Tomato lovers have long known that the red fruit sold by supermarkets tastes like cardboard. A new study has found why: A genetic mutation that gives commercially produced tomatoes their uniform color also prevents the production of sugars and carotenoids that give a proper tomato its taste and health benefits. The mutation “is in literally 100 percent of modern breeds […]
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Over 15 years of observational data collected by NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Australia Telescope Compact Array have given us a composite image of a tremendous cosmic blast. The image depicts an x-ray beam (blue) casts away from the black hole sitting at the center of Pictor A, a galaxy located 500 million light years from Earth. Other prominent […]
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Japan decided to resume Antarctic whale hunt after a hiatus despite an IJC ruling, which prompted international outrage. The International Court of Justice ruled in March 2104 that Japan’s decades-old whale hunt in the Antarctic should stop, prompting Tokyo to cancel the bulk of its whaling for the 2014/2015 season. The order from the United Nations court was binding and […]
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CAPE LEGOUPIL, ANTARCTICA: From the ground in this extreme northern part of Antarctica, spectacularly white and blinding ice seems to extend forever. What can’t be seen is the battle raging thousands of feet below to re-shape Earth. Water is eating away at the Antarctic ice, melting it where it hits the oceans. As the ice sheets slowly thaw, water pours […]
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Saturn’s ice-covered moon Enceladus could harbor a warm-water ocean beneath its frozen surface, opening up new possibilities for life beyond Earth. Enceladus has fascinated astronomers since 2005, when NASA’s Cassini probe caught geysers on the moon’s south pole spewing out plumes of salty water. Water that is thought to have originated in an ocean buried beneath the moon’s 25-mile-thick ice […]
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The warming of the world’s oceans is penetrating radar. They discovered two causing a glacier the size of California in massive undersea valleys beneath the East Antarctica to melt, and scientists fear ice sheet, one of which is 3 miles wide, its collapse could eventually cause global Those canyons allow warm, salty water sea levels to rise by as much […]
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The last study showed that the world has about 3 trillion trees. That is over the estimate of 400 billion in previous studies. Researchers did a count by actually going out and physically counting trees, using satellite imagery, ground survey, and national forest inventories. Even though we have lost trees from fires, drought, and insect outbreaks there are still more […]
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The newest professor in the University of Rhode Island’s College of the Environment and Life Sciences, Hollie Putnam, thinks some corals and shellfish might have good enough “memories” to buffer the changes in ocean chemistry that are resulting from the effects of climate change on coral reefs. A native of Minnesota who earned a doctorate at the University of Hawaii, […]
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Mysterious plumes of gas rising more than 150 miles above the surface of Mars have left scientists confounded. On two occasions in the spring of 2012, amateur astronomers spotted a cloud developing on the surface of the Red Planet. The plumes, which spanned about 600 miles in diameter and changed shape constantly, appeared within a few hours and remained […]
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There’s no question that our species has had a dramatic impact on the planet’s physical environment, particularly over the last few centuries, with the rise of modern industry, transportation, and infrastructure. But as new research shows, humans have been transforming the landscape, with lasting impacts, since long before the start of the Industrial Era. Scientists from MIT and the University […]
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