Have you ever wondered why some plants thrive better untended in forests than in many human-owned gardens?  No one caters to the fruit trees or prunes the wild vegetable shrubs every week. No one bothers about watering them, covering them with mulch, manuring, or controlling pests. Absolutely no amount of human work goes into maintaining...

We’ll probably never get tired of throwing things in lava. It’s something that’s almost certainly taken place since time immemorial, and although there’s no practical way to turn lava lakes or flows into insane trash incinerators, it’s certainly a lot of fun to watch people try. The latest victim of a fresh Hawaiian lava flow appears to...

Oat milk is a non-dairy alternative that has gained a lot of popularity in recent years. Recently, however, questions have arisen about its nutritional value and whether it’s actually good for you. Let’s look at what oat milk is, how it’s made, why it exists, and the pros and cons of drinking it. Then, you...

The Earth is a watery place. In fact, 71 percent of our planet is covered in water [1]. Despite this, one in nine people do not have access to safe drinking water – that’s around 785 million people [2]. But thanks to a solar powered desalination machine, that’s changing for people in Kenya. The trouble...

A cluster of elementary school kids sit at a picnic table in a grassy field, avidly watching 18-year-old Xavier Baty connect a solar panel cell to a small motor hooked up to a fan. With precise movements, he holds the panel toward the setting sun and shifts it slightly to change the speed of the...

Tucked away in the middle of the Arizona desert there is an unfinished and not-so-aptly-named “city of the future”. This city, called Arcosanti, currently sits at 1.5% capacity and is only 5% complete. Construction, however, started 50 years ago. (1, 3, 4) Arcosanti – The Unfinished City of the Future Arcosanti is the brainchild of...

After officials in Grand Rapids, Michigan, began adding small amounts of fluoride to the city’s water in 1945, the number of tooth cavities dropped by an astonishing sixty percent  [1]. Since then, water fluoridation has become a standard practice all across the country. Despite the evidence that fluoride prevents tooth decay, many arguments against its...

Most people who have enough money to do so will donate to charitable causes here and there. Few do what one of the world’s greatest boxers of all time has done. Manny Pacquiao builds homes for the poor with the money from his winnings, bringing hope to an entire community. Manny Pacquiao Builds Homes for...

Thailand authorities are warning tourists to stop riding elephants in their country as heart-wrenching images of the beaten animals exploded on Twitter. The caption was: “You can stop inhumanity tortured on elephants by stop riding an elephant!” The pictures in question are suspected to be from Phuket, one of the most popular vacation spots in...

The white-throated rail is a bird about the size of a chicken. It is native to Madagascar and tends to colonize individual islands, specifically an atoll called Aldabra, a ring-shaped reef in the Seychelle Islands. The reef had contained no predators for the rails, and eventually, they became flightless. They also became extinct 136,000 years...

Time and time again, humans prove themselves to be the most ruthless and dangerous ‘animals’ on the planet. Animal cruelty being one of the worst offenses, we hear these tragic stories again and again. The latest of these comes from Russia, where a lion cub’s legs were broken to take pictures with tourists on the...

The breakfast table of 2050 is set to challenge our traditional morning routines. As we wake up to a world with a population projected to reach 10 billion, the question of what’s for breakfast becomes far more complex.1 Our current global food system is facing a multitude of challenges, from climate change to inefficient resource...