Earth
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Earth
Ancient Chasm: Parts of Grand Canyon may be 17 million years old
The chemical composition of mineral formations in caves along the Grand Canyon may provide fresh insight into the chasm's history, including its age and the rate at which it was carved.
- Earth
Some corals buffered from warming
Corals in the western Pacific have escaped bleaching linked to rising ocean temperatures.
- Earth
Manifest dirt
Nineteenth-century settlers left a dusty mark on the West. Rocky Mountain lake deposits reveal that America’s westward expansion kicked huge amounts of dirt into the air—probably from livestock grazing. A team led by Jason Neff, a biogeochemist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, examined soil cores from the beds of tiny mountain lakes in […]
- Earth
Greener Green Energy: Today’s solar cells give more than they take
With new production techniques, the total emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants from making and using solar panels are now only one-tenth as high as those of conventional power generation.
- Earth
Dioxin’s long reach
Breast development is delayed in teenage girls who were exposed to the organic pollutant dioxin in the womb and in their mothers' breast milk.
- Agriculture
Resistance to Bt crops emerges
Resistance to pest-killing cotton crops is spreading among one species of caterpillar, but techniques to prevent the spread of resistance appear to be working for five other species.
- Earth
Defining Toxic: Federal agencies look to cells, not animals, for chemical testing
Government scientists are collaborating to shift the testing of potentially toxic chemicals away from animals to methods that use high-speed automated robots, which should generate data relevant to humans faster and more cheaply than current methods.
- Earth
Going Down: Climate change, water use threaten Lake Mead
If climate changes as expected and future water use is not curtailed, there's a 50 percent chance that Arizona's Lake Mead, one of the southwestern United States' key reservoirs, will become functionally dry in the next couple of decades.
- Earth
Water-Hogging Electric Vehicles
Electric cars may save on gasoline, but some can place an indirect drain on other resources.
- Earth
Spying asbestos
A quick, on-site test will allow contractors and inspectors to test for asbestos in construction materials such as concrete.
- Earth
Find My Valentine—or Other Places
The federal Geographic Names Information System lists 14 sites around the nation named Valentine—Including Alta Mills, Kan., and Bedison, Mo., for which Valentine is an alternate moniker. You can search for locations that may share your name, a name associated with some holiday (like Santa Claus, Ind.), or the name of an object of your […]
- Earth
Don’t like it hot
King penguins don't live on continental Antarctica but even they are vulnerable to warming water.
