8,095 results
- Earth
Landfills Make Mercury More Toxic
Landfill disposal of mercury-containing products can chemically transform the pollutant not only to make it more potent but also to foster its release into air.
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A bad month for condors
Two California condors in the wild—a hatching and a just-released juvenile—died the same week, as a third went missing.
- Animals
Condor chicks hatch in zoo and wild
Newly hatched California condor chicks indicate that reproduction is again taking place in the wild.
- Tech
Taming High-Tech Particles
Researchers are beginning to study whether nanomaterials could have unintended negative consequences in the human body or the environment.
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Tracking down bodies in the brain
A new report that a specific brain region orchestrates the recognition of human bodies and body parts stirs up a scientific debate over the neural workings of perception.
- Chemistry
Burned by Flame Retardants?
One particular class of flame retardants—polybrominated diphenyl ethers—is accumulating at alarming rates in the environment, taints human breast milk, and has toxic effects similar to the now-banned PCBs.
- Materials Science
Chemical sensors gain true portability
Researchers have designed simple new films for indicating the presence of worrisome airborne chemicals.
- Paleontology
New Fossils Resolve Whale’s Origin
The first discovery of early whale fossils with key ankle bones intact provides compelling paleontological evidence that whales are closely related to many living ungulates, a relationship already supported by molecular data.
- Animals
Even deep down, the right whales don’t sink
A right whale may weigh some 70 tons, but unlike other marine mammals studied so far, it tends to float rather than sink at great depths.
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Science News of the Year 2001
A review of important scientific achievements reported in Science News during the year 2001.
- Health & Medicine
Aerial War against Disease
Researchers around the world are catching on to the idea of using satellites to predict where diseases may strike.
- Materials Science
Materials Take Wing
Materials scientists are finding new uses for the billions of pounds of feathers produced each year by the poultry industry.
