Many corporations, educational institutions, and publishers have made efforts in recent years to shift from paper-based reading to electronic and online reading in order to save paper. According to this logic, paper is gleaned from trees, which must be replenished, and the energy required to recycle paper waste is another blow to the environment as well as to organizations' finances. However, researcher Emma Gardsdale sees more gray area in the issue. First, in order for e-reading to be practical, tablets and e-readers are required. Because these devices have a limited lifespan of one to four years, they create e-waste which puts poisons such as arsenic, lead, and poly-brominated flame retardants into landfills, where they can leach into water supplies and soil. Second, e-reading has a hidden cost: the electricity required to power servers, computers and mobile devices. Gardsdale also points out that the ecological balance between paper reading and e-reading depends significantly on the amount of reading that one does. An e-reader, for example, will have a smaller carbon footprint than paper only if it is used for at least a certain volume of reading. Gardsdale argues that the current all-encompassing enthusiasm for the ecological promise of electronic reading isn't the quick ecological fix it may seem to be. Over the long term, she says, both paper and electronic reading will likely have a place in our lives. Each method's role will depend on the energy-saving and waste-minimizing technologies that become available in the coming years, and on whether corporations that manufacture mobile reading devices are willing to take responsibility for the impact of their devices' life cycles.

     Cap and Trade (a government measure to incentivize the reduction of carbon emissions by business entities through financial means) has become a popular method to reduce air pollution by nations across the world, with many witnessing substantial reductions in CO2 emissions since its implementation. Carlos Sangster and Stephen Saifuddin recognize that this development is a positive one but stipulate that Cap and Trade in itself may actually increase the long-term likelihood of environmental catastrophe. Emissions trading measures, like Cap and Trade, incentivize certain companies to reduce their emissions but allow companies that can afford to do so to continue to produce emissions at historic levels; indeed, the largest companies often accept the costs of Cap and Trade measures because, despite moderately increased overhead, they can do so and still sustain record profits and growth. Moreover, there is no guarantee that short-term reductions in carbon emissions will translate into reductions in the total amount of fossil fuels used, because even into the far future, fossil fuels might easily remain more cost-effective than more environmentally-friendly alternatives. Even if government regulations were to make carbon emissions vastly more expensive, the current fossil fuel-based economic model would, were it to grow or even remain at its current size, produce more atmospheric carbon dioxide and global warming than would an economic model that put a hard cap on the amount of carbon emissions that could be produced. Sangster and Saifuddin argue that to effectively protect the planet's environmental health and encourage a more sustainable fuel economy, governments must implement measures that mandate environmentally-friendly energy sources and keep as-yet untapped fossil fuels safely underground. Unduly emphasizing halfway measures like Cap and Trade, which appeal to business entities and political interests with a vested stake in the prolonged use of fossil fuels, may distract global regulators from policies that might prove more effective in averting the disastrous effects of climate change.

     A recent underwater survey has found clues in a Mayan cenote, a type of sinkhole, about the development of the Mesoamerican city of Mayapán (1150–1450 CE). The city wall curves to avoid this particular cenote, Sac Uayum, in which research divers found more than a dozen skeletal human remains. Normally cenotes are found within city limits, to provide water, so the location of the cenote and number of remains are notably atypical.

     Researchers are considering various possibilities to explain their findings. A theory that the cenote might have served as a general city cemetery was rejected, because most city residents were interred near or under their homes. A theory of ceremonial human sacrifice was dismissed because the bones were unmarked, showing no indications of rituals or cause of death. A theory of social elitism was eliminated, because shards of other artifacts discovered at the same site were mainly those of plain water pitchers, displaying no indications of wealth or high social rank. So far the most tenable interpretation under consideration is that the cenote may have served as an attempt at contagious-disease containment—a plague pit, kept deliberately beyond the city wall and apart from drinking water supplies. The persistence into modern times of local taboos and superstitions around Sac Uayum, threatening death if the gods are not appeased with rituals before the water is approached, lends further credence to the researchers' theory.

     In semi-aquatic ecosystems, bodies of water present peculiar difficulties for the hunting strategies of spiders. Ponds, lakes, and rivers can provide unnavigable escape vectors for prey organisms, making it likely that predators will lose out on valuable nutritional resources. The water spider Dolomedes, in particular, demonstrates adaptations that allow it to take advantage of waterborne food sources.

     The difficulty that members of the species Dolomedes face is best evidenced by the typical hunting strategies of terrestrial spiders. All spiders produce silk and arboreal species generally spin their silk into fine, latticework structures that they suspend in the environment to trap passing arthropods, which entangle themselves due to the exigencies of the forested ecosystem. In environs lacking tree coverage or comparable large structures, however, web-hunting becomes inefficient, and other strategies of predation have to be pursued. That many spider species persist in environments lacking significant tree coverage suggests that certain behavioral adaptations enable them to locate food effectively in a variety of environmental circumstances.

     One such adaptation is the proactive use of water bodies by Dolomedes, who eschew silk in favor of water tension, which they use to monitor the movements of prey animals. Organisms fall into a pond, lake, or river, and send waves vibrating from the point of impact across the surface of the pool. Dolomedes uses these vibrations to locate and capture the fallen organism. For arboreal spiders, who can only monitor the vibrations caused by insects caught in the webs they've spun, this is useless information. Such a hunting strategy does not require that the arboreal spiders pay attention to extraneous prey when other prey is acquired in abundance by other adaptations. In comparison, Dolomedes acquires its prey by yet another aquatic adaptation, using a coat of tiny, hydrophobic hairs that allow the spider to submerge itself in the liquid environment. By causing a pocket of air to gather and surround the surface of the spider's body, these hairs allow Dolomedes to submerge itself in water, thus giving it access to sources of prey closed off to other species.

     Finzer predicts that the possibilities for medical research could be expanded through a strategic deployment of the data-gathering and -analysis technologies now becoming available. Currently, huge amounts of data are already being generated for each patient—raising hopes for the possibility of highly personalized medicine—as well as by clinical studies and other methods that promise to allow comparison across populations. Although data storage and access present security and privacy concerns, Finzer points out that the benefits far outweigh the risks, which can be mitigated. Both local and internet-based storage solutions have been proposed for minimizing the possibility of patient data theft.

     Finzer hopes not only that data will be gathered and stored but also that the medical community will recognize the need for more medically-trained data scientists to analyze the data. Often medical researchers simply employ a computer scientist with little medical knowledge to perform specific analysis-related tasks. Results produced using this method are likely to overlook important factors, correlations, or anomalies in the data. A closer collaboration between medical and data science, Finzer says, would allow researchers to fully exploit the possibilities the vast amounts of available data present by increasing understanding in the medical and data science fields of how data is organized and what it implies, respectively, allowing better collaboration on projects where the two are strongly intertwined. For example, computer modeling could speed or improve clinical trials of treatments in humans. The field of genetics also routinely employs computer models.