Earth
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Earth
Naming Your Tax Write-Off
You can name this newly discovered sea slug — or nudibranch — housed in the Scripps Oceanographic Collections. The catch: It’ll cost you. But that “donation” will be tax deductible.
- Earth
Sense of Wonder Contest
Rachel Carson aficionados will recognize The Sense of Wonder as the title of one of that environmentalist’s books. The Environmental Protection Agency is using that title to invite people young and old—literally and collaboratively—to explore that sense in poetry, essays, and photography. It’s inviting submissions from intergenerational teams “that best express the ‘Sense of Wonder’ […]
- Earth
Tibetan Plateau history gets a lift
The Tibetan Plateau formed when the Indian and Eurasian plates collided, but scientists may have had the order of events wrong.
- Earth
A New Would-Be Hormone in Water
Nitrate, a common pollutant, may also perturb reproductive hormones—at least in frogs.
- Earth
Floral Cues to Climate Change
Phenology may not be a word that trips off your tongue, but it may be one you want to consider adding to your vocabulary. It has the same root as phenomena, and in fact deals with biological events linked to climate—such as bird migrations and plant germination. The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research has set […]
- Earth
New Recipe for Pollution Stew: Another chemical culprit adds to ozone
A reactive chemical in urban air cleans up some pollutants but could introduce another.
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- Earth
The Costs of Meat and Fish
The purchase price is often but a small part of the true cost of many animal products in the diet.
- Agriculture
Switchgrass Science
A native prairie grass shows promise as a substitute for corn in the production of fuel ethanol—an additive to stretch fossil-fuel resources for transportation. University of Tennessee researchers have produced a video on the science and prospects of switchgrass ethanol that is available in a 26-minute version and an abbreviated form. For those who don’t […]
- Earth
Weather maker
The North Atlantic's Gulf Stream affects the overlying atmosphere more strongly than previously suspected.
- Chemistry
Drugs on Tap
It's finally time to investigate whether pharmaceuticals in water pose a health risk.
- Earth
Ocean ups and downs—the long view
Sea level has dropped about 170 meters in the past 80 million years, thanks in part to the thinning of ocean crust and the formation of land-based ice sheets.
