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Earth

How to make your new house a sustainable one

People might falsely believe that when they are building a house incorporating any sustainable solutions require additional costs and effort. It is actually the opposite. Some of the sustainable solutions require very little in any financing with comparison to the costs that need to be incurred anyways in a newly constructed building. Moreover, while an initial cost might be a bit higher as for purchasing, for example a sustainable heating system, there is a fast return on investment as utility bills are much lowers with sustainable heating than a standard one. It is possible to save around 30% on the use of energy and water in a sustainable house. That is a case with any other sustainable solution, when it pays off to invest in environment friendly solution in every case.Below there is list of sustainable solutions that can be applied in every house.Heat recovery system for the ventilation, heating and cooling.The use of geothermal heat pump for heating the house, allows for great savings on heating costs.It is common to use only floor heating as a heating option in energy efficient houses (no radiators). Use of low energy doors and windows (recommended triple glazed windows).

Earth

Why Spiderman can’t exist: Geckos are ‘size limit’ for sticking to walls

Latest research reveals why geckos are the largest animals able to scale smooth vertical walls — even larger climbers would require unmanageably large sticky footpads. Scientists estimate that a human would need adhesive pads covering 40 percent of their body surface in order to walk up a wall like Spiderman, and believe their insights have implications for the feasibility of large-scale, gecko-like adhesives.

Earth

Deadly amphibian fungus may decline, study finds

A new study offers a glimmer of hope for some amphibian populations decimated by the deadly chytrid fungus: climate change may make environmental conditions for the fungus unsuitable in some regions and potentially stave off the spread of disease in African amphibian populations struggling to adapt to changes brought about by global warming.

Earth

NASA’s Great Observatories weigh massive young galaxy cluster

Astronomers have made the most detailed study yet of an extremely massive young galaxy cluster using three of NASA’s Great Observatories. This multiwavelength image shows this galaxy cluster, called IDCS J1426.5+3508, in X-rays recorded by Chandra in blue, visible light observed by Hubble in green, and infrared light detected by Spitzer in red. is so far away that the light detected is from when the universe was roughly a quarter of its current age. This is the most massive galaxy cluster detected at such an early age.