Fire ants may have first entered the United States during the 1930s aboard ships coming from South America. Over the years their populations have exploded, in many cases displacing native ants. The fire ants attack anything that disturbs their colonies, making them dangerous to small children. They also cause damage to electrical contacts, cause potholes in roads, and damage agricultural fields.

In a newly released report, the U.N. Population Fund has determined that in mid-October the world population will reach 6 billion. This century alone has seen a 400% increase in the number of people inhabiting the planet Earth, from 1.5 billion to 6 billion. The U.N. study projects that by the year 2050, 8.9 billion people will populate Earth.

Exponential Concerns
In May of last year, President Bush made a speech in which he unveiled his administration's national energy strategy. Calling it a plan "that faces up to our energy challenges and meets them," President Bush made over 100 proposals, including the following:

Misinformation and Scare Tactics By Jimmy Carter 17 May 2001

It has been more than 20 years since our country developed a comprehensive energy policy. It is important for President Bush and Congress to take another look at this important issue, but not based on misleading statements made lately by high
administration officials. These comments have distorted history and future needs.

Nibbles and Bits
The next time you bite into a turkey, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, think about where this puts you and your students on the food chain. A food chain is a model of feeding relationships in an ecosystem. A food chain uses a single representative for each feeding level — also called a trophic level — in the chain. In a simple chain, the turkey ate grain and you ate the turkey.

Ablaze Out West
No wonder we use the phrase "spreading like wildfire." Each year, it takes the awesome effort of thousands of United States firefighters to rein in wildfires as they scorch their way across acres. Right now, 19 large wildfires are crackling in seven states. With over 2.3 million acres devoured so far, the acreage burned for this time of year is more than twice the 10-year average — an indication of a wildfire season that has gotten off to an early start.

Images from NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites have become a regular part of the National Interagency Fire Center's firefighting toolkit. The images help the center track fires on a daily basis and are used in allocating precious firefighting resources. These satellite images show the Aspen Fire progression from June 19 to 27, 2003. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board the NASA satellite acquired the data for these images.

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/0627arizonafire.html

Did you know that even forest fires can be good things? It is true. If they are planned correctly forests fires can be very beneficial to the environment.

http://www.units.muohio.edu/dragonfly/save/fire1.htmlx

Holding Back a River

After the Flood
Under a burning sun, a water skier ploughs through the crystal-blue waters that lap against the towering, red walls of Glen Canyon. It's a summer afternoon on Lake Powell, a vast body of water that lies on the border between Arizona and Utah. For the lake's visitors, the cool water is a welcome respite from the searing western heat.

Why are the polar bears getting thinner?

Cow Power

Waste Not, Watt Not
"The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo; the other, milk."

If Ogden Nash were writing this poem today, he might want to add a line or two. In the new millennium, both ends of our bovine friends are under scrutiny — but for very different reasons. While governments are trying to figure out how to control cow burping, a significant factor in global warming, cow manure is gaining popularity as one of Earth's greenest sources of electricity.

President Bush on Global Warming

The Heat is On for Change
In a long-awaited policy announcement, President Bush has unveiled his administration's plan to reduce global warming. Focusing on tax credits and other incentives intended to encourage but not force the cooperation of industries and business, Bush's plan aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States — the world's largest producer of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming — approximately 4.5 percent by the year 2012.

Computers for Africa

Technology for All?
For an increasingly large number of people in this country, especially students, using a computer has become an ordinary and regular part of life and learning. It's almost impossible for us to imagine life without computers, and it's even harder to imagine not having the electricity to use one.

How to recycle that obsolete computer

These days, computers are becoming outdated faster than last year's wardrobe and recycling that vintage 386 may not be as easy as you think

Beneficial Bugs
Ten years ago there were approximately 750,000 named insect species. Today, that number is over 1,000,000. And according to a recent article in Scientific American, entomologists estimate that there are likely over eight million different species of insects on Earth. When you compare that to 4,650 named and 4,809 estimated mammal species or the 72,000 named and 1,500,000 estimated fungi, it is easy to see that insects "out-populate" any other living taxonomic group on Earth.

Visit this site for information about safe ways to work with bugs.

Recycling

Did you know that every year American people throw away 208 million tons of municipal solid waste? That means that every day each person throws away an average of 4.3 pounds of garbage or trash! Where on earth does all of this garbage go? The answer is landfills.

All Sorts of Savings
Recycling is getting more convenient than ever. You may have used the self-contained recycling machines found at many supermarkets. The process is simple: You place cans and bottles in designated slots, and a computer prints a receipt that you can take inside the grocery store to be redeemed for cash. How many months do you think will pass before the aluminum cans you just recycled reappear on the supermarket shelves?

http://www.riverdeep.net/current/2000/04/front.280400.recycle.jhtml

EPA kid's page on recycling:

http://www.epa.gov/recyclecity/

Rescuing Sea Otters

Oil tankers--ships that sometimes carry millions of liters of oil--sail up and down the Pacific coast from California to Alaska. The tankers pass right through sea otter habitat.

If an oil tanker wrecks, oil spills into the

oil spill facts

What does Superfund do?