On Our Radar: Cautious Support for British Fracking A report commissioned by the British government recommends that it allow the shale gas exploration process known as hydraulic fracturing to proceed, but with tighter rules on monitoring seismic activity and more detailed drilling surveys. After months of pressure from environmental activists, Apple agrees to a jointly monitored audit of pollution controls at a circuit-board supplier's factory in China. The Financial Times A floating laboratory tracking plankton, which accounts for 98 percent of the oceans" biomass, returns to a French port after circling the globe for two and a half years. The goal is to build up a database of these little-understood microscopic organisms. Biologists at the University of Ottawa have developed an electronic monitoring tool to help Canadians track butterfly species as climate change pushes them north. University of Ottawa With one-fourth of all sea horse species threatened with extinction, conservationists take to nurturing the creatures in aquariums. It's fairly tricky.