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The Mediterranean diet is bad for biodiversity
The Mediterranean diet is less good for biodiversity than the current American diet, according to a new analysis from the United States Department of Agriculture. Posted in PNAS in early April, this analysis shows that even the vegetarian diet is not as good for biodiversity as its “territorial footprint” suggests. The vegetarian diet affects half as many territories as the current American diet, but its fruits and nuts come from countries richer in biodiversity than the United States, making it only 30% less destructive to biodiversity than the American diet. current. The current American diet is better than the Mediterranean diet because it includes a lot of vegetable fats, less good for health, but better for biodiversity than the dairy products and fish of the Mediterranean diet.
Quiz
What is the solution that Swiss, Austrian and Brazilian engineers have found to the problem of overexploitation of sand deposits?
PHOTO PROVIDED BY VALE
The Vale mine in Brazil, where ore sand technology was tested.
Answer
Transform mine tailings into sand. Working with a Brazilian mine from mining giant Vale, researchers from the universities of Geneva and Queensland have demonstrated that it is possible to create “ore sand” at minimal cost. This source of sand could meet 10% of global needs, according to their telepresentation before the 5and UN Environment Assembly last week. The extraction of sand, often from oceans and rivers in Asia and Africa, has doubled over the past 20 years.
The number
150 years
IMAGE PROVIDED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
Mayan calendar fragment from IIand or IIIand century BC discovered in Guatemala
This is the shot of old taken by a Mayan calendar discovered on the site of San Bartolo, in Guatemala. The wall fragments of the calendar, recently analyzed because several complete frescoes were brought to light on this site discovered in 2001, date from the IIand or IIIand century BC. That’s a century and a half earlier than expected, according to archaeologists at the University of Texas at Austin, who describe their find this week in the journal Science Advances. This also means that the Maya script does not only come from the Oaxaca region in southern Mexico.
The enigma of the Avars
PHOTO FROM THE NEW YORK METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART WEBSITE
Metal utensils from an avaricious tomb in Hungary
The Avars, who ruled central Europe for two centuries some 1,500 years ago, did indeed come from western Mongolia, shows a genetic analysis published in early April by an international team in the journal Cell. Less well known than the Huns of Attila, the Avars would be the descendants of the Ruanruans, nomads who lived between northwestern China and southern Siberia. The Ruanruan were driven from their lands by the ancestors of the Turks, who then dominated eastern southern central Asia. The Avars notably waged war against the Byzantines from Hungary.
Reforestation better than expected
PHOTO FROM WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Planting trees in the United States
Current climate predictions do not account for local cooling caused by vegetation, according to a new study from the University of Virginia. Published in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, the study shows that this effect increases by 30 to 50% the contribution of reforestation in the fight against global warming. This means that carbon credits linked to reforestation should be higher, but not in the North, because northern forests reduce the reflective effect of snow.