The Atlantic blue fin tuna is one of the largest, fastest, and most gorgeously colored of all the world’s fishes. Their torpedo shaped, streamlined bodies are built for speed and endurance. Their coloring (metallic blue on top and silver white on the bottom) helps camouflage them from above and below. They have an average size…

Life thrives where one least expects it. In a surprising discovery about where life can exist, scientists for the first time found a curious shrimp like creature and a piece of a jellyfish beneath a massive Antarctic ice sheet. Six hundred feet below the ice where no light shines, scientists had figured nothing much more…

The smell of sea salt at the beach is a pleasant thought for many beach goers. Wind and waves kick up spray sending salt (sodium chloride into the air. Most salt of this sort falls back into the sea or nearby beach. The bit of chloride lingering in the air can react with nitrogen oxides…

Oil supply is not infinite. Sooner or later it will run out. The interesting speculation is when that will happen. In a recent publication (ACS Energy and Fuels), several Kuwait scientists have studied this matter with a multicycle Hubbert model. The original Hubbert model in 1956, accurately predicted that oil production would peak in the…

When there is a large earthquake, it basically means that a major geological stress was released. When that happens the earth will literally move. It may not be as dramatic as some motion pictures may show but it does happen. The massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck the west coast of Chile last month moved…

An old proverb states that to stay young is to keep alert and active or: “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” University of California neurobiologists are providing the first visual evidence that learning promotes brain health — and, therefore, that mental stimulation could limit the debilitating effects of aging on memory and the mind.…

The sensitivity of Amazon rain forests to dry season droughts is still poorly understood, with reports of enhanced tree mortality and forest fires on one hand, and excessive forest greening on the other. In a current story there is a report that previous conclusions of large scale greening of the Amazon as a result of…

The Toba super eruption occurred between 69,000 and 77,000 years ago at Lake Toba (present day Indonesia), and it is recognized as one of Earth’s largest known eruptions. The related catastrophe theory holds that this super volcanic event plunged the planet into a 6 to 10 year volcanic winter, which resulted in the world’s human…

Garlic is known in legend as great against vampires and it is quite nice in many delicious recipes. Researchers have now designed a urine test that can simultaneously measure the extent of a potential carcinogenic process and a marker of garlic consumption in humans. In a small pilot study, the test suggested that the more…

Covering about 70 percent of our planet’s surface, the ocean acts as a global thermostat, storing energy from the sun, keeping Earth’s temperature changes moderate and keeping climate change gradual. In fact, the ocean can store as much heat in its top 10 feet as the entire atmosphere does. What happens in the atmosphere has…