Sea turtles may be eating themselves to death. In this case, though, the phrase likely doesn’t mean what you think it does. Green sea turtles in the Caribbean may be in danger of starving to death in the near future thanks to a recent invasion of seagrass. The marine plant is spreading quickly and edging out native species helped, ironically, by the sea turtles themselves. Underwater Gardens Green sea turtles forage in beds of seagrass, an abundant resource in their underwate ...read more

By the end of the century, rising CO2 levels will cut fishes’ sense of smell by nearly half, new research finds. And the impaired olfaction will threaten marine ecosystems and our food supply. That’s according to a report Monday in Nature Climate Change. Fish need a sharp smelling sense because many species spawn offshore, forcing newly hatched fish to find their way home by following their noses. Smell also helps fish locate food, communicate with their pa ...read more

As the climate warms, seas will rise, storms will proliferate and cities will bake. But, in addition to the marquee issues global warming causes, there will likely be a host of tangential issues, many of which we may not anticipate. A new study in Nature Climate Change looks at the psychological effects a warming climate will have on humans, focusing specifically on mental health. Though the work is somewhat preliminary, the authors pick out a broad trend of ...read more

Sock Signals Throughout Africa and Asia, elephants can be seen as problem causers. The behemoth mammals destroy crops and threaten farmers’ livelihoods when they trundle through fields after tasty snacks. Scarecrows, fences and noisemaking tripwires don’t deter the beasts, and tensions with humans can escalate so much that elephants are sometimes shot. Now, scientists have discovered that the odor of angry honeybees is an effective elephant repellant. Th ...read more

Two years ago, a paper by Swedish neuroscientist Anders Eklund and colleagues caused a media storm. The paper, Cluster Failure, reported that the most widely used methods for the analysis of fMRI data are flawed and produce a high rate of false positives. As I said at the time, Cluster Failure wasn't actually making especially new claims because Eklund et al. had been publishing quite similar results years earlier - but it wasn't until Cluster Failure that they attracted widespread attent ...read more

Weather forecasts and remote sensing imagery show that the Branson duck boat tragedy was avoidable The duck boat tragedy in Branson, Missouri, was made all the more horrible by the fact that it was completely avoidable. While Jim Pattison Jr., president of the company that owns Ride the Ducks Branson, claimed the storm “came out of nowhere,� nothing could be further from the truth. ...read more

Hidden away in the woods near the upstate New York town of Lake George is a cave. The entrance of the cavern, an abandoned graphite mine, is almost perfectly round, with a trickle of water running out of it. On a weekday morning in late February, researchers, led by Carl Herzog, a wildlife biologist for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, gather at the cave mouth and swap hiking boots for waders before filing in. Kate Ritzko, a fish and wildlife technician for th ...read more

It has been not quite a half-century since human beings stepped foot on another planetary body for the first time. Forty-nine years ago today, to be exact. It was on July 20, 1969 when Neil A. Armstrong, Commander of the Apollo 11 mission, descended the steps of the Lunar Module and upon reaching the surface uttered these instantly famous words: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." (Btw, if you think he didn't actually say "a man," ...read more

BAIKONUR, KAZAKHSTAN – That rocket looked so tiny from a mile away. Shining white against the dull beige sands of Baikonur, the Soyuz had three people on board all set for a ride to the International Space Station. From this distance, though, it appeared fragile, like a child's plaything. Standing beside me was a member of the backup crew, Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques. He passed the time talking to me about other launches he had seen. When the Soyuz finally lighted ...read more

On Tuesday, Jupiter officially “gained� 10-12 moons. But that doesn’t make up for the dozens of moons the solar system has lost over time. Unlike the recent crop, the long lost moons were of pretty substantial size. This includes even a few now missing moons for Jupiter. The king of our planets started out in a gas envelope, like the other planets. It’s system had quite a bit of heft, but the slow drag of this cloud m ...read more