It is always amazing to watch birds in flight because they often behave as if they respond to unseen commands when they turn in unison. Pigeons have been recently studied by Oxford University and Eötvös University (Hungary) to see who is command in a given flock. Pigeon flocks (they concluded) are guided by a flexible…

There’s a plan afoot among evolutionary scientists to launch a big new project — to look back in time and find out how climate change over millions of years affected human evolution. A panel of experts from the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., has given its blessing to the plan. They say it…

Thawing permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere releases “large amounts” of greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, according to a new study from the journal Nature Geoscience. The study found that under certain conditions thawed permafrost can release as much nitrous oxide as tropical forests, one of the main sources of the gas.

Talk of ecological diversity or saving rare species does not fly very far in Mato Grosso. The state is Brazil’s top soy producer, churning out an annual harvest of about 18 million tones. Fields of emerald green line the highways, stretching out to horizons so flat they look drawn with a ruler. The crops have…

I admit I’d hoped for something a little more exciting after a seven-and-a-half-hour journey from New Delhi to one of India’s best-known wildlife parks. It’s not that we didn’t see any wildlife when we made the trek late last month to the Corbett National Park in the northern state of Uttaranchal. On our outing to…

For the first time in 10 years Americans are more likely to say the United States should give more priority to developing oil, natural gas and coal than to protecting the environment, according to a poll on Tuesday. The poll was conducted a few weeks before President Barack Obama announced he would open offshore oil…

A newly discovered asteroid, 2010 GA6, will safely fly by Earth April 8th at 4:06 p.m. Pacific (23:06 U.T.C.). At the time of the closest approach 2010 GA6 will be about 223,000 miles away from Earth – about 9/10ths the distance to the moon. The asteroid, approximately 71 feet wide, was discovered by the Catalina…

Urgent warnings by government experts about the risks of routinely using powerful CT scans to screen patients for colon cancer were brushed aside by the Food and Drug Administration, according to agency documents and interviews with agency scientists.

You may have a hard time spelling phthalates, but there’s no avoiding them. They’re in the air you breathe, water you drink and foods you eat. And this ubiquity may carry a price, particularly for young boys, emerging data suggest. Including a drop in their IQ.

Gorillas may disappear across much of the Congo Basin by the mid 2020s unless action is taken to protect against poaching and habitat destruction, warns a new report issued by United Nations and INTERPOL.