Breaking Waves: Ocean News

These tiny organisms matter. They have been used to map dark matter and improve transport networks, and they’re living all around us A few years ago, I started looking at the underside of logs and it changed my life. I found a secret carnival of the most bodacious and interesting organisms I had ever seen. Bubbles of candy-pink gloss on stilts (Comatricha nigra), bunches of rainbow iridescence on toffee strings (Badhamia utricularis), bouffants of raspberry parfait (Arcyria denudata) – and those are just a few that have appeared on bits of wood in our urban garden. Slime moulds, or myxomycetes, spend part of their life cycle as what are known as fruiting bodies – which look a bit like tiny mushrooms, hence why they were once classified as fungi (they’re actually in the kingdom Protista). Often you will find them, at this stage, in a colony – or, well, I’d suggest galaxy, sweetshop or funfair would be more accurate for a collective noun. Lucy Jones is the author of Matrescence, Losing Eden and The Nature Seed Continue reading...

Diminutive bird breeds in Alaska and Arctic Canada and sightings in Britain are rare enough to attract a crowd If you’d asked me which rare bird I might see in Somerset in early January, the least sandpiper would have been very low on my list. Yet on a fine, bright, chilly morning here it was: running along the edge of the water like a clockwork toy, probing the mud for food with its stubby bill. This species is well-named. It is the world’s smallest wading bird, just 13-15cm long and weighing less than 30 grams – about the same as a house sparrow. Even its scientific name, minutilla, is Latin for “very small”. Standing next to a dunlin and a teal, it made them look enormous. Continue reading...

Fueled by major windstorm, Pacific Palisades fire touches museum site but officials say collection safe Follow live: Palisades blaze doubles in size to nearly 3,000 acres A rapidly spreading wildfire in southern California reached the grounds of the Getty Villa museum north of Santa Monica on Tuesday, but officials said no structures had burned and the collection was safe. The Pacific Palisades fire, fueled by a major windstorm and prompting mass evacuations in Los Angeles county, burned some trees and vegetation on site at the Getty Villa, but museum leaders said the galleries and archives were protected. Continue reading...

Agency has either ignored petitions or ruled against taking action against chemical that presents serious health risks A coalition of environmental groups has sued the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over the use of highly toxic phthalates in plastic food packaging because the chemicals have been found to leach at alarming rates and present a serious health risk, especially for developing children. The suit is the latest salvo in an ongoing eight-year battle in which advocates have pressured the FDA to ban the chemicals’ use in food packaging, but the agency has sided with industry that opposes the calls. Since 2016, the FDA has either illegally ignored petitions or rejected demands to revoke a 40-year-old authorization for the chemicals that is based on long-outdated science. Continue reading...