Earth

  1. Earth

    Alternative flame retardants leach into the environment

    Supposedly safer chemicals are spotted in peregrine falcon eggs in California.

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  2. Paleontology

    Tyrannosaurs lived in the Southern Hemisphere, too

    Australian fossils suggest the kin of T. rex dispersed globally 110 million years ago.

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  3. Chemistry

    Building a cheaper catalyst

    Using perovskite instead of platinum in catalytic converters could shave many hundreds of dollars off the cost of a diesel car.

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  4. Chemistry

    The skinny on indoor ozone

    Indoor concentrations of ozone tend to be far lower than those outside, largely because much gets destroyed as molecules of the respiratory irritant collide with surfaces and undergo transformative chemical reactions. New research identifies a hitherto ignored surface that apparently plays a major role in quashing indoor ozone: It’s human skin. And while removing ozone from indoor air should be good, what takes its place may not be, data indicate.

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  5. Earth

    Bacteria show new route to making oxygen

    New discovery adds to the few known biological pathways for making and metabolically using the gas.

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  6. Chemistry

    BPA found beached and at sea

    Food chemists have been showing for years that bisphenol A, an estrogen-mimicking building block of polycarbonate plastics and food-can coatings, can leach into food and drinks. But other materials contain BPA – and leach it – such as certain resins used in nautical paint. And Katsuhiko Saido suspects those paints explain the high concentrations of BPA that he’s just found in beach sand and coastal seawater around the world.

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  7. Ecosystems

    Athlete’s foot therapy tapped to treat bat-killing fungus

    Over the past four years, a mysterious white-nose fungus has struck hibernating North American bats. Populations in affected caves and mines can experience death rates of more than 80 percent over a winter. In desperation, an informal interagency task force of scientists from state and federal agencies has just launched an experimental program to fight the plague. Their weapon: a drug ordinarily used to treat athlete’s foot.

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  8. Plants

    Bees face ‘unprecedented’ pesticide exposures at home and afield

    Honey bees are being hammered by some mysterious environmental plaque that has a name — colony collapse disorder – but no established cause. A two-year study now provides evidence indicting one likely group of suspects: pesticides. It found “unprecedented levels” of mite-killing chemicals and crop pesticides in hives across the United States and parts of Canada.

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  9. Paleontology

    Fossilized poop bears tooth marks

    Shark-bitten fecal matter probably came from an assault on an ancient croc.

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  10. Earth

    Ice drilling nets shrimpy surprise

    Underwater camera captures an Antarctic crustacean, as a serendipitous part of a larger ice shelf study.

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  11. Chemistry

    Methane-making microbes thrive under the ice

    Antarctica’s ice sheets could hide vast quantities of the greenhouse gas, churned out by a buried ecosystem.

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  12. Ecosystems

    Iron fertilization in ocean nourishes toxic algae

    Efforts to prevent global warming by fertilizing the oceans with iron could trigger harmful algal blooms.

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