Earth
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Climate
(Political) party animals
Featured blog: When it comes to attitudes about climate change, the chasm between Democrats and Republicans is wide. Political-polling analysts speculate that a McCain win in November might do more than an Obama victory to win over the minds of climate-change skeptics.
By Janet Raloff -
Climate
Energy: Apollo-like Program Needed
Big action and big bucks are needed to deal with the United States' energy problems, research leaders argued today.
By Janet Raloff -
Climate
Heat waves stunt grassland growth
An abnormally hot year can significantly suppress growth in grasslands, a stifling effect that lingers well into the next year even if temperatures return to normal. It can also hinder how well the grasslands absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
By Sid Perkins -
Astronomy
McCain Is Bullish on R&D
Featured blog: John McCain weighs in on science and technology issues with long-awaited written responses to the Science Debate 2008.
By Janet Raloff -
Paleontology
Dino domination was in the cards, maybe
A new study finds that early dinosaurs coexisted with and were outnumbered by a competing species. Dinosaurs eventually reigned supreme anyway, but perhaps not because they were better.
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Tech
Cops Might Get Pollution Sniffers
One day soon, precise up-to-minute air pollution data might be available at a street-by-street level.
By Janet Raloff -
Agriculture
Network Antennas — Yum!
Sensor designers might have to consider engineering in bovine deterrence.
By Janet Raloff -
Earth
Don’t blame the cities
Urban sprawl is sometimes blamed for skewing weather data and creating a false signal of global warming, but a new study suggests this idea is just a lot of hot air.
By Sid Perkins -
Earth
Mammoth migrations
Ancient DNA shows North American woolly mammoths migrated back to Asia and displaced Siberian mammoths.
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Earth
Mighty hurricanes get mightier
Peak winds in North Atlantic hurricanes and similar storms elsewhere in the world have gained speed during the past three decades, thanks to a warming trend in many of the ocean basins where such storms are spawned.
By Sid Perkins -
Earth
Ice spy
Radar altimeters on Earth-orbiting probes can detect and count small icebergs even under cloudy skies, providing warning to ships and invaluable data for scientists monitoring climate change.
By Sid Perkins -
Earth
Past gasps
Earth’s atmosphere during some past geological ages wasn’t as oxygen-deprived as previously thought, new experiments suggest.
By Sid Perkins