Earth
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Agriculture
Tasteful new wrapping can protect produce
New, fruit- and vegetable-based edible packaging could reduce the amount of synthetic wrapping needed to protect food.
- Earth
Salmon puzzle: Why did males turn female?
Most of the spawning female Chinook salmon in one part of the Columbia River appear to have started life as males.
- Earth
Can Banking Carbon Cool the Greenhouse?
Stockpiling carbon dioxide in plants and soil may be effective only for the short term, if at all.
- Earth
New accord targets long-lived pollutants
Negotiators drafted an agreement to ban or phase out some of the world's most persistent and toxic pollutants.
- Earth
Wafting pesticides taint far-flung frogs
Agricultural pesticides blowing into California's wilderness areas have played a role in mysterious declines in frog populations.
- Earth
Chalk reveals greatest underwater landslide
Seismic waves generated by an extraterrestrial object crashing into Mexico 65 million years ago appear to have sent sediment from shallow waters sliding off the continental shelf.
- Earth
Lemon-scented products spawn pollutants
Some fragrances used in home-care products can play a role in generating potentially harmful air pollution.
- Earth
Life Landed 2.6 Billion Years Ago
Unusually carbon-rich rocks found in eastern South Africa may push back the evidence of life on land to 2.6 billion years ago, more than twice the current age of indisputably terrestrial organisms.
- Earth
Problems with eradicating polio
The oral vaccine's live but attenuated virus may in rare cases revert to the disease-causing form, which can then turn up in natural waters even in regions now certified free of the wild-type virus.
- Earth
Infectious stowaways
A new study finds that ballast water can move huge quantities of cholera germs and other microbes between ports around the globe.
- Earth
New database describes all the marbles
Analyses of the isotope ratios of carbon and oxygen in hundreds of samples of Greek marble may help researchers identify the quarries that supplied the stone for some of Europe's most famous statues and architecture.
- Earth
Sprawl’s aquatic pollution
A new study links the traffic associated with urban sprawl to an unexpectedly large rain of air pollutants entering local waters.
