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These days, screen-addicted Americans are more stressed out and distracted than ever. And there’s no app for that. But there is a radically simple remedy: get outside. Florence Williams travels to the deep woods of Japan, where researchers are backing up the theory that nature can lower your blood pressure, fight off depression—and even prevent cancer.
In early November, a South African court sentenced a Thai man to 40 years in prison after he pled guilty to organizing illegal rhino poaching activities. The high-profile case of Chumlong Lemtongthai will likely have…
My parents ignored the dire warnings about Hurricane Sandy and didn't evacuate. By the time they called for rescue, it was too late.
Adam Bradley's view of the Yukon River. Photo: Adam Bradley If you follow notable (read: crazy) solo expeditions, you likely recognize the name Adam Bradley—or Krudmeister, as his friends call him. In 2009, Bradley set a record for the fastest unsupported through-hike of…
When astronaut Donald Pettit heads into space with his 10 cameras, his goal is to collect data about the earth and the stars. Often, his images end up as art. Anyone with a computer can download the photos he takes from the cupola—the glass turret…
Ascending Mount Lenin. Photo: Hari Mix Is Hari Mix a mountaineer with a science habit or a scientist with a mountaineering habit? “I'm not sure,” says the 27-year-old Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Earth Systems Science at Stanford University. “They're definitely related,…
Seaside Heights. Photo: Google/NOAA After Hurricane Gloria damaged the New Jersey coast in 1985, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) asked the state’s Department of…
Ken Burns talks about his latest documentary and why a 1930s disaster means so much in the present day
Photo: Manuel|MC “Leave only footprints” may be the outdoor industry ethos, but Greenpeace says a study it recently conducted revealed troubling indications that the apparel made for outdoor recreation contains persistent chemicals, some of which are…
Three Outside readers tell us how the magazine led them to do something different
Leslie MacMillan investigates the questionable destruction of a Crow Indian religious site in Montana
Not pretty, but powerful. Part of the Elk Creek methane-to-energy system. Photo: Vessels Coal Gas Before it was at the vanguard of North American luxury ski resorts, Aspen, Colorado, was a mining town. Now, Aspen Skiing Company has made a $5.4 million…
International humanitarian-aid group Doctors Without Borders, best known for conducting emergency health care interventions in war-torn countries, set up a makeshift clinic for Hurricane Sandy victims in one of New York’s worst-hit communities to fill in the gaps in the government’s response. Matthew Power joined volunteer physicians for a day in the field duri
Sandy passing west of Hispaniola. Photo: NASA Goddard Hurricane Sandy did not hit Haiti directly. It passed to the west, crossing over Cuba. Even so, it dropped roughly 20 inches of rain on…
Hurricane Sandy after landfall. Photo: NASA Goddard A couple of weeks ago, Andrew Revkin celebrated the fifth birthday of his…
Yesterday, Vimeo selected a video called Rockaway Needs Us as a staff pick. It's just the latest video that shows the effects of Sandy, from the recreational to devastation. The shorts range from a…
https://www.youtube.com/embed/RhQktHY9aZgA video showing Sandy’s life from October 23 to October 31. It was as a nine-year-old kid in Reading, Pennsylvania, that University of Miami scientist Brian McNoldy developed a fascination with hurricanes. “I think most of us have a storm,” he…
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Kate Rawles on her Mexico-to-Canada tour. Photo: Chris Loynes Kate Rawles is an outdoor philosopher. That is a title she coined herself, and it is accurate in more than one way. She spends her professional life thinking about, talking about,…
A view of the changed coastline in New Jersey. Photo: NASA Goddard Instead of gathering a widespread assortment of the week's best articles, videos, and photos, I've included the most thought-provoking and eye-opening articles on Sandy and her aftermath. Some…
What's it like to watch the Storm of the Century hit your home from 2,000 miles away?
After wandering to a bar in Sandy's aftermath, Jason Diamond was reminded of the best parts about living in New York
Here is a view of Sandy's life from above. It was recorded by NASA's GOES-13 Satellite. It begins on October 23, when Tropical Depression 18 morphed into Tropical Storm Sandy. Before that, on October 22, at roughly 11:00 a.m., about 320 miles southwest of Kingston, Jamaica, a hot towering…
NYC, Avenue C at East 6th Street, Oct. 29, 2012. Photo: David Shankbone/Flickr The loss of life and property damage from Superstorm Sandy is still being tallied, but the catastrophe is pointing a spotlight on the need for cities to adapt…
Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy as seen from space Photo: NOAA GOES-13 When Hurricane Sandy made landfall near Atlantic City, New Jersey, around 8 p.m. last night, it lived up to the deadly reputation forecasters feared, and the death toll from the storm has continued to rise…
Hurricane Sandy expands, taken Sunday, October 28, at 9:00 a.m. Photo: NOAA GOES-13 Satellite As scientists feared late last week, Hurricane Sandy has morphed into…
Heidi Volpe speaks with Rich Roll about his transformation from addict to ultra-endurance athlete
The Revenue Cutter Thomas Corwin, in which John Muir sailed as part of an Arctic research trip. Photo: Frank H. Nowell In July 1879, 33 Navy men set sail for the North Pole aboard the U.S.S. Jeannette Arctic expedition. That…
Left: BLM land open to solar development before 2011; right: BLM's current 17 solar energy zone. Maps: NRDC Wind, solar, geothermal and other so-called green energy sources might not spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but they're far from benign. Ask any bird conservationist…
Rick Paulas takes a look at Allen Carr's The Easy Way to Stop Smoking and wonders if the author might actually be right
Bikini Atoll, a tiny ring of islands halfway between Hawaii and Australia, is a world-class diving destination and home to one of the Pacific's last great fishing grounds. So where are all the tourists? Welcome to heaven on earth, where the vestiges of hell lie just below the surface.
