Publication archives

Like the leader in the Tour de France, the man to beat in Saturday 's Wisconsin Arborist Association 's tree climbing contest wore the yellow jersey, which helped identify him as he swung nimbly through the top of one of Warner Park 's oak trees.

Convenience and cost savings have fueled unprecedented growth of online banking and bill payment over the past several years. But as growth flags, environmentalists are urging consumers to put away their checkbooks and fire up their computers in the name of conservation.

International Paper recycled bad news into good on Friday, announcing an investor-friendly $1.5 billion five-year investment in Russia after a week of mill closures and union agreements in the U.S.

While 10 years of bathing North Carolina pine tree stands with extra carbon dioxide did allow the trees to grow more tissue, only those pines receiving the most water and nutrients were able to store significant amounts of carbon that could offset the effects of global warming, scientists told a national meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA).

Japan will try to turn the millions of wooden chopsticks that go discarded each year into biofuel to ease the country's energy shortage, officials said Wednesday. Biofuels are seen as an alternative clean energy resource that can reduce dependence on Middle East oil and lessen the impact of global warming. Japan has virtually no natural energy resources of its own.

As superheroes go, the tiny insect that Ellen Lake holds in her outstretched hand seems preposterous. For starters, it's no bigger than a speck of dirt. In magnification, with its bizarre long snout, the insect - a weevil known as R. latipes - looks almost comical, like something Dr. Seuss would have created.

The forests are disappearing. That's the warning from conservationists who point to statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service, which found Rhode Island has been losing forest land since 1963, when the tree cover peaked at 434,000 acres, or about two-thirds of the state.

The traditional emphasis on dense, fast growing, conifer forests in the Pacific Northwest raises questions about the health of dozens of bird and animal species that depend on shrubs, herbs and broadleaf trees, suggests a new analysis by Oregon State University and the U.S. Geological Survey.