Earth

  1. Earth

    Night space images show development

    Scientists may have come up with a way to use satellite images taken at night to estimate the rate of population growth in fire-prone areas and thereby better assess fire risk to specific groups of residents.

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  2. Earth

    New U.N. treaty on toxic exports

    The United Nations enacted a new treaty to ban exportation of any of a list of toxic chemicals without the prior informed consent of an importing nation.

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  3. Earth

    Smoking out a source of painful menses

    Breathing in secondhand smoke may contribute to the development of menstrual cramps.

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  4. Earth

    Allergic to computing?

    The plastic cases of certain computer monitors emit a chemical—triphenyl phosphate—that can cause allergic reactions.

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  5. Earth

    Flaws make it a geologist’s best friend

    By analyzing some of a diamond's trapped impurities, researchers were able to measure remnants of the gargantuan pressure that produced the gem.

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  6. Earth

    Diesel fumes suppress immune response

    Recurring exposure to soot particles from diesel exhaust fumes reduces the immune system's capacity to fend off infection, tests on rodents indicate.

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  7. Earth

    Pompeii debris yields calamity clues

    The magnetic characteristics of rocks and debris excavated from Pompeii reveal the changing temperatures of the volcanic ash cloud that smothered the Italian city in A.D. 79.

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  8. Earth

    Deep Pacific waters warmed in recent years

    Oceanographic data gathered across the North Pacific in 1985 and again in 1999 indicate that the deepest waters there have been heating up.

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  9. Agriculture

    Fishy Alpha Males

    As a way to protect wild fish stocks, raising genetically engineered fish may be futile should some of these modified fish escape into the environment.

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  10. Earth

    Lowering the Boom? Impact crater may predate extinction of the dinosaurs

    Analyses of sediments from the Yucatán in Mexico suggest that an extraterrestrial impact there more than 65 million years ago actually happened about 300,000 years before mass extinctions of dinosaurs occurred.

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  11. Earth

    Killer Waves

    Scientists are using sophisticated computer models, field studies of coastal geology, and data from tidal gauges to assess the tsunami risk for coastal residents.

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  12. Earth

    Nanosponges: Plastic particles pick up pollutants

    Nanometer-scale polymer particles can extract pollutants from contaminated soil.

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