The Noon Digg: Mon.

Here are some noteworthy science and environmental links folks are Digging today:

 

— The mayor of Chicopee, Mass., has proposed to Dow Jones, the company that owns the WSJ, that it build "a national data center here with the possibility of generating electricity from the methane at the landfill." Landfill gas has gained popularity as a source of renewable energy since it takes advantage of a fuel source that would otherwise just take up space and pollute. For more on landfill gas and other U.S. alternative energy sources, see Translating Uncle Sam.

 

— A new study in the journal Conservation Biology has determined that more than 80 percent of the world's major wars between 1950 to 2000 took place in regions also considered the most biologically diverse and threatened places on Earth. In Vietnam, for example, toxic Agent Orange destroyed forest cover and mangroves, and conflicts in African rain forests have been funded in part by intensive timber harvesting. 

 

— Jaguars once roamed from South America through the Southern United States, but overhunting and habitat fragmentation have beaten the cats back to a shadow of their former ranges. All the more encouraging, then, that two recent sightings prove the predators still stalk in Arizona and central Mexico. The jaguar found southwest of Tucson was actually captured and collared, giving scientists hope they'll be able to track its movements; the one caught on film in central Mexico was the first seen there in more than 100 years.

 

— Ball lightning — that weird, slow-moving sphere of electricity that may fizzle or blow up — could have a career as a weapon, if some U.S. scientists have their way. Very little is still understood about the phenomenon, however, including how and why it happens in nature. 

 

— This digitally stitched composite image shows a panorama of the lunar surface in November 1969, during the second NASA mission to put people on the moon.

 

— Russell McLendon