food

When you recycle a plastic bottle, it doesn't necessarily become another plastic bottle.

Because of limitations in recycling technology, a common type of plastic used in water bottles and food containers weakens so much when it's recycled that it can't be used again for the same purpose. Some small amount of the plastic might make it into another bottle, but more often than not, it instead becomes synthetic carpet or clothing and can't easily be recycled a second time. So when those products are used up, they end up in landfills.

Micheál Martin, the foreign minister of Ireland, in the New York Times:

Carl Zimmer in his excellent blog, The Loom:

The messages began flowing soon after the quake hit the country.

"Urgent. In Constitucion an eight-year old boy named Ivan Lara showed up alone. He's looking for his family," stated a post on Twitter.

"Urgent. If someone needs a ride to Concepcion call ... will be traveling tomorrow and there's room in the car," tweeted another user two minutes later.

And 20 seconds after that, another person posted a link to a Web site with a list of supermarkets still open in the central-south region of Chile.

Dave Munger in Seed Magazine:

John Tierney in The New York Times:

Warmer ocean temperatures pose a serious threat to corals around the world.  Warmer waters typically kill the brown or green algae that a reef depends on for food, leading to bleaching and death of the reefs, but Penn State scientists have found some algae are not affected by rising temperatures, buying their coral partners some time.

Zach Zorich in Archaeology: