« March 2008 | Main | May 2008 »

The God of Fear

Quickly, before the opportunity passes, I wanted to share an image from a few days ago. It is of Phobos, the larger of the two moons of Mars, as seen by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, from a distance of about...

Continue reading "The God of Fear"

April 11, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (7)

Too Hot to Touch

You can wash your lettuce until there's nothing left of it. But nothing we routinely do in America -- not even rinsing produce in chlorine disinfectants -- will get rid of all the bacteria that cause food poisoning. That's the...

Continue reading "Too Hot to Touch"

April 11, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (17)

Saving the Wild Without Roping it All Off

Protecting nature's diversity of species seems to set off fights in the wealthiest countries and the poorest. But it doesn't have to be that way. After a massive survey of the island of Madagascar, scientists say they can protect the...

Continue reading "Saving the Wild Without Roping it All Off"

April 10, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (3)

Better than Fine? People Say They Take Medicines to Help Concentrate

When you hear complaints about performance-enhancing drugs, you usually think of ballplayers or runners. But what about the rest of us? Turns out a surprising number of people use "cognitive-enhancing" prescription medications to help themselves through work, tests they have...

Continue reading "Better than Fine? People Say They Take Medicines to Help Concentrate"

April 9, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (38)

America's Carbon Footprint

Take a look at the map included in this post. The Vulcan Project, a team at Purdue University, has plotted where in America carbon dioxide emissions are the greatest. At first glance, the map looks very pretty -- and very...

Continue reading "America's Carbon Footprint"

April 8, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (32)

It's Not the Sun

Those who doubt that human activity is warming the climate sometimes suggest that earthly temperatures are tied to the natural cycles of the Sun. Two British physicists decided to test this idea. They say they came up dry. The paper,...

Continue reading "It's Not the Sun"

April 7, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (54)

The Long Journey of the Leatherback Turtle

There are migratory animals in this world, and then there are leatherback turtles. Scientists have tracked one 13,000 miles -- halfway across the world -- apparently in search of food. We did a World News piece on the leatherbacks, and...

Continue reading "The Long Journey of the Leatherback Turtle"

April 4, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (6)

The Cost of Controlling Climate Change

A veteran climate scientist, a policy analyst and an economist say it will be far more expensive than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated to cut down on the greenhouse gases often blamed for the problem. They've published a...

Continue reading "The Cost of Controlling Climate Change"

April 3, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (25)

A Planet is Born

There's a beautiful image today from the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, Scotland, and we hope you'll like it. It is a computer-generated simulation of a young star, say astronomers, with a vast disc of rock and dust around it gradually...

Continue reading "A Planet is Born"

April 2, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (14)

A Black Hole? In Switzerland?

In a giant lab deep beneath the Alps, physicists have spent $8 billion and 14 years assembling a machine called the Large Hadron Collider, in which they hope to smash protons together to simulate the conditions right after the Big...

Continue reading "A Black Hole? In Switzerland?"

April 1, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (110)