Earth

Earth

Dead Sea once went dry

The Holy Land’s salt lake ran out of water during a warm spell about 120,000 years ago, which suggests it could disappear again.

Health & Medicine

E. coli evade detection by going dormant

When stressed, bacteria can temporarily turn comatose and dodge germ-screening tests.

Earth

Arctic has taken a turn for the warmer

Northern climate has changed substantially in the last five years, and the shift is probably permanent.

Earth

Polar ice sheets are synchronized swimmers

Glaciers in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres advance and retreat together.

Humans

Germs’ persistence: Nothing to sneeze at

Years ago, I read (probably in Science News) that viruses can’t survive long outside their hosts. That implied any surface onto which a sneezed-out germ found itself — such as the arm of a chair, kitchen counter or car-door handle — would effectively decontaminate itself within hours to a day. A pair of new flu papers now indicates that although many germs will die within hours, none of us should count on it. Given the right environment, viruses can remain infectious — potentially for many weeks, one of the studies finds.

Life

Biology’s big bang had a long fuse

The fossil record’s earliest troves of animal life are the result of more than 200 million years of evolution.

Life

Cretaceous Thanksgiving

A fossilized feathered dinosaur dined on bird not long before its own demise.

Earth

Oxygen a bit player in Earth’s outer core

Sulfur and silicon may be more abundant in the planet’s heart than thought.

Animals

Lost to history: The “churk”

More than a half-century ago, researchers at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center outside Washington, D.C., engaged in some creative barnyard breeding. Their goal was the development of fatherless turkeys — virgin hens that would reproduce via parthenogenesis. Along the way, and ostensibly quite by accident, an interim stage of this work resulted in a rooster-fathered hybrid that the scientists termed a churk.

Climate

Matt Crenson, Reconstructions

In ancient Southwest droughts, a warning of dry times to come.

Earth

Dirty air fosters precipitation extremes

Changes to clouds encourage drought in dry areas and torrential downpours in moist places.

Tech

Hooking fish, not endangered turtles

A tuna fisherman has taken it upon himself to make the seas safer for sea turtles, animals that are threatened or endangered with extinction worldwide. He’s designed a new hook that he says will make bait unavailable to marine birds and turtles until long after it’s sunk well below the range where these animals venture to eat.