Biology
3 Billion to Zero: What Happened to the Passenger Pigeon?
Human actions may have caused the species’s populations to grow huge as well as led to its demise
Stories by David Biello
Sustainability
Future Smog Looks More Persistent
Computer models show that increased levels of greenhouse gases, along with their trapped heat, will make the atmosphere more stagnant, leading to many more days of unhealthy air. David Biello reports...
Sustainability
Can Open Patents or Zippy Race Cars Spur Electric Car Sales?
Electric cars, no matter how sexy, still have a battery problem
Sustainability
Fusion Experiment Breakthrough
In a first, the fuel released more energy than it absorbed
Sustainability
Poisoned Poor Killed in Millions by Pollution
The Global Alliance on Health and Pollution calls for a war against pollution to save the lives of more than eight million people annually. David Biello reports
Sustainability
Fact or Fiction?: Mammoths Can Be Brought Back from Extinction
Is de-extinction a real possibility?
Sustainability
I Just Want to Say One Word to You: Plastiglomerate
Thanks to us humans, there's a new type of rock in the geologic record. And it's part plastic. David Biello reports
The Sciences
Students Build the First Eukaryotic Chromosome from Scratch
The feat is a landmark achievement in synthetic biology
Sustainability
Obama's Clean Power Plan Means More Gas to Fight Global Warming [Video]
400 PPM: What’s Next for a Warming Planet Concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have reached this level for the first time in millions of years.
Sustainability
Better Car Labeling Could Pump Up Fuel Efficiency
When gas mileage cost was explicitly revealed on new car window stickers, potential consumers were more likely to choose the most efficient vehicle. David Biello reports.
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Sustainability
Pope Francis Pleas for the Environment
In a May 21 speech Pope Francis warned that despoiling the environment would come back to haunt humanity. David Biello reports
Sustainability
One Hurricane Is Enough to Ruin Your Year
GOWANUS—The surge of sewer water, toxic sludge and “Brooklyn whitefish” (aka condoms) stopped one short block away from my house back on the long night of October 29, 2012...
Sustainability
World's Deadliest Fuel Made Safe and Clean?
Coal kills. When it’s not horrific mining accidents like the one in Soma, Turkey, on May 13 that killed more than 300 miners, it’s the 13,000 Americans who die early each year because of air pollution from burning the dirtiest fossil fuel...
Sustainability
Poetry Poster Sucks Up Smog
A building-sized poem shows how billboards could help cut pollution from cars. David Biello reports
Sustainability
Hurricanes Move Away from Equator with Expanding Tropics
Since the 1970s the locations where tropical cyclones (hurricanes and typhoons) reach their maximum intensities have shifted toward both poles at a rate of about 35 miles per decade. David Biello reports
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Mind
Does Rice Farming Lead to Collectivist Thinking?
Psychologists find that the agricultural region in China where people grew up predicted whether they have an individualistic or communal outlook
Sustainability
Fight over Solar Power Returns to White House Roof [Video]
The sunshine that warms Washington, D.C. is once again generating electricity for the White House. After an absence of nearly 30 years, the Obama administration has announced that a 6.3..
Sustainability
Volcanoes That Act as Air-Conditioning for a Warming World
Many small eruptions over the past decade or so have helped restrain climate change
Sustainability
Biodiversity Survives Extinctions for Now
A meta-analysis of ecosystems finds that species losses in any given place do not yet translate to large changes in the number of different species in that place. David Biello reports
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Sustainability
Fish Smell Badly in More Acidic Oceans
Some fish living in waters with currently naturally high levels of CO2 lose their sense of smell, and with it their ability to perceive predators—a possible portent to a global situation in the near future...
