Originally published on Fri January 11, 2013 1:03 pm
According to the EPA, more than 2.5 million tons of electronic waste, or e-waste, is produced each year in the U.S. Derek Markham, a contributing writer for Treehugger.com, discusses the global impacts, and why you should think twice before discarding your old cell phone.
Originally published on Fri January 11, 2013 1:03 pm
What's it like to live--and cook--on Mars? To find out, researchers are simulating Mars missions in Russia, and on the slopes of a Hawaiian volcano. Kim Binsted talks about her study to whip up tastier space food. Porcini mushroom risotto, anyone? And sleep expert Charles Czeisler talks about how humans adapt to the 24.65-hour Martian day.
Originally published on Fri January 11, 2013 1:51 pm
It's hard to imagine how this teeny little rock — it's not even a whole rock, it's just a grain, a miniscule droplet of mineral barely the thickness of a human hair — could rewrite the history of our planet. But that's what seems to be happening.
Part of the nation's physical landscape is changing. Nature writer and commentator Craig Childs has been watching the dramatic transformation of a mighty river that is running dry.
Small porpoises once swam in the brackish estuaries of the Colorado River delta. Jaguars stalked the river channels and marshes. It's not like that any more, though. The Colorado River no longer reaches the sea in Northern Mexico. It hasn't since 1983.
A 1,000-pound butter sculpture is unveiled at the 97th Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg last week.
Credit Scott Detrow / NPR
The butter sculpture will be dumped into this pit of rotting fruit and vegetables on the Reinford family's farm. Then, all that food will get ground up and put into the farm's methane digester.
For more than a week, it was the belle of the ball, the butter with no better: a giant 1,000-pound dairy sculpture that occupied the place of honor at the annual Farm Show in Harrisburg, Pa.
Originally published on Fri January 11, 2013 1:05 pm
Xiao Liwu made his public debut Thursday at the San Diego Zoo. Fans crowded around the exhibit, their camera lenses extended, hoping to catch a glimpse of the 5-month-old giant panda cub. If they're lucky and actually do see the 16-pound panda (his Chinese name means "Little Gift"), there'll be much oooing and aaahing.
You'd have to be heartless not to agree that pandas, especially the youngest of them, are as cute as all get-out. Right? But why?
Sarah Hallacher came up with the idea to represent the beef industry as "raw" steaks while she was researching on the web about where her own steak dinner came from.
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Credit Courtesy of Sarah Hallacher
The Texas rib-eye gets a whole new look. The Beef Stakes project illustrates the U.S.'s top meat producers with steaks sculptured into each state's shape.
Credit Courtesy of Sarah Hallacher
Each steak is made with modeling clay and then packaged in green foam trays and shrink wrap. Sarah Hallacher considered using real steaks for the project, but she couldn't stand the thought of wasting all that food.
Credit Courtesy of Sarah Hallacher
Each label gives the total pounds of beef produced annually in the state, the cost to produce that much beef and how much steak each person in that state would need to eat for the beef to be consumed "locally."
Credit Courtesy of Sarah Hallacher
Super-sized steaks for big beef producers. The height of each steak, from top to bottom, is scaled to the state's annual beef production. Iowa made 6.5 billion pounds of beef last year, so its steak is about 6.5 inches tall.
Credit Courtesy of Sarah Hallacher
Hallacher says she choose the traditional Styrofoam and shrink-wrapped packaging because people are familiar with it. She also wanted to emphasize how little information is typically given about the beef's origin in this packaging.
Credit Courtesy of Sarah Hallacher
Sarah Hallacher swirled in white clay with red to mimic the fat marbling, just like you see in prime cuts of meat.
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Credit Courtesy of Sarah Hallacher
Sizing Iowa's steak. The height of each steak, from top to bottom, scales with the state's annual beef production. Iowa ranks second in the U.S. with over 6.5 billion pounds of beef made in 2011, so its steak is about 6.5 inches tall.
Originally published on Mon January 14, 2013 1:14 pm
If there's one thing we love more than talking about beef here at The Salt, it's visualizing the U.S.'s insatiable appetite for meat through infographics and charts.
So when we ran across Sarah Hallacher's Beef Stakes project over at Fast Company's Co.Design blog, our eyes lit up like the charcoal grill on Super Bowl Sunday.
If you know some mice that took This Is Spinal Tap too literally, they might want to know about an experiment to restore hearing with a failed Alzheimer's drug.
If you've spent years CRANKING YOUR MUSIC UP TO 11, this item's for you.
A drug developed for Alzheimer's disease can partially reverse hearing loss caused by exposure to extremely loud sounds, an international team reports in the journal Neuron.
Before you go back to rocking the house with your Van Halen collection, though, consider that the drug has only been tried in mice so far. And it has never been approved for human use.
