Earth

  1. Agriculture

    Resistance to Bt crops emerges

    Resistance to pest-killing cotton crops is spreading among one species of caterpillar, but techniques to prevent the spread of resistance appear to be working for five other species.

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  2. 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.

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  3. 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.

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  4. Earth

    Water-Hogging Electric Vehicles

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

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  5. Earth

    Spying asbestos

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

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  6. 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 […]

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  7. Earth

    Don’t like it hot

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

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  8. 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.

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  9. Earth

    Early dioxin exposure hinders sperm later

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

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  10. 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.

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  11. Earth

    A crack and a fault in paradise

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

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  12. 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.

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