Earth

  1. Animals

    Eggs and other land foods won’t feed polar bears

    Polar bears will not be able to survive on land by eating birds, eggs and vegetation, a new review concludes.

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  2. Oceans

    UV light reveals hidden patterns on seashell fossils

    Under UV light, fossil seashell color patterns glow, a researcher finds.

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  3. Environment

    Five years on, Deepwater Horizon oil spill’s impact lingers

    Five years after the Gulf of Mexico’s largest disaster, researchers are still studying its ecological impact and struggling to learn the fate of most of the spilled oil.

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  4. Earth

    Spot the northern lights with Aurorasaurus

    Crowdsourced Aurorasaurus project uses Twitter to track the northern lights.

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  5. Climate

    Fewer cold snaps in the forecast

    Rapid Arctic warming will reduce the frequency of cold snaps throughout much of the Northern Hemisphere, new research suggests.

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  6. Earth

    Plate loss gave chain of Pacific islands and seamounts a bend

    The sinking Izanagi tectonic plate may have rerouted the mantle flow beneath the Pacific, halting the Hawaiian hot spot.

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  7. Environment

    Tampons: Not just for feminine hygiene

    Tampons soaked in polluted water glow under UV light, revealing detergent-filled wastewater in rivers.

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  8. Environment

    Fracking chemicals can alter mouse development

    Hormone-disrupting chemicals used in fracking fluid cause developmental changes in mice, new experiments show.

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  9. Materials Science

    Suds turn silver nanoparticles in clothes into duds

    Bleach-containing detergents destroy antibacterial silver nanoparticles that coat clothes.

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  10. Climate

    Antarctic ice shelves rapidly melting

    Melting around Antarctica is accelerating, with several ice shelves projected to vanish entirely within 100 years.

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  11. Chemistry

    Air pollution molecules make key immune protein go haywire

    Reactive molecules in air pollution derail immune responses in the lung and can trigger life-long asthma.

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  12. Life

    A vineyard’s soil influences the microbiome of a grapevine

    Vineyard soil microbes end up on grapes, leaves and flowers, study finds.

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