Earth and Human Activity

Chemistry

Scientists find a ‘greener’ way to make jeans blue

When coated onto jeans, a plant-based polymer reduces water and cuts the amount of toxic chemicals needed.

Chemistry

Everyday plastics can pollute, leaching thousands of chemicals

Plastic bags and containers leach potentially toxic chemicals into both food and water, but researchers yet don’t know how they might affect health.

Agriculture

Potty-trained cows could help reduce pollution

About a dozen calves have been trained to pee in a stall. Toilet training cows on a large scale could cut down on pollution, scientists say.

Chemistry

Chemists win Nobel Prize for faster, cleaner way of making molecules

Both scientists independently came up with new process — asymmetric organocatalysis. That name may be a mouthful, but it’s not that hard to understand.

Climate

Research on climate and more brings trio the 2021 physics Nobel Prize

Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann pioneered work on simulations of Earth’s climate. Giorgio Parisi probed complex materials.

Earth

Scientists Say: Anthropocene

Humans are changing the world in profound ways. Some scientists think those changes have launched a new epoch in Earth’s history: the Anthropocene.

Earth

Moon’s orbital wobble can add to sea-level rise and flooding

In a dozen years or so, the tide-enhancing effects of a wobble in the moon’s orbit should lead to dramatically higher sea levels in some coastal cities.

Ecosystems

Cheatgrass thrives on the well-lit urban night scene

Middle-grade campers team up with ecologists at Denver University to show that streetlights boost the growth of a reviled invasive species.

Materials Science

Tiny swimming robots may help clean up a microplastics mess

Big problem, tiny solution. Researchers in the Czech Republic have designed swimming robots that can help collect and break down microplastics.

Animals

Tiny animals survive 24,000 years in suspended animation

Tiny bdelloid rotifers awake from a 24,000-year slumber when freed from the Arctic permafrost.

Environment

Wildfire smoke seeds the air with potentially dangerous microbes

Studies now show that most wildfires don’t kill microbes. That’s fueling worries about what risks these smoke hitchhikers might pose to people.

Tech

Let’s learn about artificial intelligence

Computers are getting smarter all the time. At some tasks, they can even outsmart people.