The Thin End

Awkward and ungainly on the ground, vultures are graceful and elegant in the air, soaring beautifully in the sky. Vultures are scavengers of dead animals and are found on every continent except for Australia and Antarctica.  There is even one, the mountain-dwelling bearded vulture that feeds on the bones.  The stomachs of vultures are incredibly acidic and corrosive (pH=1.0; for humans, it is between 1.5 and 3.5), protecting them from potentially lethal toxins such as botulinum, hog cholera, and anthrax bacteria.  By removing dead carcasses of rotting animals,  vultures play a vital role in preventing the spread of disease.  However, their populations have declined dramatically due to human activity.  Vultures in Asia have been particularly affected by the use of the veterinary drug, diclofenac.  We need a better understanding of the conservation and role played by vultures in ecosystems.  The benefits they provide far outweigh any potential threa...

Invented around 1908, it fundamentally changed our drinking habits - the teabag.  But it wasn't actually 'invented.' The teabag was an accident rather than design.  A New York tea merchant, John Sullivan, started sending tea to customers in small silken packets for convenience.  Many of his customers, thinking they were intended to be convenient infusions, placed them in their teapot.  The teabag was born.  Sullivan went on to make the bags from gauze, making them more suitable for infusion, and their use swept across the USA.  In 1953, Tetley introduced the teabag to tea drinkers in the United Kingdom, where now they are used in 96% of tea consumption.  So, what are they?  Here the story is both environmentally good and potentially bad. Not all tea bags are made of the same stuff.  Many tea bags are made with added plastic, which is neither biodegradable nor recyclable.  Some types of teabag leak millions of plastic particles ...