Mapping Science is meant to inspire cross-disciplinary discussion on how to best track and communicate human activity and scientific progress on a global scale. It has two components: the physical part supports the close inspection of high quality reproductions of maps for display at conferences and education centers; the online counterpart provides links to a selected series of maps and their makers along with detailed explanations of how these maps work.

http://scimaps.org/maps/browse/

It has taken humanity less than nine months to exhaust its ecological budget for the year, according to data from Global Footprint Network, a California-based environmental research organization. Global Footprint Network calculates nature's supply in the form of biocapacity, the amount of resources the planet regenerates each year, and compares that to human demand: the amount it takes to produce all the living resources we consume and absorb our carbon dioxide emissions.

By John Ribeiro About 26 percent of the world's population were online at the end of 2009, and mobile telephony is booming with the number of mobile subscribers likely to reach the 5 billion mark this year, according to a report released Tuesday by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The number of Internet users has doubled between 2003 to 2009, according to the report.

The world's forests, which cover a third of Earth's land area, provide us with many essential services. They absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and give us oxygen, limit soil erosion, aid in flood control and aquifer recharge, and host a wealth of biodiversity. But as human populations have grown, so, too, have the demands placed on these natural systems.