Beth Mole

All Stories by Beth Mole

  1. Environment

    Spiders enlisted as pollution sensors for rivers

    Hunting arachnids provide a better picture of chemical threats to food web.

  2. Environment

    Thirdhand smoke poses lingering danger

    Harmful cigarette chemicals that linger on surfaces, known as thirdhand smoke, can go on to pollute the air and may harm people’s health.

  3. Materials Science

    Batteries become safe to swallow with spongy covering

    Quantum-inspired coating switches from a conductor to an insulator to prevent injury from swallowed batteries.

  4. Chemistry

    Atom breaks limit of lost electrons

    An iridium atom sets the record for highest oxidation state at +9.

  5. Environment

    Oil from BP spill may be sitting on seafloor

    More than four years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists find that oil is still lingering over a large area on the seafloor.

  6. Environment

    Engineered plants demolish toxic waste

    With help from bacteria, plants could one day clean up polluted sites.

  7. Chemistry

    Crystallography celebrates centennial

    Dubbed the international year of crystallography, 2014 marks the centennial of X-ray diffraction.

  8. Climate

    Rivers may gush under sullied skies

    By dimming sunlight and curbing evaporation, air pollution can increase the amount of water flowing through rivers, new simulations suggest.

  9. Science & Society

    Nobels go to maps, LEDs, microscopy

    The 2014 Nobel Prizes in chemistry, physics and physiology or medicine went to discoveries that defy single-discipline labels.

  10. Chemistry

    Microscopy providing ‘window into the cell’ wins chemistry Nobel

    Three scientists use fluorescence and lasers to see single molecules and other tiny objects.

  11. Chemistry

    Lasers wrest oxygen from carbon dioxide

    By zapping oxygen molecules off carbon dioxide, an experiment hints that Earth may have had breathable air long before the dawn of plants.

  12. Climate

    19th century chronicles offer clues to mystery volcano

    Meteorological records narrow down the time and place of a massive volcanic eruption that helped trigger a decade of extreme cold.