Asia
Asia’s First Fully Solar-Powered Drone Lifts Off
In April, a group of students from the Innovation & Design Programme (iDP) at National University of Singapore Engineering developed a quadcopter drone that is powered completely with solar energy, without the need for batteries or other energy storage. In…
New Study Finds Food Waste Will Increase to 66 Tons per Second If Left Unchecked
A new analysis from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has found that global food waste will increase by more than 30% by 2030 if no action is taken. The figures themselves are even more alarming: a total of 2.1 billion tons…
Summer Weather Is Getting ‘Stuck’ Due to Arctic Warming
Summer weather patterns are increasingly likely to stall in Europe, North America and parts of Asia, according to a new climate study that explains why Arctic warming is making heatwaves elsewhere more persistent and dangerous. Rising temperatures in the Arctic…
Indonesia’s Deforestation Dropped 60 Percent in 2017
In the midst of the second-worst year for tropical tree cover loss in 2017, Indonesia saw an encouraging sign: a 60 percent drop in tree cover loss in primary forests compared with 2016. That’s the difference in carbon dioxide emissions…
Wild-Caught Elephants Can Die Up to 7 Years Earlier
For the study, published Tuesday in Nature Communications, researchers studied records of 5,000 timber elephants in Myanmar to understand the effects of capture. They determined that capturing and taming wild-caught elephants resulted in a median lifespan that is 3–7 years…
Illegal Ivory Found on Sale in 10 European Countries
Illegal ivory has been found on sale in 10 European countries, contravening international efforts to cut down on the trade which campaigners say encourages the poaching of elephants. The campaigning group Avaaz bought 109 items of ivory and had them…
Historic Floods in Japan Kill More Than 100, Force Millions to Flee
At least 109 people have died in Japan following historic flooding and mudslides over the weekend that prompted evacuation orders covering about five million people, The Guardian reported Monday. The flooding was prompted by Japan’s heaviest rainfall in decades. Parts…