Earth
- Earth
Testing computers’ hazardous potential
The approved test for evaluating the ability of wastes to leach toxic metals fails to identify lead risks from some electronics equipment.
- Earth
Big worries about little tubes
The size and chemical makeup of some nanotubes being developed for industrial operations resemble mineral fibers, including asbestos, that pose a serious cancer risk.
- Earth
Clearing the Air: Ozone-killing bromine is on the decline
Chemical analyses of Earth's lower atmosphere show that the overall concentration of bromine, a component of some potent ozone-destroying chemicals, has dropped by 5 percent since peaking in 1998.
- Earth
On Shifting Ground
In earthquake-prone areas of the United States and elsewhere in the world, debates go on over whether—and how much—to reinforce buildings.
- Earth
Not So Green? Using hydrogen as fuel may hurt environment
Replacing fossil fuels with clean-burning hydrogen—considered to be a way to reduce globe-warming carbon dioxide—may create a different set of environmental problems, including larger and longer-lasting ozone holes.
- Earth
Saltier Water: Climate change can slow ocean’s absorption of carbon dioxide gas
A decrease in precipitation over the Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii in recent years has left the ocean there saltier and has diminished its ability to soak up carbon dioxide.
- Agriculture
Fluid Security—Overcoming Water Shortfalls in the 21st Century
About 70 percent of Earth’s surface is covered with water, some 1.4 billion cubic kilometers of it. Too bad almost 96.5 percent of it’s salty, and another 2 percent is locked away as ice in remote places such as Greenland and Antarctica. All told, just a little more than 1 percent of our planet’s water […]
- Earth
Bt corn pollen can hurt monarchs
A second test of a strain of corn genetically engineered to make its own insecticide finds potential for harm to monarch butterfly caterpillars.
- Earth
High-Flying Science, with Strings Attached
In the hands of scientists, kites do serious data gathering.
- Earth
Small quake shakes up hydrothermal vents
Long-term, post-earthquake fluctuations in the temperature and volume of water spewing from hydrothermal vents off the coast of Washington state suggest that the fluid flow feeding such vents may be much more complex than previously thought.
- Earth
Large lake floods scoured New Zealand
A volcanic region of New Zealand’s North Island experienced immense floods and severe erosion when lakes filling the craters of dormant volcanoes burst through the craters' rims and poured down the slopes.
- Earth
For European lakes, how clean is clean enough?
New research on lakes in Denmark suggests that agriculture has been affecting water quality there for more than 5,000 years.
