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If life were a Michael Bay movie, the moment this week when Russian scientists finally drilled into the subglacial Lake Vostok in Antarctica would immediately be followed by the sudden and frightening appearance of unfrozen aliens, or the Predator, or the Decepticons, or giant prehistoric piranhas, and only Shia LaBeouf—plus leggy starlet to be named [...]
President Obama came into office promising to restore scientific integrity to policymaking, but his Administration has allowed politics to trump science several times—including with this week’s move to keep the emergency contraceptive Plan B from being sold without a prescription. But science—in climate change and in other areas—can only tell us so much. Ethics and [...]
Jellyfish: they’re the worst. From the dollar bill-sized jellies that wash up along the New Jersey shore to the deadly box jelly—the most toxic creature on the planet—no one likes jellyfish. And the bad news is that they may be taking over: as we pull fish from the sea, the jellyfish are left to flourish. [...]
We live in the Anthropocene, as some scientists have come to call our new geologic era. The term acknowledges the fact that human beings—nearly 7 billion strong and growing—have so much influence over the life, geography and even chemistry of planet Earth that we’re now essentially responsible for the whole show. For good and for [...]
The hidden story of 2011 has been the record-breaking rise in global food prices. Global corn prices doubled between April 2010 and April 2011, while wheat prices are up some 60 to 80%. Exactly why food has gotten so expensive in recent months is the subject of an ongoing debate—biofuel policy, inflation, oil prices, natural [...]
It can be hard to feel much sympathy for bats. Like snakes or spiders or sharks or bunnies (OK, maybe the last one is just me), there’s something primordially alarming about bats, something that activates the lizard part of the brain and shutters empathy. Bats aren’t actually “flying rodents,” but you likely won’t see them [...]
On the main page I have a piece on a fascinating Science study that showed how scientists were able to genetically engineer chickens to make them virtually unable to pass on avian flu. That could have major implications for influenza—birds can spread new flu viruses to human beings—and for veterinary disease, if researchers can engineer [...]
As the meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) continues in Nagoya (tip for attendees—check out Los Tacos!), hopes are dwindling for any kind of broad, global deal to aggressively protect nature. That’s partially due to the fact that diplomats are locked over contentious arguments about how to divide up the world’s bioresources. But [...]
Not to use an overly technical term here, but there’s a neat paper in this week’s Science that explains clearly why carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main agent behind changes in the Earth’s climate—now and in the geologic past. First a bit of background: one argument you might hear from skeptics of manmade climate change [...]
We’ve learned so many wonderful new terms during the more than four-month old BP oil spill: top kill, static kill, bottom kill, Corexit, junk shot. It’s time to add one more: Oceanospirillales. That’s that name of an order of proteobacteria that are currently chowing down on the plumes of underwater oil created by the spill—and [...]
