Earth
- Earth
Africa’s bumper crop of dust
Seafloor sediments show that agriculture has greatly boosted airborne dust in the last two centuries.
- Climate
New carbon data should produce better climate forecasts
BLOG: More refined measurements for carbon dioxide input by plants and carbon dioxide released during respiration will help models, Science News editor in chief Tom Siegfried reports from the Euroscience Open Forum 2010 in Turin, Italy.
- Climate
Methane releases in arctic seas could wreak devastation
Warming climate could lead to dead zones, acidification and shifts at the base of the ocean’s food chain.
- Earth
African fossils suggest complex life arose early
Researchers find evidence that Earth’s earliest multicellular life got going 2.1 billion years ago.
- Earth
Moby Dick meets Jaws
A recently discovered fossil demonstrates that giant whales weren’t always as gentle as they are today.
- Earth
Ivy nanoparticles promise sunblocks and other green products
I’ve developed a love-hate relationship with English ivy that’s been devolving towards hate-hate. But a new paper may temper my antipathy. Apparently this backyard bully also offers a kinder, gentler alternative to the potentially toxic metal-based nanoparticles used in today’s sunscreens.
- Earth
Antarctic shoal breaks the ice
Instruments on a massive berg help pinpoint a previously unreported undersea ridge.
- Animals
Climate change may favor couch-potato elk
With drought and rising temperatures in Wyoming, migratory animals suffer while stay-at-home members of the same herd thrive
- Earth
Even a newborn canyon is big in Texas
A flood carved a surprisingly large gorge that may help understand features on Earth and Mars.
- Health & Medicine
Feds probe Gulf spill health risks
The Institute of Medicine will be hosting a small public workshop in New Orleans, June 22 and 23, on possible health risks to Gulf coast residents and workers in the wake of the catastrophic BP oil spill. A June 16 congressional hearing previewed some of the concerns likely to arise at the meeting. They ranged from potential long-terms risks of DNA damage to claims that BP failed to provide protective gear to contract crews hired to clean up oil.
- Earth
Loop Current will determine spill’s ultimate fate
Oceanographers track a newly formed eddy in the Gulf of Mexico and where it might carry oil.
- Science & Society
Citation inflation
Many journals – and the authors who publish their novel data and analyses in them – rely on “impact factors” as a gauge of the importance and prestige of their work. However, a new analysis turns up subtle ways that journals can game the system to artificially inflate their impact factor.
