413 results
- Climate
Soil’s Hidden Secrets
Shocking discoveries from the underground may shake up climate science.
- Humans
Climate meddling dates back 8,000 years
Cutting down trees put lots of carbon into the atmosphere long before the industrial revolution began.
- Earth
Shuttle images reveal Egypt’s lost great lake
Radar studies of desert drainage patterns point to ancient oases in the Sahara.
- Anthropology
Contested evidence pushes Ardi out of the woods
A controversial new investigation suggests that the ancient hominid lived on savannas, not in forests.
- Humans
Ancient shoe steps out of cave and into limelight
Excavations in an Armenian cave have uncovered the oldest known leather footwear, a 5,500-year-old shoe.
- Climate
Heat waves stunt grassland growth
An abnormally hot year can significantly suppress growth in grasslands, a stifling effect that lingers well into the next year even if temperatures return to normal. It can also hinder how well the grasslands absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
- Ecosystems
U.S. bird populations in decline, report says
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar releases a review of U.S. bird populations.
- Climate
Climate: China defends its reputation
Over the past few days, a number of national delegations – not least the United States’ – have criticized implicitly, if not explicitly, China’s unwillingness to accept binding limits on its greenhouse-gas emissions and the measurement of emissions by outside auditors. This morning, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao addressed a plenary meeting of the United Nations climate-change conference – populated by more than 100 heads of heads of state – to make his case that China has embarked on an earnest step toward substantive climate protection.
- Plants
Losing life’s variety
2010 is the deadline set for reversing declines in biodiversity, but little has been accomplished.
- Paleontology
Fish death, mammal extinction and tiny dino footprints
Paleontologists in Bristol, England, at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology report on fish fossils in Wyoming, the loss of Australia’s megafauna and the smallest dinosaur tracks.
- Health & Medicine
Neandertals, gut microbes and mail-order ancestry tests
Geneticists weigh in during the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics.
- Planetary Science
Seeing the future hot spells
Satellite data could help scientists better predict killer heat waves, such as the one that hit Europe in 2003.
