Earth
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Earth
How polluted we are
Most people carry traces of toxic pollutiants, including metals, pesticides, and phthalates.
- Earth
Microbes put ancient carbon on the menu
Scientists have found microorganisms within Kentucky shale that are eating the ancient carbon locked within the rock, a previously unrecognized dietary habit that could have a prevalent role in the weathering and erosion of similar sedimentary rock at many other locations.
- Earth
Ancient tree rings reveal past climate
Using tree-ring analysis, an international team of researchers has reconstructed the earliest record of annual climate variation.
- Earth
POPs in the butter
Governments may be able to monitor trends in the release and transport of persistent organic pollutants by sampling butter.
- Earth
Leaden calcium supplements
Consuming calcium along with lead limits, and may prevent, the body's absorption of the toxicant.
- Earth
Thick ice scraped rock bottom in Arctic
Scuffs, scrapes, and gouges found atop undersea plateaus and ridges in the Arctic Ocean suggest that kilometer-thick ice shelves covered much of the ocean there during some previous ice ages.
- Earth
A quick recovery after dinosaur deaths
Evidence from 65-million-year-old sediments suggests that a single impact from space wiped out the dinosaurs and that ecosystems recovered from the trauma in only a few thousand years.
- Earth
New analysis rejuvenates Himalayas
The Asian mountain range that includes some of the tallest peaks in the world turns out to be about 15 million years younger than geologists previously thought.
- Earth
Diesels: NO rises with altitude
The combustion chemistry of heavy-duty diesel trucks changes with altitude.
- Earth
Passive smoking’s carcinogenic traces
Researchers isolated markers of a cigarette-generated carcinogen in urine of nonsmoking women married to smokers.
- Earth
Satellites verify greenhouse-gas effects
Comparisons of data obtained from instruments that orbited Earth more than 25 years apart provide direct evidence that the planet's greenhouse effect increased significantly between 1970 and 1997.
- Earth
Is there a vent in the global greenhouse?
Satellite observations of ocean temperatures in tropical regions of the western Pacific suggest that when ocean temperatures there warm up, the amount of heat-trapping cirrus clouds decreases, possibly providing a heat-venting effect that could help reduce global warming.
