Earth
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Earth
High-Flying Science, with Strings Attached
In the hands of scientists, kites do serious data gathering.
By Sid Perkins -
Earth
Small quake shakes up hydrothermal vents
Long-term, post-earthquake fluctuations in the temperature and volume of water spewing from hydrothermal vents off the coast of Washington state suggest that the fluid flow feeding such vents may be much more complex than previously thought.
By Sid Perkins -
Earth
Large lake floods scoured New Zealand
A volcanic region of New Zealand’s North Island experienced immense floods and severe erosion when lakes filling the craters of dormant volcanoes burst through the craters' rims and poured down the slopes.
By Sid Perkins -
Earth
For European lakes, how clean is clean enough?
New research on lakes in Denmark suggests that agriculture has been affecting water quality there for more than 5,000 years.
By Sid Perkins -
Earth
Extracting Estrogens: Modern treatment plants strip hormone from sewage
New research helps explain why state-of-the-art sewage treatment facilities are more effective than conventional plants at removing certain sex hormones from sludge.
By Ben Harder -
Agriculture
Local Foods Could Make for Greener Grocers
There was a time not so long ago when people tended to select the ingredients for their meals either from what was available that week at local markets or from out-of-season home-canned, -smoked, or -pickled goods in the family larder. No longer. Maryland cooks can pick up New Zealand lamb or Icelandic salmon any time […]
By Janet Raloff -
Earth
Air Sickness
Studies have begun showing subtle but substantial harmful effects in outwardly healthy people who regularly breathe hazy air.
By Janet Raloff -
Earth
Long-Term Ocean Venting: Seafloor system has been active for ages
Analyses of mineral deposits in and around a unique set of hydrothermal vents beneath the Atlantic Ocean suggest that the site's tallest towers of minerals have been growing for at least 30,000 years.
By Sid Perkins -
Earth
Catch Zero
It generally has taken less than a generation for modern, industrial-scale fishing, once deployed in a new plot of ocean, to exhaust the vast majority of the sea’s edible bounty and leave behind decimated ecosystems and depleted economic opportunities.
By Ben Harder -
Earth
Greenland ice variation appears normal
Changes in snowfall observed in parts of southern Greenland between 1978 and 1988 appear to be normal if gauged against the variations recorded in ice cores over the past 400 years.
By Sid Perkins -
Earth
Cooking up a key chemical of life
Researchers have simulated the conditions and ingredients found at hydrothermal vents to create pyruvic acid, an organic chemical vital for cellular metabolism.
By Sid Perkins -
Earth
Protective Blanket: Atmosphere blocks many small stony asteroids
A new computer model that more realistically simulates the aerodynamic forces on an object as it passes through Earth’s atmosphere suggests that the thin layer of air is an even better shield than previously thought.
By Sid Perkins