Jul 28 California wildfires are breaking the rules by burning downhill fast By Allie Weill, KQED Science Because of the dangers of fighting a fire burning up a hill, crews working in hilly terrain take advantage of the opposite effect, anchoring firefighting operations on the downhill side of a fire and using the slope as a buffer… Continue reading
Jul 28 New Ebola species is reported for first time in a decade By Helen Branswell, STAT The family of Ebola viruses has just gotten a bit bigger. The government of Sierra Leone has announced that a new species of Ebola, the sixth, has been discovered there in bats. Continue reading
Jul 27 Watch 5:42 High temperatures and dry conditions are helping wildfires spread Firefighters are battling rapidly expanding wildfires across California, facing high winds and triple digit temperatures, while mass evacuations are underway in some areas. Other states like Oregon and Alaska are facing even more severe situations. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports… Continue watching
Jul 27 Here's proof that open office layouts don't work, and how to fix them By Nsikan Akpan, Julia Griffin A new study shows moving to an open office dramatically cuts face-to-face conversations, but architects say not all open offices should be treated equal. Continue reading
Jul 26 WATCH: As the longest lunar eclipse arrives, learn about blood moon myths from around the world By Daniel Brown, The Conversation On Friday, millions of have the opportunity to see a lunar eclipse – an event popularly known in the media as a “blood moon” – on Friday… Continue reading
Jul 25 Watch 6:03 Life on Mars? Watery new discovery raises tantalizing possibilities By Miles O'Brien Scientists have finally found for the first time a large watery reservoir beneath the southern ice cap of Mars. Radar suggests it is more than 12 miles wide and similar in some ways to lakes found beneath the Greenland and… Continue watching
Jul 25 Mars has a giant hidden lake. Could there be life in it? By Lee Billings, Scientific American Deep beneath the frigid surface of its southern ice cap, Mars holds a lake of liquid water nearly three times larger than the island of Manhattan. Continue reading
Jul 24 California wines contain Fukushima radiation, and it's not a bad thing By Amanda Grennell In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, cesium-137 made its way through the atmosphere to vineyards in Napa Valley. But the small amount of radiation poses more of a threat to wine counterfeiters than to your body. Continue reading
Jul 24 As glaciers shrink, iceberg tourism booms By Teresa Carey Scientists are concerned that global warming is destabilizing glaciers and ice shelves, creating larger and more frequent icebergs, like the Petermann Ice Island and the iceberg off the Innaarsuit settlement in Greenland. Continue reading
Jul 22 A sea urchin army is mowing down California's kelp forests -- but why? By Amanda Heidt, KQED Science These oceanic forests are currently under siege from a potent mix of climate anomalies, disease, and predation that have led to declines in kelp forests not seen in decades. Continue reading