1,375 results
- Ecosystems
On Whales’ Appetites: What a Waste
An advocacy group and renowned scientist floundered in an attempt to compel opinion shapers with the science showing that industrial fleets, not whales, pose a serious threat to fish stocks.
-
Letters
Outsized beaver Accompanying your recent article about giant extinct beavers (“Ancient beavers did not eat trees,” SN: 11/21/09, p. 10), there is an illustration that seems to show that the extinct beaver was about twice the length of a present-day beaver. I measured each from nose to the base of the tail rather than to […]
-
More science for science writers
More dispatches from the 47th annual New Horizons in Science meeting, sponsored by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing and held this year in Austin, Texas.
- Life
Supreme Court lifts restriction on Navy sonar testing
Justices overturn restrictions that require Navy to stop using sonar when marine mammals are within 2,200 yards of vessels.
-
Letters
Tobacco for adults, cocoa for kids I was interested in the report of cacao-beverage use by people of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico as early as A.D. 1000 (“Hot chocolate, with foam please,” SN: 2/28/09, p. 14). In the late ’50s, I and others at the Philip Morris Research Center looked at pipe samples from […]
- Earth
Exxon Valdez 20 Years Later
March 24 marked the 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The effects are still obvious today. A series of blogs from senior editor Janet Raloff describes the continuing aftermath.
-
Letters
A climate tipping point In Janet Raloff’s article “Forest invades tundra” (SN: 7/5/08, p. 26), there seems to be a paradox. Raloff says that the albedo from normal snow coverage of the tundra “helps maintain the region’s chilly temperatures,” implying that the coverage also preserves the mats of plant matter. A little later in the […]
- Health & Medicine
Genome 10K: A new ark
Featured blog: Researchers are working to catalog the DNA sequences of just about every vertebrate genus.
- Paleontology
Whales started small
The ancestors of whales, some of which are the largest creatures ever to evolve, probably were mammals no larger than a fox.
-
- Animals
Sonar causes rock-concert effect in dolphins
Test of recorded sonar causes temporary hearing impairment in dolphins.
- Humans
Otters and oil: Problems remain
The behavior of Alaska's southern sea otters may unwittingly expose them to toxic oil-spill residues.
