Earth
- Chemistry
Oil magnets
Featured blog: Nanomagnets and wires point to a potentially better mousetrap — or crude trap — for dealing with oil spills.
- Ecosystems
Fish Houses
Tanked half-way houses allow people and fish to get acquainted on their own terms — and exhibit their individual personalities.
- Plants
Fugitives spread bumblebee diseases
Pathogens hitchhike on commercial bees that escape from greenhouses. These escapees bring disease to wild bumblebees.
- Plants
Parasitic plant gets more than a meal
The parasitic vine known as dodder really sucks. It pierces the tissue of other plants — some of which are important crops — extracting water and nutrients needed for its own growth. But it also consumes molecules that scientists could manipulate to bring on the parasite’s demise.
- Earth
Seafloor chronicles
Survey of ocean floor reveals long history, from a geological fault to the wreckage of the Lusitania.
- Agriculture
Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa
by Robert Paarlberg, Harvard Univ. Press, 2008, 235 p., $24.95.
- Astronomy
Science Future for August 2, 2008
August 16–24 Australia celebrates National Science Week. Visit www.scienceweek.info.au September 18 and 19 University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Holtz Center presents “Climate Change is Global.” Visit www.sts.wisc.edu October 8 Space Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to launch as part of the final mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Visit www.nasa.gov/missions
- Ecosystems
Tracing Tahitian vanilla
The discovery of Tahitian vanilla’s heritage could set off a custody battle between nations.
- Agriculture
Dirt Is Not Soil
Probing the distinction in what you call the stuff that mud is made of.
- Climate
Hydrogen economy sustainable in 15 years
Hydrogen fuel cells can eventually replace the combustion engine, but meanwhile a wider range of technologies will be needed to reduce carbon emissions.
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- Oceans
Death by magma
Widespread extinctions in the world’s oceans millions of years ago may have been triggered by massive underwater volcanic eruptions that created much of the Caribbean seafloor.
