Earth

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.

Earth

Planes can trigger snowfall

Under certain conditions, aircraft can trigger precipitation as they pass through moisture-laden clouds.

Humans

Crude pick-ups

To date, 400 skimmers have retrieved some 18 million gallons of oiled water from the BP Gulf spill, according to Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen during a June 11 press briefing. After removing the entrained water, this translates to between 1.8 million and 2.7 million gallons of crude oil. Another 3.8 million gallons of oil have been burned at sea. Four million gallons more have been collected through a near-mile-long riser tube and a containment cap fitted over the broken Deepwater Horizon wellhead.

Earth

Operation Icewatch 2010 gears up

Climate experts turn their gaze north to monitor this summer's Arctic melt.

Humans

BP spill: Gulf is primed to heal, but . . .

Every day, Mother Nature burps another 1,000 barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico, along with additional quantities of natural gas. Normally, these hydrocarbons don’t stick around long because local bacteria have evolved to eat them about as fast as they appear. Which is potentially good news, she explained in testimony during a pair of June 9 House subcommittee events on Capitol Hill, because those bugs are now in place to begin chowing down on the oil and gas entering the Gulf from BP's damaged Deepwater Horizon well.

Earth

Feds up estimates of BP-spill rate

At a news briefing on June 10, Marcia McNutt, who chairs the National Incident Command’s brain trust of experts calculating the likely release rate of the ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil spill, pegged the best available estimates at between 20,000 and more than 40,000 barrels per day.

Earth

Ancient marine reptiles losing their cool

Warm-bloodedness may help explain the creatures’ evolutionary success, a new study suggests.

Earth

Gulf gusher is far and away the biggest U.S. spill

As cleanup efforts progress, scientists try to track missing oil roaming below the surface.

Earth

BP oil isn’t the only source of Gulf’s deep roaming plumes

During a June 8 briefing for reporters, a NOAA science officer described deep strata of water tainted with oil identified during a recent cruise in the Gulf of Mexico. The presumption was that anything they found would be plumes of oil spewed by the jet of hydrocarbons emanating from the BP well head. But the chemical fingerprinting of diffuse undersea clouds of oil at one sampling site was “not consistent with BP oil,” he pointed out.

Earth

Possible snake shortage looms

Declines among species in Europe and Africa raise herpetologists’ worries of widespread population losses.