Particles of black carbon have been found inside the placenta, raising questions of health risks to fetuses. (Credit: Africa Studio/Shutterstock)
Many of us don’t give much thought to the air we breathe. But if you live in a city, near a major road, next to an industrial plant or even just have a wood burning stove, that air is often laced with miniscule pollutants. After we inhale, those particles can lodge in our lungs and travel throughout the body. For pregnant women, this may put t ...read more
The Gemini Observatory in Hawaii caught this first-ever color image of the interstellar comet and its faint tail. (Credit: Composite image by Travis Rector. Gemini Observatory/NSF/AURA)
Astronomers are in a frenzy to learn more about the newest
visitor to our solar system, comet C/2019 Q4. While it hasn’t yet been
officially confirmed, they’re largely convinced the object originated outside
our solar system.
“I will say there is no debate at this point,” said Quanz ...read more
Adding seaweed to cows' diet would help tamp down their methane emissions. (Credit: Jan K/ Shutterstock)
Every morning, Breanna Roque goes out to the barn to feed the cows. But this isn’t your typical farm – in fact, it’s a laboratory. The University of California, Davis graduate researcher spends her time among bovines, tweaking their diets so that they burp less. Why? Less burps means less methane. And less methane, on a global scale, could mean slowing down climate change ...read more
Our blue-marble planet, imaged by the DSCOVR spacecraft. Life maintains a stubborn balance here--but for how long? (Credit: NOAA/EPIC)
James Lovelock has a lot to
celebrate. The renowned British futurist and environmentalist just enjoyed a
100th birthday party with his wife and friends. Over his long career
he has seen his once-controversial Gaia hypothesis steadily gain significant acceptance
among his colleagues. And capping all that, he has just published Novacene, a book that predicts th ...read more
Buying clothes and other items second hand is a great way to cut your environmental impact. (Credit: Cabeca de Marmore/Shutterstock)
Helping the environment might seem like an impossible task, especially when there are a couple billion other people out there, still doing their thing. But even just cutting your current environmental impact a little is better than doing nothing at all. So, here are a few ideas to get you started.
Buy Stuff Second Hand
What has less of an impact than buy ...read more
A new look at the Large Magellanic Cloud is helping astronomers better understand how groups of stars evolve. (Credit: ESA/NASA)
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has taken new observations of
the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small, neighboring galaxy to our Milky Way and
found new insights into the star clusters that live there.
Star clusters are quite common in the universe. If a galaxy
is a cosmic metropolis, star clusters would be like a small town. They form as huge
clouds of gas and ...read more
An experiment with white-crowned sparrows shows that insecticides may be impacting songbirds. (Credit: Phil Lowe/Shutterstock)
Some migrating songbirds may be starving thanks to agricultural pesticides. Neonicotinoids are popular insecticides used in industrial agriculture across the U.S. But the chemicals' are controversial because of their detrimental impact on bees and other pollinators.
Now, a group of researchers has added heat to the debate, showing that even small amounts of one pa ...read more
When you're overcome with fear, it's not adrenaline making you want to fight or flee. (Credit: Master1305/Shutterstock)
A thrilling high when you’re faced with danger, a boost of energy when you’re going for an intense run – we tend to associate these rushes with adrenaline, a hormone synonymous with our fight-or-flight response. But it turns out adrenaline might not be what activates our brains' stress reaction after all.
In fact, our bones might be doing more work than ...read more
Astronomers first found Comet C/2019 Q4 on August 30. The past week of observations, including this image taken by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Hawaii's Big Island, have increased astronomers confidence that the comet started life in another solar system. (Credit: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope)
A newly discovered comet has astronomers excited. Formally
named C/2019 Q4 (Borisov), the object appears to have come from outside our
solar system. If confirmed, that would make it the seco ...read more
A gigantic area of super-warm water has formed again off the U.S. West Coast, threatening impacts on weather and wildlife
A map of sea surface temperature anomalies shows a blob of very warm water off the West Coast of the North America. (Source: Climate Reanalyzer, University of Maine)
Five years ago, a gigantic cauldron of abnormally warm water in the Pacific Ocean wreaked havoc on marine ecosystems and contributed to drought along the western coast of North America.
Dubbed "The Blob ...read more
