U.S. Creates Largest Protected Area In The World
The Obama administration announced late Wednesday that it is creating the largest marine reserve in the world by expanding an existing monument around seven U.S.-controlled islands and atolls in the...
View ArticleHow Dust Might Make Drought Worse (Or A Bit Better) In California
As the state's historic drought drags on, scientists are watching the Sierra snow with intense interest — and they're worrying that even tiny airborne particles of dust may have a big effect on water...
View ArticleThe Big Possibilities Of Micro-Robots
Engineer Robert Wood says that medicine and agriculture could be transformed by micro and "soft" robots.
View ArticleDid The Vikings Get A Bum Rap?
A Yale historian wants us to rethink the terrible tales about the Norse.
View ArticleWhen The U.S. Government Was Obsessed With Bird Shit
Blame it on "guano mania." A craze for natural fertilizer made from bird droppings spurred the U.S. to take possession of a group of remote Pacific islands in the 19th century, and now those islands...
View ArticleAstronomers Are Still Arguing Over Pluto
Disagreements continue over Pluto's planetary status, with a recent debate held at Harvard for scientists to weigh the pros and cons.
View ArticleHow Burmese Elephants Helped Defeat The Japanese In World War II
A British "elephant whisperer" and his best beloved helpers waged guerrilla warfare and carried refugees to safety.
View ArticleChina's 'Supercave' Takes Title As World's Most Enormous Cavern
China's immense Miao Room cavern, hidden beneath rolling hills and reachable only by an underground stream, is the world's biggest cave chamber, an international mapping team reported on Sunday.
View ArticleThe Big Problem With Mini-Pigs
When pint-size pigs grow bigger than promised, they wind up euthanized or in overburdened shelters. Can education, regulation and more sanctuaries solve the problem?
View ArticleLast Dance For The Playboy King Of Swaziland?
As Swaziland's economy struggles, Africa's last absolute monarch faces a growing chorus of critics.
View ArticleHere's Why We Haven't Quite Figured Out How To Feed Billions More People
Solving the world's looming food crisis will require big investments in agricultural research, yet public support for that is lagging.
View ArticleOne-Third Of Food Is Lost Or Wasted: What Can Be Done?
From our farms to grocery stores to dinner tables, 30 percent of the food we grow is never eaten. We can do better.
View ArticleThe War On Bugs
Faced with more than 600,000 deaths a year from malaria, scientists and their philanthropic backers have set their sights on the lowly mosquito. If we could annihilate mosquitoes, malaria would go,...
View Article45,000-Year-Old Bone Pinpoints The First Time Humans And Neanderthals Had Sex
Unearthed by an ivory carver from a Siberian riverbank, a man's 45,000-year-old thigh bone reveals when people first mated with Neanderthals, an international genetics team reports Wednesday.
View ArticleMale Birds Poison Themselves To Appear Sexier
Great bustards eat toxic beetles to clear parasites and look healthier, study says.
View ArticleHow Maggots Help Solve Crimes
Learn how forensic entomologists study how bugs colonize dead bodies to help establish a time of death.
View ArticleAmazon Warriors Did Indeed Fight And Die Like Men
Archaeology shows that these fierce women also smoked pot, got tattoos, killed — and loved — men.
View ArticleWhy NASA Blew Up A Rocket Just After Launch
Every time NASA launches a rocket, two safety officers have one weighty decision: They have to decide whether to push a self-destruct button if it appears the launch is going awry.
View ArticleBillions Have Been Spent On Technology To Find IEDs, But Dogs Still Do It Better
These working dogs have saved countless soldiers' lives — and helped prevent PTSD.
View ArticleRelics Of The Cold War 25 Years On
Twenty-five years ago the first hammer blows struck the Berlin Wall. Today little remains of that international symbol of the Cold War, the political disaccord that almost pushed Europe to the brink of...
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