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But there’s another way for companies and institutions to follow a more sustainable standard by putting money in the system instead of taking it out—ESGs. The buzzy term stands for “environmental, social, and governance” and is a set of standards for a company’s operations used to screen potential investments. For an individual investor, a typical ESG could look like opening an online brokerage account and checking off settings for a portfolio that is low risk and high in social responsibility....

Melinda Laubach-Hock, who is leading the massive scan job, estimates that the Apache could have around 5,000 to 6,000 parts. Her estimate is based on a similar project her team is wrapping up that involved scanning in around 5,000 parts of a Black Hawk helicopter. “We are taking an airframe, disassembling it down to the detail parts, cleaning it up, scanning it in, [and] reverse engineering it,” she says, describing the process for the Apache aircraft....

One woman said she fretted all night about her pipes, roof and furnace. Another said she searched her whole home for intruders, knife in hand. Others wondered if frigid cold could kill birds mid-flight and send them spiraling downward. Meteorologists weighed in with their own explanation: Frost quakes. “They’re kind of strange,” says Brian Jackson, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service who grew up with the cracks and booms of frost quakes in Rochester, New York....

Could it happen again? And are we headed there now? The term “solar activity” refers collectively to sunspots, solar flares, and solar eruptions. Together, these phenomena make up the “space weather” that alters interactions between Earth and its atmosphere, causing potential disruptions to satellites, communications systems, and power grids. Varying levels of solar activity also cause significant changes in atmospheric circulation patterns, which can affect the weather and climate on Earth....

Our universe might be as round(ish) as the globe we call home. In this reality, moving in any direction would eventually bring you back to your starting point—like a jaunt around our equator. This vision isn’t infinite, however; you wouldn’t find endless unexplored land as you walked. But since the end ­connects seamlessly to the start, you’d never arrive at its edge. This heavenly Pringle is the best way to illustrate a universe that doesn’t contain enough mass to slow the expansion left over from the big bang....

“I think there’s definitely a trend towards more sustainable and more environmentally conscious yard solutions,” says Bythe Yost, a landscape architect and chief executive of Tilly, an online landscape design company. “But that certainly isn’t everybody, and I think the more education you can do the better, because there’s definitely room for good balance—not just having a monoculture of one grass mowed to a specific height.” Determining your motivation will enable you to do specific research and hire the right local landscaper for the job, if you’d rather have someone else handle all the details for you....

Netflix has previously revealed limited viewership details about its most popular shows. It publishes weekly global Top 10s as well as individual most popular lists for nearly 100 countries it operates in. The numbers, though, are fudged. Netflix counts each season of a TV show individually and ranks things in terms of hours viewed (which sounds meaningful, but obscures a lot of information and favors longer movies and TV series)....

This is all according to a new report by a group of international researchers that advise the United Nations on all things climate change. The research zooms in on what would happen if the world warms by 1.5°C and 2°C above pre-industrial levels. The report’s authors say keeping temperature rise at or below 1.5°C is necessary to stave off the more drastic impacts of global climate change. What, exactly, the IPCC report says The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientific advisory body to the United Nations, is considered the leading expert group on climate science....

So, if you make a boat with a light enough hull — out of aluminum foil for example — although its density is going to be greater than air, it just might be less than SF6, and it’s going to float there all day given the chance. (Remember, for a boat the density is the total mass of the hull, plus the air space within, divided by the total volume....

But in fairness to listicle writers, the science isn’t exactly clear. A recent review of the field found that 718 different plants have been used as aphrodisiacs in traditional medicine (to say nothing of various animal and mineral interventions). But does any of it work? Unfortunately, the jury is still decidedly out. Two studies in 2013 surveyed the research on 20 herbal aphrodisiacs, from saffron to date palm pollen. The first was willing to entertain findings on everything from bufo, a venom derived from toad skin, to various herbs that had made rats extra-spunky—but there isn’t much data one way or the other on any of the included substances....

