Too slow, too expensive, too risky: the multi-billion dollar Mixed Oxide Fuel (MOX) program, under construction at the Savannah River Site, continues to be controversial. A technology chosen by the United States in the mid-1990s to contribute to the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, today it is being held out as a solution for America’s energy…

A North Atlantic current flowing into the Arctic Ocean is warmer than for at least 2,000 years in a sign that global warming is likely to bring ice-free seas around the North Pole in summers, a study showed. Scientists said that waters at the northern end of the Gulf Stream, between Greenland and the Norwegian…

When it gets warmer vegetation and animal life adapt and change. Different populations move in from warmer climes to former colder climes. One widely held assumption is that it gets colder as the elevation gets higher so that as the climate gets warmer life that has adapted to a warmer environment will go higher pushing…

The Egyptian jackal, which may have been the inspiration for the Egyptian god Anubis, is actually not a jackal at all but a member of the wolf family. New genetic research in the open-access journal PLoS ONE finds that the Egyptian jackal is Africa’s only member of the gray wolf family. The new wolf, dubbed…

New York: New research shows that 2010 set new records for the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, expected to be a major contributor to projected sea level rises in coming decades.

Less than a week after 25 wild buffalo from the nation’s last purebred herd were permitted to roam into Montana, officials have shot and killed one bison and were debating the fate of 14 others. Government wildlife managers on January 19 drove a trial band of buffalo, or bison, from Yellowstone National Park into nearby…

Most institutions (such as restaurants) have a dish washing machine which sanitizes dishes by a final rinse in either very hot water or a chemical sanitizing solution (e.g. bleach solution). Dishes are placed on large trays and fed onto rollers through the machine. The bleach solution is quite dilute (50-100 parts per million chlorine which…

Most of the olive oil Americans consume is imported from southern Europe. The Mediterranean region alone provides 95 percent of all olive oil worldwide. The largest grower, Spain, supplies a third, followed by Italy, Greece, and Portugal. However, a new player may be entering the scene from half a world away. According to an article…

An important portion of the Himalaya’s glacier cover is currently stable and, thanks to an insulating layer of debris, may be even growing, a new study finds. The study’s conclusion contradicts a portion of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that had to be retracted last year because it could not be substantiated.

A newly concluded Census of Marine Life, covering most of the world’s seas and oceans, has discovered over 1,200 new species of sea creatures. The ten year study, completed in October, 2010, was composed of 3,000 scientists from 80 countries, including a few from Israel, and cost $370 million USD. The study was the first…