Earth
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Earth
It’s Night: Why’s It So Light?
We're wasting scads of energy while much of the world sleeps.
By Janet Raloff -
Earth
Subglacial lakes flood, glaciers speed up
Floods that occasionally surge from immense lakes trapped beneath the Antarctic ice sheet can significantly affect the flow rate of overlying glaciers, a new study shows.
By Sid Perkins -
Life
Supreme Court lifts restriction on Navy sonar testing
Justices overturn restrictions that require Navy to stop using sonar when marine mammals are within 2,200 yards of vessels.
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Ecosystems
Costs of Choked-Up Waters
Scientists tally the economic toll of fertilizing pollutants on water quality.
By Janet Raloff -
Earth
Minerals evolved along with life
Turns out, the variety and number of minerals in the solar system and on Earth have increased through time, and some minerals exist because Earth has life.
By Sid Perkins -
Agriculture
A Mushrooming Advance
Human skin isn't the only thing that makes vitamin D upon exposure to the ultraviolet radiation.
By Janet Raloff -
Climate
Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal About the Current Threat— And How to Counter It by Wallace S. Broecker and Robert Kunzig
Hill and Wang, 2008, 253 p., $25.
By Science News -
Earth
Stalagmite is scribe for monsoons, society
Cave formation has recorded monsoon strength in China since the third century.
By Sid Perkins -
Climate
Climate change stifling lemmings
Warmer winter temperatures are altering the snowpack, squelching the rodents’ population booms.
By Sid Perkins -
Chemistry
Oldest evidence for complex life in doubt
Chemical biomarkers in ancient Australian rocks, once thought to be the oldest known evidence of complex life on Earth, may have infiltrated long after the sediments were laid down, new analyses suggest.
By Sid Perkins -
Chemistry
From Aerators to Rust — New Lead Risks
Rusty water and other unusual sources of toxic risks in home drinking water.
By Janet Raloff -
Chemistry
Faucets Destined for Brassy Changes
Although new standards poised to take effect in a few years will reduce the lead-leaching risk from drinking water faucets, showerheads and many other water dispensers around will remain unregulated.
By Janet Raloff