Scientists writing in Environmental Research Letters estimate that the onset of spring plant growth will shift by a median of three weeks over the next century - and global warming is to blame.

The scholars from University of Wisconsin-Madison applied the extended Spring Indices to predict the dates of leaf and flower emergence based on day length. These general models capture the phenology of many plant species.  Their results show particularly rapid shifts in plant phenology in the Pacific Northwest and Mountainous regions of the western US, with smaller shifts in southern areas, where spring already arrives early. Much of their data is available at http://silvis.forest.wisc.edu/

The graph below, I hope you'll agree, is significantly cooler and better-looking than the typical data display plots you get from high-energy physics analyses. Colours are bright, graphical symbols are clean, and one grasps the essence of the information quickly once one knows what it is about. So, let me tell you what it is about for starters.

Researchers have developed a new strategy for helping African farmers fight a parasitic plant that devastates crops - plants in the genus Striga, also known as witchweed.

Though their purple flowers are pretty to look at, a field full of Striga plants is in fact a nightmare for a farmer who wants to grow corn, sorghum, rice or other subsistence crops. The problem affects more than 100 million people across 25 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

 University of Toronto  chemical engineering professor Alexei Savchenko, along with professor Peter McCourt in the Department of Cell and Systems Biology, have created a genetically engineered plant biosensor, a tool that will help them hunt for molecules that could prevent Striga infestations.

By meticulously examining sediments in China's Yellow River, a Swedish-Chinese research group are showing that the history of tectonic and climate evolution on Earth may need to be rewritten. Their findings are published today in the highly reputed journal Nature Communications.

To reconstruct how the global climate and topography of the Earth's surface have developed over millions of years, deposits of eroded land sediment transported by rivers to ocean depths are often used. This process is assumed to have been rapid and, by the same token, not to have resulted in any major storages of this sediment as large deposits along the way.

A new paper gives psycholgists a unique glimpse at how humans develop an ability to use tools in childhood while nonhuman primates--such as capuchin monkeys and chimpanzees--remain only occasional tool users.

Dorothy Fragaszy, a psychology professor at the University of Georgia, created two studies to look at how non-human primates and human children differ in completing simple spatial reasoning tasks. 

Much like a game of Operation, human children ages 2, 3 and 4 and adult nonhuman primates were asked to fit a stick, a cross and a tomahawk into a matching cutout space on a tray. Children were also given an opportunity to complete this task by placing the sticks on a mat with a drawing of the matching shape, as well as into a space on a tray.

Since publishing our study on “A scientific basis for regulation deep-sea fishing by depth“ we’ve been subjected to criticism online and in print from fisheries organizations and most recently on this website in an article by Magnus Johnson.

Renewable energy is not very sustainable in the European Union (EU) yet but the food industry, which is heavily reliable on subsidies to stay competitive with the rest of the world, needs renewable energy costs to come down to remain viable.

Until then, the food sector is going to resist using renewable energy, which is a scant 7 percent of their usage, compared to 15 percent in the EU overall. Instead of advocating basic research to improve renewable energy, the call is out to lower meat consumption in a new report. And of course to reduce food choices by shopping locally and seasonally.

. Clothing brand Patagonia gives 1% of its sales “to support environmental organisations around the world”. Carpet-maker Interface takes an “aggressive approach” to reach its goal to source 100% of its “energy needs from renewable sources by 2020”. Nudie Jeans meanwhile, repairs, reuses and recycles its denim products, as well as using organic cotton to produce them in the first place.

By Joel Shurkin, Inside Science -- The notion that Earth’s climate is changing—and that the threat to the world is serious—goes back to the 1980s, when a consensus began to form among climate scientists as temperatures began to rise noticeably. Thirty years later, that consensus is solid, yet climate change and the disruption it may cause remain divisive political issues, and millions of people remain unconvinced.

A new book argues that social scientists should play a greater role in helping natural scientists convince people of the reality of climate change and drive policy.

In the early days of food labeling and regulations, it was just about mandating honesty. If you go to buy mayonnaise, you shouldn't have to wonder if it is mayonnaise (1), and then labels became a marketing distinction.

Better ingredients meant a better product and that appealed to people who cared about higher quality or superior health for their families. 

More recently, labels have become a way to promote self-identification with a world view - you could show you are more ethical and care more about your children and the developing world, and even the whole planet, if you buy a special label.