Oxygen serves as the focus of who to credit with a discovery – and why.

Humans may have been walking around what is now central Mexico 40,000 years ago

Norwegian Academy awards three novel and hefty prizes to three teams of scientists.

Iridescence could be pretty meaningful—or maybe just pretty

Surfaces that mimic the back of an African beetle can collect water from fog.

Yesterday, I reported that in hopes of slowing down global warming, some nations were interested in strengthening the Montreal Protocol – a United Nations treaty to curb releases of chemicals that endanger stratospheric ozone. But I didn’t really get into what they had up their sleeves. It turns out they want signatory nations to eliminate a loophole: a failure to regulate coolants in existing refrigerators and air conditioners and the fluffing-up constituents of some plastic foams. Old fridges, A/C units, and foam all tend to get sent to landfills or other graveyards of past-the...

Quick: What’s the name of the big UN global climate treaty?If you said the Kyoto Protocol – you’d be wrong. Because it’s a trick question.Although the Kyoto Protocol is indeed the treaty developed to address the issue of arresting global warming and the climate perturbations that will be spawned by such a growing planetary fever, this treaty has yet to actually accomplish much in terms of putting a brake on warming. Indeed, it hasn’t even gotten the United States to sign on yet, and discussions among active parties to the treaty have been languishing.The only treaty to have had a big...