Earth
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Earth
Global warming is marmot wake-up call
Marmots are coming out of hibernation earlier, while chipmunks and ground squirrels sleep longer-effects that could be attributed to global warming.
- Earth
Lawn Agent Cues Embryo Shortfall: Herbicide weeds out mice in the womb
Minuscule amounts of over-the-counter weed killers impair reproduction in mice.
- Earth
Clipping the Fin Trade
New research and policy developments aim to curb the wasteful and gruesome practice of killing sharks solely for their fins.
- Earth
Impurities clock crystal growth rates
A novel method for measuring tiny amounts of hydrogen-containing impurities allows researchers to determine growth rates along different directions in a quartz crystal.
- Earth
A deadly threat in undeployed airbags
The extremely toxic and reactive chemical used to inflate airbags could cause risks to human health and wildlife if accidentally released into the environment.
- Earth
It’s high tide for ice age climate change
Tides may sometimes be strong enough to tug Earth into an ice age.
- Earth
Moderate flows help carve rivers
Measurements of erosion in a rocky river channel in Taiwan suggest that the day-to-day flow of water accounts for more rock wear there than occasional catastrophic floods do.
- Earth
Gasoline additive’s going, but far from gone
As the federal government proposes phasing out the gasoline additive MTBE, scientists explore ways to remove this potential carcinogen from drinking-water supplies that it has tainted throughout the nation.
- Earth
Titanic iceberg sets sail from Antarctica
An iceberg about the size of Connecticut recently split off from the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.
- Earth
More Waters Test Positive for Drugs
Traces of drugs, excreted by people and livestock, pollute surface and ground waters in the United States, as had already been confirmed in Europe.
- Earth
Much that glitters is really old
New isotopic analyses of rock samples from one of the world's richest gold-mining regions suggest that the flecks of gold in those ores are more than 3 billion years old.
- Agriculture
Toxic bugs taint large numbers of cattle
U.S. cattle have dramatically higher rates of infection with a virulent food-poisoning bacterium than had been realized, a factor that leads to widespread carcass contamination during slaughter.
