The billowing stainless steel forms of Frank Gehry’s Pritzker bandshell seem to float up from behind the 3.5-acre Lurie Garden in Millennium Park, backed by Chicago’s celebrated skyline. Another landmark in a city long a laboratory for innovation in architecture and landscaping, the garden has been called a “model of responsible horticulture.” Masses of flowering perennials and grasses are a striking counterpoint to the surrounding walls of concrete and glass. Perhaps most unexpected, at a place that sits atop a 4,000-vehicle underground parking garage and railroad depot in the inner city, are the bees that flit from flower to flower.

There are fewer fish in the sea – literally.

Consumer demand and inadequate scientific information has led to overharvesting, reducing fish species and fish stocks around the world.

As eureka moments go, it didn’t entirely follow the script.

There was the flash of inspiration and a flush of excitement when a check of the literature showed that, yes, this could be the real deal.

We need to act urgently to increase the energy efficiency of our buildings as the world’s emerging middle classes put increasing demands on our planet’s energy resources. These are the findings of a new report, published in MRS Energy & Sustainability by authors Matthias M. Koebel, Jannis Wernery and Wim J. Malfait.

What are the best ways for U.S. cities to combat climate change? A new study co-authored by an MIT professor indicates it will be easier for cities to reduce emissions coming from residential energy use rather than from local transportation — and this reduction will happen mostly thanks to better building practices, not greater housing density.

A researcher in the University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (UCVM) is using genomic technology in the search for a drug to fight a parasite that costs the cattle industry worldwide billions of dollars a year.

“One aspect of my research program is to develop new drugs to treat parasites of livestock and specifically helminths — parasitic roundworms — which cost the Canadian cattle industry an estimated $210 million a year,” says James Wasmuth, associate professor of host-parasite interactions at UCVM. “This is in lost production as well as treatment. The cost in the U.S. is around $2 billion, and in Brazil it’s a $7 billion-a-year problem for their beef industry.”

Three years ago, when Carleton architecture student and national team whitewater kayaker, Ben Hayward, took time off from his studies to train and compete in Europe in a bid to qualify for the 2016 Olympics in Rio, the cost of accommodation and travel was tough to manage on his amateur athlete’s budget.

So Hayward bought a used flatbed truck for just over $2,000 and, with $7,500 in materials and help from a Welsh mechanic friend, built a 72-square-foot wooden camper with a small wind turbine, solar panels and a round door at the back. He lived in the “Hobbit Van” for two years, driving from country to country to attend races, sleeping in parking lots.

A shipping container-sized pilot plant that can process a variety of wastes into valuable biofuels will be shipped from Germany to Edmonton thanks to a new future energy research collaboration between the University of Alberta and Germany’s Fraunhofer Society.

The plant, known as Biobattery, uses thermo-catalytic reforming (TCR) technology developed by Fraunhofer bioengineering researcher Andreas Hornung to process a variety of wastes into three valuable products––bio-oil, char and gases––at a rate of 30 kilograms per hour.

Discarded plastic bottles could one day be used to build stronger, more flexible concrete structures, from sidewalks and street barriers, to buildings and bridges, according to a new study.

Rising sea levels and human activities are fast creating a "worst case scenario" for Native Americans of the Mississippi Delta who stand to lose not just their homes, but their irreplaceable heritage, to climate change.