Their metamorphosis seems more like a human’s than a butterfly’s – so much is visible, and awkward, whereas the butterfly forms in secret
Some species of frog have eyes so sensitive to light that they can detect a single photon. To confirm this, scientists dissected a frog’s eye and removed the lens. If you dissected eyes in biology class, you may remember that a lens is extraordinarily simple and unlike other organs. It is a hard, clearish, object that comes out clean: no blood supply, no blood. It looks like a glass bead, and functions – inanimate – much like glass, and not like most things we find in our body (except maybe teeth, which function like knives). Look through the lens at the classroom around you, you will see it clearly, but upside down.
A frog in space, moving further and further from the sun, would eventually start to see not a shrinking star but tiny flashes of light: individual photons. This is because as the photons travel further from their source, they are spread over greater areas: they will hit a frog’s eye less and less often.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
02/24/2025 - 09:00
02/24/2025 - 08:12
Result is further evidence that political conversation around the climate crisis has shifted
German election live – latest updates
In the final days of an election campaign dominated by migration, the likely new chancellor of Europe’s biggest polluter sought to assure voters that its economy ministry would not be occupied by NGOs. Instead, the conservative lead candidate Friedrich Merz posted on social media that it would be led by “someone who understands that economic policy is more than being a representative for heat pumps”.
Climate action barely featured on the campaign trail before Germany’s federal elections on Sunday – except when right-leaning parties used it to swipe at the Greens. Merz’s jab was at the tamer end of attacks aimed at the Green party candidate, Robert Habeck, the economy and climate minister who pushed through an unpopular law to promote clean heating, but is a sign of how far the political conversation around climate action has shifted.
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02/24/2025 - 08:00
Environment justice advocates say tools to study pollution in vulnerable communities by companies, including xAI and SpaceX, have disappeared
As Donald Trump’s administration continues its purge of federal agencies, environmental justice campaigners are alarmed by the disappearance of federal environmental and climate data tools – some of which have been used to identify pollution concerns about Elon Musk’s companies.
Several federal agencies, including the EPA and CDC, previously published data regarding pollution levels across the country, as well as data about the vulnerability of each census tract, such as poverty rates and life expectancy. Several of the websites containing that data have gone dark in the weeks following Trump’s inauguration.
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02/24/2025 - 07:00
Emissions estimated at 55m tonnes in 2024 and nearly 230m tonnes in three years of war
The burning of Ukraine’s forests at unprecedented rates over the past year has helped push the total greenhouse emissions from the war since Russia’s full-scale invasion to almost 230m tonnes, analysis shows.
The study, published on the third anniversary of the invasion, found the fighting and its consequences had led to 55m tonnes of emissions in the past 12 months.
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02/24/2025 - 05:00
The rare sighting of two common short-beaked dolphins hints at an environmental success story
When New Yorkers were graced by the presence of two dolphins in the city’s East River earlier this month, marine experts said such a sighting was rare – but also a sign that this spring and summer season could be a good one for spotting more marine mammals, both great and small.
On the morning of 14 February, a pair of common short-beaked dolphins was spotted alongside Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Experts tracking them observed that they lingered until 17 February, swimming up and down the fast-flowing channel that divides Manhattan from the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn and is lined with skyscrapers.
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02/24/2025 - 01:00
Green sector growing at triple the rate of the UK economy, providing high-wage jobs and increasing energy security
The net zero sector is growing three times faster than the overall UK economy, analysis has found, providing high-wage jobs across the country while cutting climate-heating emissions and increasing energy security.
The net zero economy grew by 10% in 2024 and generated £83bn in gross value added (GVA), a measure of how much value companies add through the goods and services they produce.
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02/24/2025 - 00:00
Many of the nations gathering in Rome for Cop16 have offered no plans to honour their agreement to protect 30% of land and sea for nature
More than half the world’s countries have no plans to protect 30% of land and sea for nature, despite committing to a global agreement to do so less than three years ago, new analysis shows.
In late 2022, nearly every country signed a once-in-a-decade UN deal to halt the destruction of Earth’s ecosystems. It included a headline target to protect nearly a third of the planet for biodiversity by the end of the decade – a goal known as “30 by 30”.
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02/23/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 23 February 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-024-00090-6
Scaling biocultural initiatives can support nature, food, and culture from summit to sea
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | [email protected] +12077011069
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