The forests of the coastal regions from California to British Columbia are known for unique and ancient animals and plants, like redwoods, tailed frogs, mountain beavers and even folk tales of the legendary Bigfoot (also known as Sasquatch).

Now it has something else.  Citizen scientists from the Western Cave Conservancy and arachnologists from the California Academy of Sciences have reported a newly discovered spider. named Trogloraptor ("cave robber") for its cave home and spectacular, elongate claws.  The only thing missing is evidence of it feasting on Orc flesh.

A version of this article with less scientific details (so easier to read) can be found here.

A team of Portuguese researchers have developed a mathematical tool that can classify any region in the world according to its pattern of development into one of 5 types, each with specific characteristics and predictable behaviours that call for different interventions and policy measures. The discovery, just out in Nature’s Scientific Reports,  represents a major step towards a new type to city planning - objective and most importantly,  independent of personal visions, interests and politics.

Too hot to grill outside?  Too cold?  Stuck in a New York City Restaurant?  

Here is how you pan fry a steak.  Put a bunch of salt and pepper on it, some butter too.  Heat an oven to 450 degrees.  Iron skillet too, as hot as you can get it on a stove. Once both are hot, throw the steak in there and disabled the smoke alarm. Cook it for two minutes or so, then flip it over, take it off the stove and stick the whole thing in the oven for maybe 6 minutes.  

Result; a delicious pan-friend steak as good as anything as you will get in a restaurant; and up to a 40% increased risk of prostate cancer, according to a new study in Carcinogenesis which, you can tell by the name, is a pretty scary magazine.

DNA sequencing is getting faster and cheaper, but it's still pretty scary to patients who don't understand the difference between a risk factor and 'I have a gene for this disease' - doctors are also still unclear how they will be able to use this information.

When genomic data needs is a contest.

When we think about agriculture, technology and the future there is one apparent truth—we will need to produce more with less.  We are going to need to produce more food,with higher quality, closer to urban centers, with fewer agricultural inputs and impacts.