Algae, Art and Attitudes: A Roundtable About the AAAS Conference

Scientific American staffers Mark Fischetti and Robin Lloyd talk with podcast host Steve Mirsky about sessions they attended--including those about algae for energy, dissecting the astronomy in art and attitudes about climate change--at the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. [More]


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Do the Engine-Performance Benefits of Nitrogen-Enriched Gas Outweigh the Added Emissions?

Dear EarthTalk : Since nitrogen oxide compounds are components of smog and are common water pollutants, does nitrogen-enriched gasoline create additional pollution? --Rick Oestrike, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. [More]


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U.K. zoo builds "love shack" for critically endangered frogs

What does it take to encourage endangered species to breed? In the case of two frog species living at Bristol Zoo Gardens in England it takes creating a very special environment, and not just one that plays romantic music. [More]


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Are Pesticides from Plants Dangerous to Humans?

Chemicals derived from flowers may sound harmless, but new research raises concerns about compounds synthesized from chrysanthemums that are used in virtually every household pesticide .

Measuring iron's importance to ocean life

Editor's Note: Journalist and crew member Kathryn Eident and scientist Jeremy Jacquot are traveling on board the RV Atlantis on a monthlong voyage to sample and study nitrogen fixation in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, among other research projects. This is the fourth blog post detailing this ongoing voyage of discovery for ScientificAmerican.com . [More]


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MIND Reviews: The Perfect Swarm

The Perfect Swarm: The Science of Complexity in Everyday Life by Len Fisher. Basic Books, 2009

Is the great white shark slowly slipping into extinction?

It's not exactly easy to study the great white shark ( Carcharodon carcharia s) in the wild, but new evidence suggests that while we've been worrying about tigers, gorillas and other obviously rare species, the great white has been quietly disappearing from the oceans . [More]


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How Has Human Sprawl Affected Bird Migration--And the Spread of Avian Diseases?

Dear EarthTalk : How does growing human population, and its resultant landscape changes, affect the flight paths of migratory birds that might carry diseases? --Ronnie Washines, Toppenish, Wash.

Busting Big Myths in Popular Psychology (preview)

Parts of this article are adapted from 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about Human Behavior , by Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, John Ruscio and Barry L. Beyerstein. Copyright © Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

Popular psychology has become a fixture in our society, and its aphorisms, truths and half-truths permeate our everyday existence. A casual stroll through our neighborhood bookstore reveals dozens of self-help, relationship, recovery and addiction books that serve up heaping portions of advice for steering us along life’s rocky road. About 3,500 self-help books are published every year, and numerous new Internet sites on mental health sprout up every month.

It's in the Details: For Ecofriendly Auto Detailing, Do-It-Yourself Is the Only Way to Go

Dear EarthTalk : I recently got my car detailed at a local place and then gasped at the chemical fumes when I got inside. Are there green detailers out there, or products that I could use myself to keep my vehicle clean and my family out of harm’s way? --David Berkowitz, Newton, Mass.

Understanding nitrogen's role in the ocean

Editor's Note: Journalist and crew member Kathryn Eident and scientist Jeremy Jacquot are traveling on board the RV Atlantis on a monthlong voyage to sample and study nitrogen fixation in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, among other research projects. This is the fourth blog post detailing this ongoing voyage of discovery for ScientificAmerican.com

RV ATLANTIS MAIN DECK--For years scientists have thought that the amount of nitrogen coming into and out of the world's oceans was relatively equivalent, creating a "balanced" and naturally maintained budget. But this theory has been based on a relatively small amount of data obtained from only a few of the world's oceans, leaving room for scientists to question how accurate the model is.  [More]


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Waiting to Inhale: Deep-Ocean Low-Oxygen Zones Spreading to Shallower Coastal Waters

A plague of oxygen-deprived waters from the deep ocean is creeping up over the continental shelves off the Pacific Northwest and forcing marine species there to relocate or die. Since 2002 tongues of hypoxic, or low-oxygen , waters from deeper areas offshore have slipped into shallower near-shore environments off the Oregon coast, although not close enough to be oxygenated by the waves. The problem stems from oxygen reduction in deep water, a phenomenon that some scientists are observing in oceans worldwide, and that may be related to climate change. [More]


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Island Hoping: Are Reserves the Answer to Help Wildlife on the World's Sinking Archipelagos?

Dear EarthTalk : Are there any conservation efforts focused on animal species endemic to islands likely to be submerged by rising sea levels? --H. Wyeth, Anahola, Hawaii

100 Years Ago: Madame Curie's Research

MARCH 1960 MODERN AGRICULTURE -- “The 20th-century Israelites came to a land of encroaching sand dunes along a once-verdant coast, of malarial swamps and naked limestone hills from which an estimated three feet of topsoil have been scoured, sorted and spread as sterile overwash upon the plains or swept out to sea in flood waters. The land of Israel had shared the fate of land throughout the Middle East. A decline in productivity and in population had set in with the fading of the Byzantine Empire some 1,300 years ago. Today most of the people of the world live in the lands where mankind has lived longest in organized societies. There, with few exceptions, the soil is in the worst condition. The example of Israel shows that the land can be reclaimed and that increase in the food supply can overtake the increase that will double the 2,800 million world population before the end of this century.”

Same Species, Polar Opposites: The Mystery of Identical Creatures Found in both Arctic and Antarctic Waters [Slide Show]

Two years ago, several research vessels shipped out to the North and the South poles to assemble a census of creatures living under the ice. One of the most surprising results was a discovery that 235 identical species lived on opposite sides of the world but were undocumented anywhere else. It's easy to understand how massive humpbacks can swim from Arctic to Antarctic waters, but most of the miniature worms, snails and crustaceans on the researchers' list are no bigger than grains of rice. How could tiny creatures adapted for the frigid waters travel 9,500 kilometers through warmer climes to reach the opposite pole? [More]


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Despite Climategate, IPPC Mostly Underestimates Climate Change

Lost in the coverage of the so-called climategate email controversy is a key point about the IPCC’s track record of climate change estimates. James McCarthy is on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment. He spoke February 21st at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego:

“If you were to go back and map the IPCC projection for sea level rise and temperature in 1990, look at it in 1995, look at it in 2000. In retrospect you would find that they were conservative. So we talk about errors. If you were to do two ledgers--here are IPCC overestimates, here are IPCC underestimates--over the 20 or so years that these assessments have been running, the underestimate ledger would be much larger than the overestimate. Even with glitches--clearly erroneous editing or sloppy editing that led to these erroneous statements that got us in trouble recently.”

The Moon That Would Be a Planet (preview)

If we had not known the images were coming back from Titan, we might have guessed they were new pictures of Mars or Earth. Some people in the control room saw the California coast, some saw the French Riviera, and one person even said that Saturn’s biggest moon looked like his backyard in Tucson. For three weeks, the Huygens probe had coasted, dormant, after detaching from the Cassini spacecraft and being sent on its way to Titan. Those of us watching anxiously felt a deep personal connection with the probe. Not only had we worked on the mission for a large part of our careers, but we had developed its systems and instrumentation by putting our minds in its place, to think through how it would function on an alien and largely unknown world. We imagined Titan might be like the comparably large moons of the outer solar system, such as Jupiter’s cratered Callisto or grooved Ganymede.

And so on the morning of January 14, 2005, at the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, the pictures caused jubilation and puzzlement in equal measure. None of us expected the landscape to look so Earth-like. As Huygens parachuted down, its aerial pictures showed branching river channels cut by rain-fed streams. It landed on the damp, pebble-covered site of a recent flash flood. What was alien about Titan was its eerie familiarity.