Oskar Blues' cannery row. Photo: Ryan Dearth By Will McGough, Wake and Wander Growing up outside of Philadelphia, it was never much of a decision. There were no mountains to climb. We lived the city life…
Lees Ferry is the only place within Glen Canyon where visitors can drive to the Colorado River in over 700 miles of Canyon Country, right up to the first "rapid" in the Grand Canyon. Here at the very start of the Grand Canyon, adventurous river runners launch…
Leaves of three, leave it be. Photo: Shutterstock When I was in seventh grade, my parents took my six siblings and I out of school for a late spring vacation to the East Coast. We camped along the way and eventually…
Looking for which candidate's economic beliefs are best suited to the present day? Wondering who's better suited to take office should the next president become incapacitated? Well, you've come to the wrong place.
Snow gunning. Photo: Tim in Syndey/Flickr Pointing to the sacredness of the San Francisco Peaks north of Flagstaff, Arizona, a coalition of Native American tribes has been fighting the development and expansion of Arizona Snowbowl ski resort since 1979. It remains…
Aurora Borealis as seen from Space. Photo: NASA Earth Observatory/Flickr On October 4 and 5, a coronal mass ejection from the sun sent an explosion of particles speeding toward earth. Three days later, those particles hit the earth's magnetic…
Explaining four of the most common threats in the outdoors
Ever wondered how to survive a volcanic eruption? Not sure what to do when zombies inevitably take over? Don't worry, we've got you covered.
Gannets. Photo: Winged Planet When filmmaker John Downer was in elementary school, he got down in the dirt of his parents' garden so that he could film the insects, frogs, and toads using a Super 8 camera.
Outside readers love to lend a hand. Here, a longtime subscriber and former energy executive shows us how to take it to another level.
The video doesn't show the spark, the inciting moment that led the impala herd to bolt across the road directly into the path of a leopard crouching in the tall grass. But it does show the climax, the predator exploding from the brush into an esophagus-targeted leap that lands…
On May 30, 2012, at 3:00 P.M. MST, a series of thunderstorms formed over central and south central Kansas. They dropped golf ball-sized hail before lining up into a dark vanguard that barraged the countryside ahead with 70 mile…
Great white shark. Photo: David Stephens/Shutterstock On Thursday, the government of Western Australia released a plan that will allow the killing of great white sharks that venture…
Jugita Krilaviciute, left, works the soil during the Vail Resorts Hayman Restoration Project in the Trail Creek drainage on Thursday, June 2, 2011. The Vail Resorts Hayman Restoration Project is in the second of a three year, $750,000 partnership with the U.S. Forest Service and The Rocky…
A reindeer running in Norway. Photo: Shutterstock Here's something that might not surprise: Scientists have used a model to predict that if a formation of 241 snowkiters were to fly across…
An Italian chef, a pro snowboarder, and five other Sun Valley, Idaho, locals tell you the best way to play in one of America's most pristine mountain towns
Filmmaker Chris Tangey recorded the above video of a fire whirl whisking through the Australian Outback near Alice Springs on September 11. Since then, the clip has swerved from news sites to blogs to social media around the world. In its…
The record low compared to the average minimum. Photo: NASA/Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio The extreme melt of Arctic sea ice has stopped for the year, but only after setting a record low for area covered, scientists…
For almost a century, the world's hottest temperature was believed to be a 136-degree Fahrenheit measurement recorded in El Azizia, Libya, on September 13, 1922. This month, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) threw that record out. They gave their reasons in…
A pika in its talus home. Photo: Karunakar Rayker By Mary Ellen Hannibal When Chris Ray got started studying pika, she could not have anticipated that these small rabbit relatives would one day become a poster child…
West Mata eruption. Photo: NSF/NOAA In 2009, scientists on a cruise in the Western Pacific sent a remotely operated vehicle 4,000 feet below the ocean surface and discovered a two-mile high volcano called West Mata erupting 2,200-degree Fahrenheit lava in bursts scattered over the area…
After years of sounding the climate-change alarm, writer Bill McKibben realized that gentle persuasion wasn’t cutting it. So he got mad. Then he got busy: tweeting, organizing, protesting, getting arrested, and becoming Big Oil’s biggest threat.
