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Today in chapel, we confessed to plants. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor. What do you confess to the plants in your life?

When Amazon launched its Amazon Home Services this week, the stars of the new initiative were …Goats.Seattle goats, specifically, ready to trim back your pesky shrubbery. “We bring the goats and unload him,” said Tammy Dunakin, head goat wrangler and owner of Rent-A-Ruminant LLC. “The second they hit the ground, they’re eating. It’s incredible to watch. It’s kind of like watching marbles scatter when you drop them on the pavement. And the goats start eating everything in sight."And it sounds like ... Dunakin's goats do work for the city – you may have seen them munching on hills alongside Interstate...

Hunting rope squirrels for food could be fuelling cases of monkeypox in the Congo basinResearchers probing risk factors for human cases of monkeypox in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a ‘hotspot’ of the disease, found that people living near dense forests favoured by rope squirrels are more likely to contract the virus. “Our finding... is consistent with the fact that rope squirrels are the only natural host that have been demonstrated to transmit the monkeypox virus directly to humans in Africa,” write Trevon Fuller and colleagues this month in EcoHealth. The study suggests that the scant resources available for...

Detecting Alien Vegetation Could we find evidence of vegetation on distant exoplanets? The answer may be yes, according to recent work by Luc Arnold (Observatoire de Haute Provence) and team. If green vegetation on another planet is anything like what we have on Earth, then it will share a distinctive spectral signature called the Vegetation Red Edge, or VRE. The new paper creates climate simulations that explore whether planets with a distinctively different climate than modern Earth’s could be so detected.Two earlier eras are useful here. The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) occurred 21,000 years ago, with global temperatures on...

WASHINGTON -- The debate over the fence the United States is building along its southern border has focused largely on the costs, feasibility and how well it will curb illegal immigration. But one of its most lasting impacts may well be on the animals and vegetation that make this politically fraught landscape their home. Some wildlife researchers have grown so concerned about the consequences of bisecting hundreds of miles of rugged habitat that they have talked of engaging in civil disobedience to block the fence's construction. "This wall is so asinine and so wrong, I am one of a dozen...

Source: University of Washington Released: Mon 07-Aug-2006, 15:10 ET Ancient Bison Teeth Provide Window on Past Great Plains Climate, Vegetation Scientists have devised a way to use the fossil teeth of ancient bison as a tool to reconstruct historic climate and vegetation changes in America's breadbasket, the Great Plains.The third molar from a bison jawbone grows to 3 inches in length and has several times more surface area than a quarter. Newswise — A University of Washington researcher has devised a way to use the fossil teeth of ancient bison as a tool to reconstruct historic climate and vegetation changes...

Scientists in Germany have discovered that ordinary plants produce significant amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas which helps trap the sun's energy in the atmosphere. The findings, reported in the journal Nature, have been described as "startling", and may force a rethink of the role played by forests in holding back the pace of global warming. And the BBC News Website has learned that the research, based on observations in the laboratory, appears to be corroborated by unpublished observations of methane levels in the Brazilian Amazon. Until now, it had been thought that natural sources of methane were mainly...

LOS ANGELES – Los Angeles International Airport will spend $200,000 to uproot and replant dozens of palms trees that it illegally planted around the airfield five years ago. "We are delighted that they're following through, to right the wrong that was done," said Travis Longcore, science director of The Urban Wildlands Group, which first challenged the project. "We're very happy that it's moving forward." LAX officials expected the 92 Mexican fan palms would spruce up a grungy stretch of land just outside the airfield's chain-link fence. But some nearby residents complained that the tall palms blocked ocean views. The Urban...