Smog

• Then there’s the noise pollution, a serious issue for humans and animals alike, according to the World Health Organization.
• Our new research has found the magpies that perform better on an associative learning task are better able to maintain their normal anti-predator behaviours in noise.
• That is, the smarter the magpie, the better they are likely to do in our cities.

What does noise do to a magpie?

• To date, most research on the damage done by human-made noise has examined what it means for a species or population.
• There’s been little work done on how individuals respond differently to noise.
• What we do know suggests factors such as the sex, age, body condition and prior experience with noise can change how animals cope with noise.
• Our magpies also spent much more time on alert after an alarm call played alone compared to an alarm call played with human-made noise.
• This suggests their normal anti-predator response doesn’t work as well against a backdrop of our noise.

Why would intelligence help magpies deal with noise?

• Other researchers argue cognition is what makes it possible to adapt to and succeed in urban environments.
• To test this, we gave magpies a learning task to measure their intelligence and cognition.
• Birds with better associative learning may also be better in other aspects of intelligence too.
• Our study reveals intelligence matters for individual animals as they grapple with how to adapt to and cope with human-induced stressors.

• Empire State Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE: ESRT) today shared data which demonstrates the importance of its industry-leading indoor environmental quality (IEQ) measures.
• This summer’s Canadian wildfires caused a record-breaking peak of 117 micrograms per cubic meter of particulate matter (PM2.5) in New York City’s air.
• Tests showed that ESRT’s proactive IEQ measures maintained the portfolio’s indoor air quality at an average of two (2) micrograms per cubic meter of PM2.5 – 33 fewer micrograms per cubic meter than the minimum requirement set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
• “We originally created our indoor environmental quality program in response to SARS.

• They have teamed up for an episode of Public Television’s Viewpoint with Dennis Quaid and a series of national commercials that will air on cable television.
• View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230821004377/en/
  PET plastic can be recycled again and again and the disposal and reintroduction of a PET bottle back into the recycling stream is critical.
• (Photo: Business Wire)
  “The importance of debunking misconceptions of PET packaging and addressing the environmental advantages of PET containers is more important than ever,” said Laura Stewart, Executive Director, National Association for PET Container Resources.
• PET packaging plays a pivotal role in our daily lives by preserving and protecting our food, packaging, and transporting goods, and ensuring the secure and effective delivery of medicine.

• If humans went extinct, what would the Earth look like one year later?
• – Essie, age 11, Michigan
  If humans went extinct, what would the Earth look like one year later?
• – Essie, age 11, Michigan Have you ever wondered what the world would be like if everyone suddenly disappeared?

So much silence

• Our buildings are noisy.
• Our sky is noisy.
• The wind and the rain would scrub clean the surface of the Earth; all the smog and dust that humans make would be gone.

Home sweet home

• Go inside your house – and hope you’re not thirsty, because no water would be in your faucets.
• If no one’s at the public water supply to manage the machines that pump water, then there’s no water.
• Power plants would stop working because no one would monitor them and maintain a supply of fuel.
• And as you move through the rooms in your house, you keep dust on the move too.
• But once all that stops, the air inside your house would be still and the dust would settle all over.

On the street where you live

• That last one might surprise you, but North America was once rich with beavers.
• Lightning might strike a tree or a field and set brush on fire, or hit the houses and buildings.
• Without people to put them out, those fires would keeping going until they burned themselves out.

Around your city

• After just one year, the concrete stuff – roads, highways, bridges and buildings – would look about the same.
• Come back, say, a decade later, and cracks in them would have appeared, with little plants wiggling up through them.
• With this motion comes pressure, and with this pressure come cracks.
• Eventually, the roads would crack so much they would look like broken glass, and even trees would grow through them.

Like ancient Rome

• Some things would remain; it would depend on the materials they were made of, the climate they’re in, and just plain luck.
• An apartment building here, a movie theater there, or a crumbling shopping mall would stand as monuments to a lost civilization.
• The Roman Empire collapsed more than 1,500 years ago, yet you can see some remnants even today.
• If nothing else, humans’ suddenly vanishing from the world would reveal something about the way we treated the Earth.