Earth

  1. 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.

    By Janet Raloff
  2. Earth

    Planes can trigger snowfall

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

    By Sid Perkins
  3. 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.

    By Janet Raloff
  4. Earth

    Operation Icewatch 2010 gears up

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

    By Alexandra Witze
  5. 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.

    By Janet Raloff
  6. 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.

    By Janet Raloff
  7. Earth

    Ancient marine reptiles losing their cool

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

    By Sid Perkins
  8. 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.

    By Janet Raloff
  9. 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.

    By Janet Raloff
  10. Earth

    Possible snake shortage looms

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

    By Susan Milius
  11. Climate

    With warming, some commercial fish may boom and bust

    Higher temps in Arctic waters might be good for some species but not for others, new research suggests.

    By Sid Perkins
  12. Planetary Science

    Before the Mississippi, minerals show ancient rivers flowed west

    Michigan zircons uncover the path of an ancient river system across North America.

    By Sid Perkins