to save just a small percentage of the water used on farms, it will free up a great volume of water that can be used for other purposes, including the protection and restoration of natural ecosystems. But having a water market does not necessarily ensure benefits for nature. In Australia's Murray-Darling Basin and many other areas with water markets, too many entitlements were originally issued, too much water has been withdrawn from the environment and freshwater ecosystems are suffering the consequences.
This is where impact investment can help. Investors who wish to see environmental and social returns, as well as financial returns, can put their money toward market-based solutions that direct water back to the environment while still preserving human uses. One example of this is Water Sharing Investment Partnerships (WSIPs), which operate within existing water markets and use investor capital and other revenue sources to acquire water-use entitlements from willing sellers.
These rights can then be reallocated to depleted freshwater ecosystems or sold or leased to other water users seeking more supplies, thereby generating financial returns for investors. While the primary purpose behind WSIPs is to move water back into the environment, another critically important purpose is to keep farmers farming. In some areas, funds from WSIPs could even be used to help farmers invest in more efficient water technologies, freeing up some of their water to be returned to the environment or sold on the market.
The Nature Conservancy, through a partnership between the Conservancy's impact investing unit, NatureVest, and its Australia and Water teams, launched its first WISP, the Murray-Darling Basin Balanced Water Fund in Australia, in April 2016. This and other impact investment-driven solutions are explored in a new report released by the Conservancy, titled “Water Share,” which shows the potential to return water to depleted ecosystems in many of the 37 water-scarce countries that already have water rights systems, the basic prerequisite for a water market. If all regions with existing water rights systems could establish water markets functioning on par with the Australian market, they could collectively generate total annual water sales of US$13.4 billion per year, equating to market assets of US$331 billion.
Those numbers indicate the great potential water markets hold for nature and investors, and it is high time to unleash that potential—because scarcity is expanding and intensifying around the globe. But with creative financial solutions, nature and people can better share the most precious resource on our planet.
Paol0 posted a photo:
Primrose Hill is a hill of 213 feet (65 m) located on the northern side of Regent's Park in London, and also the name given to the surrounding district. The hill summit has a clear view of central London.
NASA has managed to reestablish a connection with the STEREO-B spacecraft after contact was lost in October 2014.…
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