Bee Wary Nature’s Wake-Up Set to Snooze


Bees are awakening earlier each spring, accord- ing to a Rutgers University study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sci- ences. Scientists report that global warming over the past 130 years has caused several species of North American bees to emerge about 10 days earlier than they did previously, with most of the shift occurring since 1970. Scientific research known as phenology measures the timing of lifecycle


Smart Giving Silicon Valley Launches Philanthropy 2.0


Reinvention is nothing new in Silicon Valley, California, home of some of the world’s most prominent cutting-edge technology companies. Frustrated with what they perceive as the slow pace and inefficiency of many nonprofits, some of the area’s innovators are bring- ing fresh approaches to solving vexing social issues. Along with money, these social entrepreneurs are applying their business skills—from marketing to op- erations, together with their enthusiasm and business drive—to transform non- profits into more savvy, goal-focused businesses. “Donors aren’t waiting until


retirement now,” says Laura Arrillaga- Andreessen, a philanthropist and author of Giving 2.0, a book on how to improve philanthropy. She says, “This is no longer about sympathy. It’s about strategy,” asserting that donors today are demanding more research and metrics before funding charitable projects. Beth Kanter, a nonprofit scholar


and author of The Networked Non- profit, points to MomsRising.org, which advocates for family-friendly laws, as a leading example. “MomsRising didn’t reinvent the wheel, and instead just focused on what they were enthusiastic about—mobilizing people,” she says. Instead of operating in a traditional manner, the nonprofit outsourced much of its operations, allowing it to run more nimbly on a virtual basis. Arrillaga-Andreessen advises,


“If we are to solve these problems, the onus is on givers to facilitate that change.”


Source: The Christian Science Monitor sunyorange.edu/ce 341-4890 sunyrockland.edu/go/cppd 574-4151 sunyulster.edu/ce 339-2025 natural awakenings March 2012 15


events of animals and plants. “A shift in 10 days is a lot from the point of view of an insect whose lifetime is measured in weeks,” says Rutgers Entomologist Rachael Winfree, co-author of the study. Because bees are the world’s most important pollinators of flowers and plants,


any change in this crucial relationship could prove devastating. Study leader Ignasi Bartomeus, Ph.D., says. “If bees and plants responded differently to climate change, bees could emerge in the spring before plants were flowering, in which case the bees would die because they wouldn’t have anything to eat. Or plants could flower before the bees emerged, in which case the plants would not be pol- linated and would fail to reproduce.”


Source: USA Today


RECYCLED SHELTERS Nigeria Makes Houses from Plastic Bottles


Citizens of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, can now live “inside” the plastic water bottles that previously lit- tered their roads, canals and gutters, thanks to a proj- ect initiated by the Kaduna-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) Developmental Association for Renewable Energies, with help from foreign experts from African Community Trust, a London-based NGO. The prototype 624-square-foot, two-bedroom bun-


galow looks like an ordinary home, but it is made from capped, sand-filled plastic bottles. The bottles are stacked


into layers and bonded together by mud and cement, with an intricate network of strings holding each bottle by its neck, providing extra support to the structure. Once approved, the country will start construction to alleviate a current deficit of 16 million housing units.


Source: PhysOrg.com


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