Tiny metal nanoparticles can damage DNA, essentially by triggering toxic gossip.

A NASA model incorporates how atmospheric aerosols and greenhouse gases interact, yielding better estimates of the gases' warming and cooling effects.

Trees near high-traffic areas accumulate tiny particles.

At least in our area of the country, consumers are already being assaulted — well before Halloween — with Christmas music, decorations and holiday-themed goods. Reporters are smack in the throes of their own early seasonal blitz: News items carrying a climate or global-warming theme. And I don’t expect the crush of climate news and seminars to diminish until around Christmas. That’s when the next United Nations COP — or Conference of the Parties — will end this year’s pivotal round of negotiations in Copenhagen aimed at producing a new climate treaty.