Earth
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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Humans
Elephants’ struggle with poaching lingers on
Even as African elephants struggle to recover from decades-old poaching, the animals face new and renewed threats today.
- Tech
Coal Country’s New Foresters
New techniques may be shaving a century or two off the recovery of mined mountain tops.
By Janet Raloff - Tech
Trading Forests for Coal
Forested mountain peaks have been giving way to grassy planes in Appalachian coal country.
By Janet Raloff - Archaeology
Really Cool History
Tales of the black band: Clues to a 4,200-year-old mystery lie frozen in icy records stored atop Mt. Kilimanjaro.
By Janet Raloff - Climate
Eggs, Tea and Mr. IPCC
Even jet-lagged, the world's lead climate negotiator took time out to brief a few reporters.
By Janet Raloff - Earth
An electronic nose that smells plants’ pain
Device can detect distress signals from plants that are harmed, under attack.
- Earth
Primordial soup lives again
Fifty-five years later, new analyses of leftovers from Stanley Miller's famous 'primordial soup' experiment suggest that life could have originated near volcanoes.
- Climate
The News Climate
Whether people choose to peruse news — and where — may explain what role science plays in shaping public opinion on global warming.
By Janet Raloff - Climate
Cooling climate ‘consensus’ of 1970s never was
Myth often cited by global warming skeptics debunked.
By Sid Perkins - Earth
One Rockin’ Library
This dusty library saves the geo-curious a trip to Antarctica.
By Janet Raloff - Climate
Glacier melts are erasing climate record
Featured blog: As glaciers continue to dry up, so does any hope of gleaning information from them about the past climate record.
By Janet Raloff - Earth
Salinity sensors
Trace elements in the carbonate shells of freshwater mussels could serve as an archive of road salt pollution.
By Sid Perkins