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The roof of the world is melting, turning large parts of China into a desert. The Chinese Academy of Sciences says the glaciers of the Tibetan plateau are melting so quickly that they are getting 50% smaller every 10 years. Meanwhile, here in the US, the Society of Landscape Architects wants everyone to have a green roof. This doesn’t mean you should put green shingles on your house?it means that you should grow plants there.

Geoffrey Lean writes in the Independent that global warming is turning large areas into desert. As China gets drier, more dust begins to blow, in a country already famous for its treacherous dust storms.
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We recently traveled to the place I consider our home town because we lived there for so many years: New York City. Whitley and I met there and raised our son there. In some ways, the trip had a deeper meaning for me, because we had plane tickets to New York in our pockets when I was suddenly struck down by an aneurysm a little over a year ago.

When I planned the trip, I decided to make it a journey to see old friends. We got in touch with a good friend who works at the Metropolitan Opera. I have heard wonderful stories from her over the years about things such as having to babysit the French poodles owned by out-of-town divas. We had supper together and then saw a delightful ballet.
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Humans and chimps share about 98% of their DNA, and now scientists have discovered monkeys that can talk to each other?in complete sentences.

Genevi?ve Roberts reports in the Independent that using words to make sentences?and using the same word for the same thing over and over?is what we call “syntax,” and putty-nosed monkeys in Africa can do this too. Two of their basic sounds, “Pyows” and “Hacks,” are used to warn against two different predators: a Pywow is a leopard and a Hack is an eagle. But when the words are combined, the sentence means “Let’s go,” which is sort of like the human phrase “Let’s roll,” which was used by the Flight 93 passengers.
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Scientists like to investigate a lot of things that the rest of us take for granted. Like whispers?how do we hear them, anyway?

Robert Roy Britt writes in LiveScience.com that there’s a tiny organ inside your ear call the cochlea, which looks like a snail shell. It transforms sounds into nerve impulses that then travel to the hairs deep inside your ear, then on to your brain, allowing you to hear. But why is it twisted so tightly?
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