Earth
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Earth
Dirty Little Secret
Recognition is growing that many communities have soils laced with asbestos, which has prodded several federal agencies to probe the hazards they might pose.
- Earth
Toxic Leftovers: Microbes convert flame retardant
Bacteria can break down a common flame retardant into more-toxic forms.
- Earth
Something’s fishy about these hormones
Synthetic steroids used to beef up cattle can impair reproduction in female fish and even give them macho physical traits.
- Earth
Main source of airborne pollen varies by month
A 15-year study conducted in the New York City area charts how air concentrations of different types of allergy-causing pollen vary throughout an average year.
- Earth
Mineral Deposit: Asbestos linked to lupus, arthritis
Already known to cause lung cancer, asbestos has now been associated with three autoimmune diseases.
- Earth
Cleaning up pollution, whey down deep
Lab and field tests hint that dairy whey, a lactose-rich by-product of the dairy industry, could be used to clean up underground water supplies tainted by the solvent trichloroethylene.
- Earth
Subglacial lakes may not be isolated ecosystems
Large volumes of water may occasionally flow between the lakes that lie deep beneath Antarctica's kilometers-thick ice sheet.
- Earth
Gasp! Ozone limits don’t protect babies
In healthy infants, even ozone concentrations well below those allowed by federal law trigger asthmalike symptoms.
- Earth
Toxic Tides: Another reason to worry about hurricanes
The hurricanes that struck Florida in the summer of 2004 also may have triggered an intense, widespread, and long-lasting red tide that afflicted the state's west-central coast throughout 2005.
- Earth
Deep-sea action
Scientists using remotely operated vehicles have reported the first close-up observations of a deep undersea volcano during its eruption.
- Earth
Oil Booms: Whales don’t avoid noise of seismic exploration
Field tests in the Gulf of Mexico suggest that sperm whales there don't swim away from boats conducting seismic surveys of the seafloor, but the noise generated by such activity may be subtly affecting the whales' feeding behavior. With video.
- Earth
Lazarus, the amphibian
The painted frog, unseen for more than a decade and feared to be extinct, has resurfaced in a remote desert highland of Colombia.
