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In Maine, the value of Mother Nature, not counting tourism dollars, natural resource-based businesses or other revenue derived from the outdoors, accounts for more than $14 billion per year.

One example in the study is Sebago Lake, which provides drinking water that’s clean enough not to be filtered before it is piped to the 200,000 customers of the Portland Water District. The study estimates the EPA’s filtration waiver — based on the cleanliness of Sebago Lake — has saved taxpayers at least $146 million, which is the approximate cost of a new water filtration plant.

A well-known and often-mentioned study of London taxi drivers showed that experienced drivers with a mental map of London had a hippocampus larger in one area than people without their experience. In some birds that hide seeds and return later to their caches with astonishing accuracy, the hippocampus grows and shrinks seasonally, presumably as they map their hiding spots.

the slime mold was designed by evolution to solve just one problem: how to build an optimal transport network (for its nutrients). So we decided to investigate how the slime mold, when presented with the task of connecting the major urban areas of the United States, would design a transport system. Would its design resemble that of the United States highway system, or would the slime mold propose a superior one?

There’s a need for training and in filling in the gaps between the extremely casual tweeting, say, and the I.P.C.C. assessment report. There’s a whole range of levels of communication that could fit in between those two things…. The stuff in the middle, that’s where the people who know what they’re talking about should be acting, because we’re not there collectively now.Some of us are. But we’re not there collectively, and that kind of cedes that whole field to the people who don’t know anything and the people who are more fond of their own voice than they are of the facts and the people who want to disinform and misinform the public.So it’s that area in the middle, the hinterland between the paper and the tweet, where I think there’s a lot more scope for us to communicate and where, quite frankly, the field is wide open.

Ocean Renewable Power Co. aims to begin installation of its first grid-connected power unit in mid-March at a 60-acre site in Cobscook Bay at the nation’s easternmost tip.

All told, the company sees up to 50 megawatts of tidal power potential in the Eastport and Lubec areas, enough to power thousands of homes, Sauer said.

The completed pilot project will produce enough electricity for about 100 homes.