Earth
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Agriculture
Bt corn variety OK for black swallowtails
The first published field study of butterflies and genetically altered corn finds no harm to black swallowtail caterpillars from a common corn variety.
- Earth
Future Looks Cloudy for Arctic Ozone
Clouds that drive ozone loss in the Antarctic turned up in force during the most recent Arctic winter.
- Earth
Dioxin cuts the chance of fathering a boy
More girls than boys are fathered by men who sustained a relatively high environmental exposure to dioxin from a 1976 factory explosion in Italy.
- Earth
Warm band may have girdled snowball Earth
A swath a liquid ocean may have hugged the planet's midriff even during the most frigid global climatic episodes between 800 million and 600 million years ago, allowing life to survive.
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- Earth
Prescribed fire burns out of control
A fire set by the National Park Service to clear underbrush burned out of control, consuming more than 44,000 acres around Los Alamos, N.M.
- Earth
U.S. smog limit permits subtle lung damage
Ambient concentrations of smog ozone in many regions can cause lungs to leak, potentially compromising the health of even robust people.
- Agriculture
Downtown Fisheries?
Advances may make fish farming a healthy prospect, even for inner cities.
- Earth
Global warming is marmot wake-up call
Marmots are coming out of hibernation earlier, while chipmunks and ground squirrels sleep longer-effects that could be attributed to global warming.
- Earth
Impurities clock crystal growth rates
A novel method for measuring tiny amounts of hydrogen-containing impurities allows researchers to determine growth rates along different directions in a quartz crystal.
- Earth
It’s high tide for ice age climate change
Tides may sometimes be strong enough to tug Earth into an ice age.
- Earth
A deadly threat in undeployed airbags
The extremely toxic and reactive chemical used to inflate airbags could cause risks to human health and wildlife if accidentally released into the environment.
