Earth
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Agriculture
Network Antennas — Yum!
Sensor designers might have to consider engineering in bovine deterrence.
- 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.
- Earth
Mammoth migrations
Ancient DNA shows North American woolly mammoths migrated back to Asia and displaced Siberian mammoths.
- 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.
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- Earth
Past gasps
Earth’s atmosphere during some past geological ages wasn’t as oxygen-deprived as previously thought, new experiments suggest.
- Chemistry
Popular plastics chemical poses further threat
The chemical bisphenol A may raise the risk of heart attacks and type 2 diabetes by suppressing a protective hormone.
- Chemistry
Turning CO2 into chalk and sand
Removing carbon dioxide from smokestacks and storing it permanently is one of the possible solutions to global warming, but remains expensive to do. A new technique could make carbon sequestration economical on a large scale, while producing useful materials on the side.
