Methane is a significant green house gas that can lead to global warming. It is also commonly produced by many animals including humans and cattle. Cow belches, a major source of greenhouse gases, could be decreased by an unusual feed supplement developed by a Penn State dairy scientist.

Termites are a group of social insects usually classified at the taxonomic rank of order Isoptera. Along with ants and some bees and wasps which are all placed in the separate order Hymenoptera, termites divide labor among gender lines, produce overlapping generations and take care of young collectively. They live in giant mounds in Africa.…

The Greenland ice sheet is a vast body of ice covering 660,235 square miles, roughly 80% of the surface of Greenland. It is the second largest ice body in the World, after the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The ice sheet is almost 1,500 miles long in a north south direction, and its greatest width is 680…

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) today reopened to commercial and recreational fishing 5,130 square miles of Gulf waters stretching from the far eastern coast of Louisiana, through Mississippi, Alabama, and the western Florida panhandle. The Mariner Energy oil platform just had an explosion is about 250 miles from today’s reopening. The fire on…

Hurricane Earl is still a powerful category four hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale as it approaches the North Carolina coast September 2. NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite observed the high rates rain was falling within Earl in some areas more than 2 inches per hour. Hurricane Earl became the most powerful hurricane of the…

The geography of Indonesia is dominated by volcanoes that are formed due to subduction zones between the Eurasian plate and the Indo-Australian plate. Some of the volcanoes are notable for their eruptions, for instance, Krakatau for its global effects in 1883, Lake Toba for its supervolcanic eruption estimated to have occurred 74,000 Before Present which…

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reopened 4,281 square miles of Gulf waters off western Louisiana to commercial and recreational fishing. The reopening was announced after consultation with FDA and under a re-opening protocol agreed to by NOAA, the FDA, and the Gulf states. On July 18, NOAA data showed no oil in the…

There are a lot of things that can go into the ground water. The key is whether what goes in will readily biodegrade and if not can it harm you or the environment. In the first large study to track the fate of a wide range of antibiotics given to dairy cows, University of California…

A geomagnetic storm (or solar storm) is a temporary disturbance of the Earth’s magnetosphere caused by a massive solar flares or related sun output. A geomagnetic storm is caused by a solar wind shock wave which typically strikes the Earth’s magnetic field 3 days after the event on the sun. The effect on the earth…

The asthenosphere is the highly viscous mechanically weak region of the upper mantle of the Earth on which “float” the continental plates. It lies below the lithosphere, at depths between 60 and 120 miles below the surface, but perhaps extending as deep as 400+ miles. The lithosphere is a complex mixture of layers. For example…