Earth

  1. Earth

    Forest loss slows in Brazilian Amazon

    Between 2004 and 2009, the rate of clearing dropped almost 75 percent.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    ‘Miracle’ tomato turns sour foods sweet

    Pucker no more: That seems to be one objective of research underway at a host of Japanese universities. For the past several years, they’ve been developing bio-production systems to inexpensively churn out loads of miraculin — a natural taste-altering protein that makes sour foods seem oh so sweet. Their newest biotech reactor: grape tomatoes.

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  3. Earth

    Rodent poop gauges ancient rains

    The size of chinchilla pellets reveals past desert environment.

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  4. Health & Medicine

    Chicken poses significant drug-resistant Salmonella threat

    More than one-in-five retail samples of raw chicken collected in Pennsylvania hosted Salmonella, a new study found — twice the prevalence reported in a 2007 U.S. Food and Drug Administration survey. And where the bacteria were present, more than half were immune to the germicidal activity of at least one antibiotic. Nearly one-third were resistant to three or more.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    Drumming up anthrax

    Mention anthrax and about the last thing that comes to mind is whether there’s a drum in the room. Yet tom-toms — or at least the stretched animal hides on their heads — can sometimes spew toxic anthrax spores into the air. Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently highlighted the case of a previously healthy 24-year-old woman who nearly died, last December, after attending a “drumming circle” in New Hampshire.

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  6. Life

    Emerging disease may wipe out common bat in the Northeast

    Hard-hit region could lose little brown myotis to white-nose syndrome within decades

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  7. Chemistry

    Receipts a large — and largely ignored — source of BPA

    A host of small studies raises a big alarm about exposure to a hormone-mimicking chemical.

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  8. Tech

    Cashiers may face special risks from BPA

    “People working at places that use thermal paper can have continual contact with bisphenol A. And if they knew, I think they would be horrified,” notes Koni Grob, an analytical chemist with an official government food laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland. He’s describing the thermal paper commonly used throughout Europe and North America to print store receipts.

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  9. Climate

    EPA rejects climate-change deniers’ petitions

    A number of people challenge that climate change is real, that it's due to greenhouse gases released by human activities and that it's a threat to human health and the environment. On July 29, the Environmental Protection Agency formally rejected those claims as it turned down 10 petitions asking the Obama administration to reconsider EPA’s “endangerment finding.”

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  10. Earth

    Trailing dust devils

    Whirlwinds leave dark paths behind by sucking sand grains clean.

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  11. Chemistry

    More evidence that BPA laces store receipts

    People interested in limiting exposure to bisphenol A — a hormone-mimicking environmental contaminant — might want to consider wearing gloves the next time a store clerk hands over a cash-register receipt. A July 27 report by a public-interest research group has now confirmed many of these receipts have a BPA-rich powdery residue on their surface.

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  12. Earth

    Researchers create global map of tree height

    A new map shows forest height around the globe and will improve estimates of how much carbon is stored in trees.

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