When corn farmers harvest their crop, they often leave the stalks, leaves and spent cobs to rot in the fields. Now, engineers have fashioned a new strain of yeast that…
Category: Earth
Focusing on Asian giant hornets distorts the view of invasive species
Fingers crossed for finding nothing: July marks the main trapping season to check for Asian giant hornets still infesting Washington state. The first of these invasive hornets found in North…
Corals may store a surprising amount of microplastics in their skeletons
A surprising amount of plastic pollution in the ocean may wind up in a previously overlooked spot: the skeletons of living corals. Up to about 20,000 metric tons of tiny…
Albatrosses divorce more often when ocean waters warm
When it comes to fidelity, birds fit the bill: Over 90 percent of all bird species are monogamous and — mostly — stay faithful, perhaps none more famously than the…
How intricate Venus’s-flower-baskets manipulate the flow of seawater
A Venus’s-flower-basket isn’t all show. This stunning deep-sea sponge can also alter the flow of seawater in surprising ways. A lacy, barrel-shaped chamber forms the sponge’s glassy skeleton. Flow simulations…
Wildfire smoke may ramp up toxic ozone production in cities
Wildfire smoke and urban air pollution bring out the worst in each other. As wildfires rage, they transform their burned fuel into a complex chemical cocktail of smoke. Many of…
Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier ice shelf could collapse within five years
The demise of a West Antarctic glacier poses the world’s biggest threat to raise sea levels before 2100 — and an ice shelf that’s holding it back from the sea…
The Southern Ocean is still swallowing large amounts of humans’ carbon dioxide emissions
The Southern Ocean is still busily absorbing large amounts of the carbon dioxide emitted by humans’ fossil fuel burning, a study based on airborne observations of the gas suggests. The…
Climate change could make Virginia’s Tangier Island uninhabitable by 2051
Virginia’s Tangier Island is rapidly disappearing. Rising sea levels are exacerbating erosion and flooding, and could make the speck of land in the Chesapeake Bay uninhabitable within the next few…
Fungi may be crucial to storing carbon in soil as the Earth warms
When it comes to storing carbon in the ground, fungi may be key. Soils are a massive reservoir of carbon, holding about three times as much carbon as Earth’s atmosphere.…
