Jan 17 What We’re Reading: Worm Bots, Dark Energy and Climate Psychology Why Dire Climate Warnings Boost Skepticism Dire predictions on climate change don't seem to be working. Even while scientific evidence that humans are causing global warming continues to mount, belief in climate change doesn't. So why the disconnect?… Continue reading
Jan 17 Watch Giffords’ Case Offers Insight on Mysteries of the ‘Changeable’ Brain The treatment of severe brain injuries has garnered increased attention in the wake of the shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Continue watching
Jan 13 New Early Dinosaur Fossils Shift Family Tree Scientists have discovered a four-foot-long, meat-eating dinosaur, with serrated teeth and long finger bones, that roamed the earth some 230 million years ago. The fossils are among the earliest dinosaur bones ever found, and the finding, which was published… Continue reading
Jan 13 Australia Flooding Threatens Already Sensitive Great Barrier Reef As muddy river water swept through parts of Australia, inundating more than 20,000 homes and claiming at least 15 lives, it also poured into the ocean, where it now threatens one of the country's most precious natural ecosystems:… Continue reading
Jan 11 Watch Oil Spill Probe Reveals Need to Balance Precautions, Profits Ray Suarez talks to the chairmen of the president's oil spill commission about how companies can adopt practices to lower the risk of another massive oil spill like the one that devastated the Gulf of Mexico. Continue watching
Jan 11 How Close Are We to Finding an Earthlike Planet? By Jenny Marder And what constitutes an "earthlike planet" anyway? The Kepler Space telescope has found a small, rocky planet, the smallest yet found orbiting a star outside our solar system, the Kepler team announced Monday at the annual meeting of… Continue reading
Jan 11 Watch After Haiti Quake, Using Science to Build Sturdier Buildings As Haiti recovers from the devastating earthquake that flattened Port-au-Prince one year ago, researchers are examining how the country can lessen the damage from another disaster using building science. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports. Continue watching
Jan 10 Tears and Testosterone, Interstellar Dust Clouds and a Medical Mystery, Unsolved In Women's Tears, a Chemical that Says, 'Not Tonight, Dear' When a man gets close enough to sniff a woman's tears, his sex drive and hormone levels drop, but his mood and empathy remain unchanged, according to… Continue reading
Jan 07 Watch Oil and Oysters: Testing Continues in Louisiana After Gulf Disaster The Louisiana Department of Health & Hospitals adopted a sophisticated two-tiered testing system to examine how safe oysters are for human consumption. Bill Rodman from Louisiana Public Broadcasting reports on their findings. Continue watching
Jan 06 Methane-Munching Bacteria Ate Potent Gas From Gulf Oil Leak at Top Speed By Jenny Marder Researchers collect water samples to study bacteria and methane gas. Photo by Elizabeth Crapo/NOAA As soon as oil began spewing into Gulf of Mexico waters, bacteria went to work, gobbling up mass amounts of methane. And as the oil… Continue reading