Biologists think white nose syndrome kills bats in a couple of ways–first, by covering their faces and wings in a powdery white fungus that makes them itchy, causing them to wake up from hibernation and burn their precious fat reserves. Second, it damages the animals’ sensitive wing membranes, which causes system-wide injury that is still not totally understood. That also hurts their ability to fly. Bat immune systems try to fight off the fungus, and apparently the system goes into overdrive when hibernating bats wake up....

Women have used internal barriers in an attempt to prevent pregnancies as far back as ancient Egypt. However, they only became widely known and used after World War I, when they became available commercially and via birth control clinics in the US, UK, Germany, and Austria. As these devices became more widespread, they gradually began appearing in novels and plays: Writers from Mary McCarthy to Philip Roth used them to symbolize specific moments in women’s sexual and reproductive lives, their growth into adulthood, and their romantic—often extramarital—relationships....

In addition to long, almost musical booms, dunes are sometimes recorded as giving off shorter sounds, sometimes described as burps. In a study published today in Physics of Fluids, researchers discovered that the difference between the two noises (booms and burps) had to do with how sound waves moved through the sand. When a ‘burp’ noise was recorded, the scientists found that the sound waves had a low frequency, a slower velocity, and traveled mostly along the surface of the dune....

The rescinding of the pipeline’s certification comes following an expansive territorial claim made by Putin on behalf of the separatist areas in Ukraine. It also follows a decade of debate and negotiation between some countries in Europe about how best to secure the energy they need at present, while designing future policy that is resilient to both market and political challenges. Russian forces, which have been massing along the borders of Ukraine since October, are now moving into the country, with the imminent possibility of greater open warfare between Russia and Ukraine....

NASA currently employs 47 astronauts, eight of which were selected as candidates during the last application process, in 2013. With the last space shuttle launch in 2011, there have been precious few opportunities for those 47 to head into space. Some have never gotten the chance to leave the Earth’s atmosphere. So why start looking for new astronaut candidates? Because NASA hopes that the next decade will involve many more space flights and they want to be ready....

The visual feast in the video above was made possible by the weather on Lake Superior, which froze just enough to create a relatively thin layer of ice on the lake’s surface. When the wind blew in at speeds of 12-15 miles per hour, the sheets of ice were flung towards shore, shattering or the edges and creating the pile of ice seen here. In her YouTube caption of the video, photographer Dawn M....

Flipping your external monitor into a vertical position is easy to do and can make more efficient use of every single inch of your screen. When you’re using programs like Microsoft Word or Google Docs, or you’re looking at traditional scroll-down webpages, there’s only so much a wider screen can do for you. It’ll come to a point when having more room only means more space between columns or a larger grey area between the document you’re working on and the scroll bar on the right....

Floridian environmental officials, in partnership with the US Fish and Wildlife Service are planning to launch a controlled feeding initiative to help sustain the struggling manatees. Giving food to animals is normally taboo, as wildlife managers want to prevent wild animals from developing a dependence on artificial food sources. But the need for large-scale interference is too great to leave the manatees to fend for themselves. A Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson told the Associated Press via email that they “have approval to move forward on a limited feeding trial” but they have not yet settled on the details....

While the quest for baseball’s inventor reads like a whodunnit, less murky is baseball’s sport-genealogy: It is descended from rounders (and to some extent cricket) and became a professional sport in the mid-19th century. Among the various rules that distinguish baseball from rounders is the role of the umpire. In baseball, the home-plate umpire calls every pitch in the game—ball or strike. In other sports, the umpire only makes calls as-needed—out-of-bounds, fouls, close plays—but the home-plate ump is mandated by the rules of the game to call every play....

Depression is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide. About five percent of adults live with the condition. If left untreated, a depressive episode can significantly impair your life, from constant hopelessness to a loss of interest in day-to-day activities. Understanding just how these microbes contribute to our mental health could shape gut-driven approaches for managing the condition. Certain gut bacteria could be causing a chemical imbalance in the brain In one of the studies, the authors examined the microbiome composition of 1,539 adults in the Netherlands....