Earth
- Earth
Reef record suggests impending Sumatra quakes
Evidence of seafloor rise and fall shows southern Sumatra is at start of new earthquake cycle.
By Sid Perkins - Chemistry
ENV Tidbits: Corals, nano concerns, and more
News nuggets on climate-imperiled corals, nanotech worries, and soft drinks bearing pesticides.
By Janet Raloff - Earth
Biological Cadre Turns Political
Conservation scientists lobby the presidential-transition team to select an Interior Secretary who respects and defends science.
By Janet Raloff - Space
Meteorites could have thickened primordial soup
New experiments show that extraterrestrial impacts that occurred early in our planet's history could have created the raw materials for life.
By Sid Perkins - Health & Medicine
Honeybee CSI: Why dead bodies can’t be found
Virus could explain one symptom of colony collapse.
By Susan Milius -
- Earth
The Hunt for Habitable Planets
Here and now, a new suite of small telescopes are poised to look for Earthlike planets beyond the solar system.
By Ron Cowen - Earth
Methane even escapes from freezing permafrost
An extended field season reveals that the autumn freeze in the arctic squeezes methane from some high-latitude wetland soils, a match even for summertime methane release.
By Sid Perkins - Earth
Toxicologist to Become an NIH Director
A new director — equal parts scientist and communicator — will take over environmental-health agency.
By Janet Raloff - Earth
Unveiling hidden craters
Earth is regularly bombarded by small meteorites, but most of the resulting craters are hard to find. A team reports finding one such crater in the forests of west-central Alberta.
By Sid Perkins - Chemistry
Nanosilver disinfects — but at what price?
Silver demonstrates some unusual immunological impacts at the nanoscale.
By Janet Raloff - Earth
Marine pollution spawns ‘wonky babies’
Featured blog: Pollutants at sea can slow critters' sperm or induce DNA damage.
By Janet Raloff