Earth

Agriculture

Switchgrass Science

A native prairie grass shows promise as a substitute for corn in the production of fuel ethanol—an additive to stretch fossil-fuel resources for transportation. University of Tennessee researchers have produced a video on the science and prospects of switchgrass ethanol that is available in a 26-minute version and an abbreviated form. For those who don’t […]

Earth

Weather maker

The North Atlantic's Gulf Stream affects the overlying atmosphere more strongly than previously suspected.

Chemistry

Drugs on Tap

It's finally time to investigate whether pharmaceuticals in water pose a health risk.

Earth

Ocean ups and downs—the long view

Sea level has dropped about 170 meters in the past 80 million years, thanks in part to the thinning of ocean crust and the formation of land-based ice sheets.

Earth

Ancient Chasm: Parts of Grand Canyon may be 17 million years old

The chemical composition of mineral formations in caves along the Grand Canyon may provide fresh insight into the chasm's history, including its age and the rate at which it was carved.

Earth

Some corals buffered from warming

Corals in the western Pacific have escaped bleaching linked to rising ocean temperatures.

Earth

Manifest dirt

Nineteenth-century settlers left a dusty mark on the West. Rocky Mountain lake deposits reveal that America’s westward expansion kicked huge amounts of dirt into the air—probably from livestock grazing. A team led by Jason Neff, a biogeochemist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, examined soil cores from the beds of tiny mountain lakes in […]

Earth

Greener Green Energy: Today’s solar cells give more than they take

With new production techniques, the total emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants from making and using solar panels are now only one-tenth as high as those of conventional power generation.

Earth

Dioxin’s long reach

Breast development is delayed in teenage girls who were exposed to the organic pollutant dioxin in the womb and in their mothers' breast milk.

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.

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.