All Stories
-
- Life
Missing chemicals on Titan could signal life
Methane-based organisms on one of Saturn’s moons might be consuming the materials.
- Earth
BP oil isn’t the only source of Gulf’s deep roaming plumes
During a June 8 briefing for reporters, a NOAA science officer described deep strata of water tainted with oil identified during a recent cruise in the Gulf of Mexico. The presumption was that anything they found would be plumes of oil spewed by the jet of hydrocarbons emanating from the BP well head. But the chemical fingerprinting of diffuse undersea clouds of oil at one sampling site was “not consistent with BP oil,” he pointed out.
- Earth
Possible snake shortage looms
Declines among species in Europe and Africa raise herpetologists’ worries of widespread population losses.
- Climate
With warming, some commercial fish may boom and bust
Higher temps in Arctic waters might be good for some species but not for others, new research suggests.
- Health & Medicine
In youth hockey, more contact means more injuries
Concussions are three times more common among 11- to 12-year-olds in leagues that permit checking, a Canadian study finds.
- Planetary Science
Hubble hunting for Jupiter bruise
No scar found yet on planet from June 3 crash with unidentified object.
- Humans
Secondhand smoke linked to mental distress
A Scottish survey finds a link between exposure to cigarette smoke and serious emotional problems.
- Planetary Science
Before the Mississippi, minerals show ancient rivers flowed west
Michigan zircons uncover the path of an ancient river system across North America.
- Life
Marine creature cooks up chemical defense from food
The sea hare transforms a benign algal pigment into a noxious molecule to help ward off crabs and other predators, new studies show.
- Physics
A giant proposal for a new type of molecule
Atoms linked across vast distances, can point in two directions at once
-
Genome from a bottle
Back Story: Cracking the code.
