Scientists have quantified for the first time how vegetation across the African continent has changed in the past 20 years. Thirty six per cent of the continent has become greener, while 11 per cent is becoming less green. The study challenges the view that Africa is undergoing a sustained loss of trees and bushes. –Kristian Sjøgren, Science Nordic, 28 May 2017

There is a little-known fact that gas molecules excite with direct radiation, while atom pairs do not. This warming is called “resonance,” not because we hear them singing when buzzed by solar photons, but because physicists have no other way of describing how molecules pass on heat energy.

Arctic sea ice extent is almost exactly “normal.”

2017

Last October, David Rose wrote that Nick Stern’s (pictured) research centre has falsely claimed credit for papers it had no role in. Rose listed a few anecdotes.

Found this inspiring:

VIDEO AFTER THE JUMP

If only universities inculcated an attitude like this.

A box of rare daisies from the 1850s had been sent to Brisbane from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.

But the pressed plant samples were incinerated because accompanying documents were filled out incorrectly.

In January 2016, the EU imposed a maximum limit of inorganic arsenic on manufacturers in a bid to mitigate associated health risks. Researchers at the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s have found that little has changed since this law was passed and that 50 per cent of baby rice food products still contains an illegal level of inorganic arsenic.

Molecules containing three atoms have been laser cooled to ultracold temperatures for the first time. The feat was achieved by John Doyle and colleagues at Harvard University in the US, who used a technique called Sisyphus cooling to chill an ensemble of about a million strontium-monohydroxide molecules to 750 μK. The team says the work opens the door to a range of applications, including quantum simulation and precision measurements.

Best practice in science is achieved through a minimum of two critical conditions: humility and perspective. If humility and perspective are ignored, science suffers.

The field of climate science is suffering from some lack of both humility and perspective.

The Climate-Industrial Complex (CIC) is fighting hard to keep the US in the Paris Accord (to the extent it ever was in it given that the Senate has never consented to it), which I call the Paris non-treaty Treaty. And President Trump promises a decision after the G-7 meeting this weekend.

Several entities are developing orbiting “garbage trucks” to remove growing amounts of debris from space, experts told Bloomberg Wednesday.

Am I reading right? A (railway) train jumped the tracks, right in a major city’s main train station? Perhaps I misread that (reminder to myself: get an eye checkup forthwith!)  — that must be a MISPRINT!

The American space agency says the Cassini satellite encountered very few particles as it dived between Saturn and its rings last week.

There were fears that the probe might hit fragments of ice or rock, and that these could cause significant damage.

Men and women differ in obvious and less obvious ways — for example, in the prevalence of certain diseases or reactions to drugs. How are these connected to one’s sex? Weizmann Institute of Science researchers recently uncovered thousands of human genes that are expressed — copied out to make proteins — differently in the two sexes. Their findings showed that harmful mutations in these particular genes tend to accumulate in the population in relatively high frequencies, and the study explains why. The detailed map of these genes, reported in BMC Biology, provides evidence that males and females undergo a sort of separate, but interconnected evolution.

A survey of more than 7000 galaxies has concluded that a mysterious cold spot in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is not caused by a giant void in space, potentially opening the door for more exotic explanations.

A study meant to debunk a claim made by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt in his confirmation hearing ended up doing the opposite — it proved him right.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Nature, found that Pruitt’s claim of a “leveling off of warming” over the past two decades is unsupported by satellite-derived temperature data, which measures the lowest few miles of the atmosphere.