Yosemite National Park confirmed on Thursday that a ninth person had contracted hantavirus, according to Reuters. The park visitor, from California, has recovered. The notice came a day after the park notified roughly 230,000 people about the outbreak by email, according to the…
Entering the cave. Photo: Rechitan Soran/Shutterstock Not long before Thanksgiving in 2009, 26-year-old University of Virginia medical student John Jones, his wife Emily, and their 13-month-old daughter flew home to Utah. Emily was pregnant, and the couple…
In the 16 years since Into Thin Air, Mount Everest has become safer in many ways, with better storm forecasting and amazing high-altitude rescue helicopters. So why did 10 people die in 2012?
Photo: Egan Snow/Flickr As summer wanes and garden harvests start to dwindle, this news lands with a thud: a recent study performed at Stanford University indicated that eating organic produce doesn’t necessarily mean eating more nutritious produce. If you figured this would…
Grizzly print, and a notebook. Photo: Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation Rachel Carson earned a master's degree in zoology from John Hopkins University and spent most of her career working as a marine biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife…
What does the popularity of a zombie-themed obstacle race say about American society?
Lance Armstrong has always denied Mike Anderson’s claim that he broke his word on a business deal, and that Anderson saw and heard evidence indicating that Armstrong was using performance-enhancing drugs. His lawyer, Mark Fabiani, sent this response to Anderson's allegations.
Delicate Arch, Arches National Park. Photo: Ryan Dearth Last year, as part of his Call to Action plan to revise and improve the way our national parks are managed, National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis asked a committee of…
Increasingly, race organizers are testing non-elite athletes for performance-enhancing drugs. But is it fair, or even possible, to hold amateurs to the same stringent standards as the pros?
Chinook salmon. Photo: NWFishers/Flickr The Elwha Dam is gone. The Glines Canyon Dam is nearly gone. With the dams no longer blocking fish from their migratory route up the river, Chinook (king) and other species of salmon and trout are returning. Salmon fry…
Sea turtle hatchling, Baguan Island, Philippines. Photo: Keith Ellenbogen Examples of poor ocean health are too easy—unfortunately—to find in many parts of the world, especially along densely populated coastlines or in the midst of ocean gyres filled with plastic pollution. But what is…
The U.S. men's soccer team made history against Mexico last night. But what makes one win so impressive?
Photo: Bradleygee/Flickr One point four million. That's how many cigarette butts volunteers collected during beach clean-up events in the United States in 2008 alone, according to Ocean Conservancy. Think of how many they missed. And consider all the butts you've seen tossed off…
Red means it's the warmest month ever. Photo: NOAA This past July was the hottest month in the recorded history of the lower 48 states. A severe drought and…
Allie Bombach on location. Photo: Miguel Tercero What is it about movers and shakers? What makes them tick? Filmmaker Allie Bombach wants to know and is using her MoveShake film series to uncover some answers. The year-long project debuted in early June with the…
A Perseid. Photo: ESO/Wikimedia Commons The best nights to see the best meteor shower of the year will start this weekend, according to NASA. The agency has released a video guide (below) that says the prime viewing nights for the Perseid meteor…
The South Fork of the Skykomish, just above Sunset Falls. Photo: Mary Catherine O'Connor When I lived for a short time in Index, Washington, a climbing and boating hotspot on the Skykomish River in the north central Cascades, it felt like equal parts…
On Monday morning at approximately 1:32 Eastern, the new rover Curiosity touched solid ground on Mars after a flight through the planet's atmosphere that NASA dubbed “seven minutes of terror.” The state-of-the-art exploratory vehicle will photograph and take samples to see if there…
Captain Don Voss, marine pollution from a diver's POV. Photos: Marine Cleanup Initiative, Inc. When he returned, wounded, from serving in Vietnam, doctors told Don Voss he wouldn't walk again. But Voss, now a 64-year-old ship captain, turned to swimming as therapy. With more…
3rd Place: Meandering Mississippi Landsat 7 Acquired 5/28/2003, Small, blocky shapes of towns, fields, and pastures surround the graceful swirls and whorls of the Mississippi River, the largest river system in North America. Countless oxbow lakes and cutoffs accompany the meandering river south of Memphis, Tennessee,…
World-renowned scientist E.O. Wilson did not take up calculus until he was 32 years old. When he did finally tackle the subject, he sat next to undergraduate students taking his introductory biology class. He uses this anecdote as a way into his five…
A mockup of the Green Wheel. Photo: Nadim Inaty Okay, you won't save the earth. But you will help it along a tiny bit. Nadim Inaty, an industrial designer from Beirut, Lebanon, is developing a public treadmill that would essentially crowdsource electricity from runners. The concept,…