Earth
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- 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.
- Earth
Extracting Estrogens: Modern treatment plants strip hormone from sewage
New research helps explain why state-of-the-art sewage treatment facilities are more effective than conventional plants at removing certain sex hormones from sludge.
- Agriculture
Local Foods Could Make for Greener Grocers
There was a time not so long ago when people tended to select the ingredients for their meals either from what was available that week at local markets or from out-of-season home-canned, -smoked, or -pickled goods in the family larder. No longer. Maryland cooks can pick up New Zealand lamb or Icelandic salmon any time […]
- Earth
Air Sickness
Studies have begun showing subtle but substantial harmful effects in outwardly healthy people who regularly breathe hazy air.
- Earth
Long-Term Ocean Venting: Seafloor system has been active for ages
Analyses of mineral deposits in and around a unique set of hydrothermal vents beneath the Atlantic Ocean suggest that the site's tallest towers of minerals have been growing for at least 30,000 years.
- Earth
Catch Zero
It generally has taken less than a generation for modern, industrial-scale fishing, once deployed in a new plot of ocean, to exhaust the vast majority of the sea’s edible bounty and leave behind decimated ecosystems and depleted economic opportunities.
