E-Card Savvy
Good, Bad & Ugly
Greeting Cards
Most of the 2 billion
paper cards mailed be-
tween Thanksgiving and
Christmas each year land
in the garbage by Janu-
ary. According to Friends
of the Earth, recycling those discarded greetings could save
the equivalent of 666,600 trees. That’s why legitimate online,
paperless, greeting card companies have such an upside.
The downside is that, while desirable and cost-efficient
e-cards readily spread cheer and cheesy humor, spammers
and hackers spreading computer viruses often hide behind
malicious season’s greetings. Experts caution that we must
ever be alert to delete the products of such malcontents, as
they continually shift their strategies to match the calendar.
Here are three tips to sort the good from the bad: Only
open cards that carry a familiar name; the generic “from a
friend or family member,” is a red light. Look for an indi-
vidual verification code; instead of clicking on the email link
provided, visit the company website to open the e-card using
the code. Stay alert; both naughty and nice greetings can
show up any time of the year.
Source: The Christian Science Monitor.
Primal Resonance
Scientists Listen to Trees to Save
Forests
New discoveries could help reduce forest
fires and prevent bug infestations, based
on two scientific studies about how trees
function.
In one, researchers are listening
to the ultrasonic complaints of drought-
stricken, beetle-infested piñon pines. They hypothesize that the
beetles find vulnerable trees by detecting these sounds. The
beetles also emit ultrasounds to communicate among them-
selves, which may attract more bugs to a tree under attack. Dr.
James Crutchfield, from the University of California at Davis,
who is collaborating with the Art and Science Laboratory in
Santa Fe, says that if the theory proves true, it may be possible
to use ultrasound to confuse and divert the beetles and protect
the trees.
The other study has solved the mystery of how trees
produce low-level electrical power. This opens the way to
using trees’ own electricity to power networks of sensors for
early fire detection, even in remote regions. Shuguang Zhang,
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, announced
the finding in PLoS ONE, a Public Library of Science online
journal. His research team notes that trees generate electricity
from an imbalance in the acidity between a tree and the soil;
it’s the same principle students use to generate a charge using
a lemon or potato at high school science fairs.
December 2008 27
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