Microbes Might Paint Your Next Party Dress
The official “fashion month,” September has concluded its parade of gorgeous outfits. These contain harmful dyes, though. Can microbes make safer colors?
Unveiling Nature’s Mysteries: Mutant Sea Stars, Junk Jellyfish, and Duck Sex
Confront nature's mysteries, scientists find mutant sea stars surviving in warming waters and that sexual competition forces ducks to grow longer penises.
To Save the Threatened, Scientists Clone Cacao, Fertilize Mollusks, and Hunt Porpoises
All over the world, researchers are trying to better understand a world in constant flux and to prevent species from extinction as they battle for survival.
Starving Killer Whales Are Losing Most of Their Babies
The southern resident killer whales of the northeast Pacific are in trouble. As habitats and food dwindle, they increasingly miscarry and lose their babies.
The New Victims of Climate Change: Plants, Parasites, and Pregnant Women
The recent series of hurricanes has demonstrated, climate change is no longer a nebulous futuristic menace, but an existential threat.
Can the Acorn Crop Predict Lyme Disease?
Will cutting fewer forests, where tick hosts and their predators live, help curb Lyme disease? Scientists debate.
When Packrats’ Hoards Are Helpful
Packrat nests, preserved by a combination of the chemistry of urine and the desert air, open a window into centuries of local climate change.
Plastic in Your Beer, Toxins in Your Air, and Heavy Metals on Your Doorsteps
From household plastic to industrial waste, anthropogenic activity has created compounds that poison ecosystems from water to air.
Hurricanes May be Getting More Severe: Do We Need a Whole New Cateogry to Describe Them?
There’s been a devastating trail of destruction and flooding along the east Atlantic coast in the last few ...
How To Recycle Half A Million Flooded Cars
Although a car seems like a long-term capital investment, it is only a crash or disaster away from becoming two tons of mass-consumer junk.