Moving Forward

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Stella.20.Woman.
College student.Feminist.Abolitionist.
Believes in the power of love, hope, and people.
Will never stop learning, informing, fighting.

"One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star."

lunaoki:

a lover’s discourse

bigbrotheryona:

ihavethisblog:

fuckyeahtoronto:

Toronto becomes first city to mandate green roofs
Toronto is the first city in North America with a bylaw that requires roofs to be green. And we’re not talking about paint. A green roof, also known as a living roof, uses various hardy plants to create a barrier between the sun’s rays and the tiles or shingles of the roof. The plants love the sun, and the building (and its inhabitants) enjoy more comfortable indoor temperatures as a result.
Toronto’s new legislation will require all residential, commercial and institutional buildings over 2,000 square meters to have between 20 and 60 percent living roofs. Although it’s been in place since early 2010, the bylaw will apply to new industrial development as of April 30, 2012. While this is the first city-wide mandate involving green roofs, Toronto’s decision follows in the footsteps of other cities, like Chicago and New York.
Under the direction of Mayor Richard Daley the city of Chicago put a 38,800 square foot green roof on a 12 story skyscraper in 2000. Twelve years later, that building now saves $5000 annually on utility bills, and Chicago boasts 7 million square feet of green roof space. New York has followed suit, and since planting a green roof on the Con Edison Learning Centre in Queens, the buildings managers have seen a 34 percent reduction of heat loss in winter, and reduced summer heat gain by 84 percent.
But lower utility bills aren’t the only benefit of planting a living roof. In addition to cooling down the city, green roofs create cleaner air, cleaner water, and provide a peaceful oasis for people, birds and insects in an otherwise polluted, concrete and asphalt-covered environment.

Fuck yeah, Toronto. Hell fucking yeah.

this needs to be everywhere

inothernews:

GREENWAY The Aurora Australis is seen between Antarctica and Australia from aboard the International Space Station. (Photo: Andre Kuipers / European Space Agency / NASA via Reuters / The Telegraph)

photographic-energy:

The World, About to Fall (by Torsten Reimer)

infoneer-pulse:

Ancient seagrass: ‘Oldest living thing on earth’ discovered in Mediterranean Sea

Australian scientists sequenced the DNA of samples of the giant seagrass, Posidonia oceanic, from 40 underwater meadows in an area spanning more than 2,000 miles, from Spain to Cyprus.
The analysis, published in the journal PLos ONE, found the seagrass was between 12,000 and 200,000 years old and was most likely to be at least 100,000 years old. This is far older than the current known oldest species, a Tasmanian plant that is believed to be 43,000 years old.
Prof Carlos Duarte, from the University of Western Australia, said the seagrass has been able to reach such old age because it can reproduce asexually and generate clones of itself. Organisms that can only reproduce sexually are inevitably lost at each generation, he added.

» via The Telegraph

animalworld:

PYGMY LEAF CHAMELEON - world’s smallest ChameleonBrookesia minima©Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images/Newscom

An employee displays the world’s smallest Pygmy Leaf Chameleon at Tokyo’s Sunshine International Aquarium. The chameleon is a rare species that measures only one inch in length, weighs only three grams.
It has an active habit for a chameleon and likes moving around in the low branches and leaf litter of its native rain forests. Though they are moderately aggressive towards one another, population densities in the wild may approach one animal per square meter.
The Pygmy Leaf Chameleon is endemic to the jungles of Nosy Be, an island located just off the northwest coast of Madagascar, but has extralimital distribution to Manongarivo Reserve on Madagascar’s northwest coast.
It is not known how frequently the chameleon reproduces, but a typical clutch contains two eggs. Source
Other Posts:
Mountain Chameleon
Big-nose Chameleon
Jackson’s Chameleon

inothernews:

An account of a rare sighting: that of a leucistic, or a nearly all-white penguin, by a National Geographic expedition team in Antarctica:

Despite colorful variation in facial patterns, all penguins are decked in the standard black and white pattern. This is no accident. Counter-shading camouflage in so necessary to diving birds that all are fundamentally alike. But to our astonishment we found an exception. At the water’s edge stood a leucistic Chinstrap. This bird was whitish, but not quite an albino. Instead, it had pigmented eyes and a washed-out version of a Chinstrap’s normal pattern. Many wondered about this unusual bird’s chances of success. While odd coloration may make fishing a bit more difficult, leucistic birds are regularly found breeding normally.

sairaphotography:

Andes Mountains, Chile

clavicola:

Tonight I feel like this