Earth

Earth

Defining Toxic: Federal agencies look to cells, not animals, for chemical testing

Government scientists are collaborating to shift the testing of potentially toxic chemicals away from animals to methods that use high-speed automated robots, which should generate data relevant to humans faster and more cheaply than current methods.

Earth

Going Down: Climate change, water use threaten Lake Mead

If climate changes as expected and future water use is not curtailed, there's a 50 percent chance that Arizona's Lake Mead, one of the southwestern United States' key reservoirs, will become functionally dry in the next couple of decades.

Earth

Water-Hogging Electric Vehicles

Electric cars may save on gasoline, but some can place an indirect drain on other resources.

Earth

Spying asbestos

A quick, on-site test will allow contractors and inspectors to test for asbestos in construction materials such as concrete.

Earth

Find My Valentine—or Other Places

The federal Geographic Names Information System lists 14 sites around the nation named Valentine—Including Alta Mills, Kan., and Bedison, Mo., for which Valentine is an alternate moniker. You can search for locations that may share your name, a name associated with some holiday (like Santa Claus, Ind.), or the name of an object of your […]

Earth

Don’t like it hot

King penguins don't live on continental Antarctica but even they are vulnerable to warming water.

Earth

Finding Fault: Trace of old subduction zone found in Italy

A thick layer of rocks now lying high in the mountains of Italy is the remains of a quake-generating subduction zone active under the sea millions of years ago, a discovery that provides clues about ancient seismic activity along this interface between tectonic plates and insights into what may be happening along many such subduction zones today.

Earth

Early dioxin exposure hinders sperm later

Dioxin exposure at an early age affects sperm quality later in life.

Earth

Seafloor Chemistry: Life’s building blocks made inorganically

Hydrocarbons in fluids spewing from hydrothermal vents on the seafloor in the central Atlantic were produced by inorganic chemical reactions deep within the ocean crust, a finding with implications for the possible origins of life.

Earth

A crack and a fault in paradise

Mauna Loa, Hawaii's most massive volcano, may be splitting the Earth's crust.

Earth

Fabulon: Looking less fabulous

The source of polychlorinated biphenyls found heavily tainting some homes—and their dwellers—appears to be a durable topcoat for hardwood floors that was widely used a half-century ago.

Earth

Identifying Polluters

Three major business schools have teamed up to map some 20,000 sources of industrial pollution. You can search for polluters in a particular region, in a designated industry, or those associated with a named company, then probe their emissions by type and quantity, look at how their pollutant trends have changed over time, and compare […]