Earth

  1. Earth

    Grazing on the Periodic Table: Some ancient microorganisms lived on a diet of pure sulfur

    Microorganisms that lived 3.5 billion years ago obtained energy by metabolizing pure sulfur.

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  2. Earth

    How Green Are Your Travels?

    This website offers a rough gauge of the carbon-dioxide emissions associated with flying around the country. Just plug in a starting point and destination and it gives you a round-trip estimate of the greenhouse-gas “footprint” of your travel. The goal is to encourage visitors to buy carbon-offsets to cover the greenhouse-gas cost of their treks. […]

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  3. Earth

    Laser printers can dirty the air

    Some laser printers emit substantial amounts of potentially hazardous nanoscale particles.

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  4. Earth

    Lack of oxygen stunts fish reproduction

    Seasonal oxygen shortages in coastal waters, increasing in severity because of pollution, may impair fish reproduction.

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  5. Earth

    What Goes Up

    A massive scientific field study in Mexico City, along with lab experiments and computer simulations, show that pollution from the world's megacities has a global impact.

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  6. Earth

    Sonic Sands: Uncovering the secret of the booming dunes

    The age-old mystery of sand dunes that produce loud, thrumming noises is explained by a new theory that involves a resonant layer of dry sand.

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  7. Earth

    Oxygen Rocks: Volcanoes spurred early atmospheric change

    Earth owes its oxygen-rich atmosphere to a change in volcanic activity about 2.5 billion years ago.

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  8. Earth

    Tiny tubes, big pollution

    Making carbon nanotubes also produces a lot of airborne carcinogens.

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  9. Earth

    Arctic snow was dirtier in early 1900s

    Arctic snow collects less soot now than it did a century ago, but it's still dirtier than it was before the Industrial Revolution.

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  10. Earth

    Don’t Bite the Dust

    Several studies show that children and adults accumulate substantial amounts of the flame retardants called PBDEs—from food, breast milk, and probably house dust.

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  11. Earth

    O River Deltas, Where Art Thou? Coastal sinking stalls sediment accumulation

    The western coast of Siberia lacks river deltas because of the way the terrain has subsided since the end of the last ice age.

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  12. Earth

    Cat disease associated with flame retardants

    An epidemic of hyperthyroidism in house cats may be the result of environmental exposure to certain flame retardants.

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