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Venus has Almost No Water. A New Study May Reveal Why

Planetary scientists at CU Boulder have discovered how Venus, Earth’s scalding and uninhabitable neighbor, became so dry.

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DDT Pollutants Found in Deep Sea Fish off Los Angeles Coast

In the 1940s and 1950s, the ocean off the coast of Los Angeles was a dumping ground for the nation’s largest manufacturer of the pesticide DDT – a chemical now known to harm humans and wildlife.

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The Clues for Cleaner Water

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Drexel University in Philadelphia, along with Brookhaven National Laboratory, are working to solve a multipart mystery to make water disinfection treatments more sustainable.

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A Leap Toward Carbon Neutrality, CO2 to Methanol

Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a catalyst material known as cobalt phthalocyanine that converts carbon dioxide—a significant driver of climate change—into renewable fuels such as methanol.

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Springtime in the Deciduous Forest

On a blustery March morning, Petya Campbell stood atop a 204-foot-tall tower and looked across the waving canopy of the leafless deciduous forest at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland.

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Chorus of Whale Song Signals Antarctic Blue Whales May Be Making a Comeback

A nearly two-decade study of whale songs recorded in the Southern Ocean suggests that blue whales, the largest creatures ever to have roamed the Earth, may be recovering in Antarctica after being hunted to the edge of extinction.

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Ice Shelves Fracture Under Weight of Meltwater Lakes

When air temperatures in Antarctica rise and glacier ice melts, water can pool on the surface of floating ice shelves, weighing them down and causing the ice to bend.

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Webb Telescope Probably Didn’t Find Life on an Exoplanet — Yet

Recent reports of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope finding signs of life on a distant planet understandably sparked excitement. 

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Lake Tsunamis Pose Significant Threat Under Warming Climate

The names might not be familiar—Cowee Creek, Brabazon Range, Upper Pederson Lagoon—but they mark the sites of recent lake tsunamis, a phenomenon that is increasingly common in Alaska, British Columbia and other regions with mountain glaciers.

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Oil Palm Plantations Are Driving Massive Downstream Impact to Watershed

Researchers at UMass Amherst find Indigenous populations bear the environmental and public health costs when native Indonesian forests are converted to oil palm plantations.

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