Earth
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Earth
A New Would-Be Hormone in Water
Nitrate, a common pollutant, may also perturb reproductive hormones—at least in frogs.
- Earth
Floral Cues to Climate Change
Phenology may not be a word that trips off your tongue, but it may be one you want to consider adding to your vocabulary. It has the same root as phenomena, and in fact deals with biological events linked to climate—such as bird migrations and plant germination. The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research has set […]
- Earth
New Recipe for Pollution Stew: Another chemical culprit adds to ozone
A reactive chemical in urban air cleans up some pollutants but could introduce another.
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- Earth
The Costs of Meat and Fish
The purchase price is often but a small part of the true cost of many animal products in the diet.
- 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 […]
