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While the House narrowly passed a climate change bill last summer, the Senate isn't expected to act until next spring. Five Senate committees have to weigh in before a final bill can go before the full Senate. The issue has taken a back seat to health care.
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Environmentalists and the Teamsters Union are fighting for newer, cleaner trucks at the Port of Newark, but most of the trucks are owned by independent drivers who can't afford to buy new ones.
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Can science explain what makes Stilton stinky and goat cheese gooey? Liz Thorpe, vice president of Murray's Cheese in New York and author of the book The Cheese Chronicles, talks about the science and business of making cheese in America. Originally broadcast Aug. 14, 2009.
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In Here Comes Science, the band They Might Be Giants tackles the scientific process, plasma physics, the role of blood in the body and the importance of DNA, all in song. Band members John Linnell and John Flansburgh discuss the album and play some science tunes. Originally broadcast Sept. 25, 2009.
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The winners of this year's Ig Nobel Prizes include the inventor of underwear that doubles as an emergency gas mask, researchers who created diamonds from tequila, and more. The Igs honor research that "first, makes you laugh, then, makes you think," according to Marc Abrahams, the master of ceremonies and the editor of Annals of Improbable Research.
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Atlantis and its seven astronauts enjoyed a "picture perfect" touchdown Friday, ending an 11-day flight that resupplied the International Space Station. It was Atlantis' next-to-last mission and only five shuttle flights remain.
The Chinese government has announced plans to slow its greenhouse gas emissions, but the formula allows emissions to rise as China's economy expands. China already leads the world in greenhouse gases. The announcement raises questions of how effective the plan will be on cleaning up earth's atmosphere.
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Sensations on the skin can help people understand speech, according to a study in the journal Nature. The study builds on decades of research showing that the brain often uses visual information to augment hearing — making people "whole-body perceiving machines," says one researcher.
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Scientists in California are experimenting with carbon banking. The idea is to manage forests so they absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and slow down global warming. Countries could, in essence, be paid to turn their forests into carbon banks. But first, climate scientists need to become climate accountants — to put hard numbers on how much carbon trees breathe in and out.
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The commitment from the world's largest polluter builds momentum ahead of a widely anticipated climate conference in Copenhagen next month. China pledges to reduce emissions by up to 45 percent as measured against its economic output.
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Fear turns out be a very good thing for certain businesses. When North Korea or Iran mentions the word "nuclear," orders pour in to NukePills.com — a Web site that sells potassium iodide. The government also stockpiles this FDA-approved drug.
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NASA has pioneered all kinds of irradiated, thermo-stabilized and freeze-dried Thanksgiving delights, like smoked turkey, candied yams and cornbread dressing. But this year, space shuttle Atlantis rocketed off without any special holiday fare because of a late schedule change.
Alfred Russel Wallace was Darwin's colleague, a globe-trotting naturalist who helped shape the theory of evolution. Thirty years ago, an antique shopper wandered into a modest antique shop in Arlington, Va., looking for Chinese carpets and wound up buying a magnificent rosewood cabinet. It contained Wallace's personal collection of 1,600 butterflies and insects.
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E-mails stolen from a climate research center in England reveal that a small group of scientists has been pressuring scientific journals not to publish reports that cast doubt on climate change. The e-mails raise questions about the impartiality of the peer-review process, which is designed to keep poor science out of the technical literature.
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A British environmental group has produced a video that shows falling polar bears slamming into the sides of buildings, onto the sidewalk or into the top of a parked car. The group, Plane Stupid, equates the weight of each bear, 400 kilograms, to the amount of greenhouse gases produced by an average European flight for each passenger it carries. Andrew Revkin, a New York Times reporter who covers the environment, looks at the facts.
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President Obama will commit the U.S. to a goal of cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade at a climate conference in Copenhagen next month. His goal is to cut carbon dioxide emissions by about 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.
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President Obama will attend the climate change summit in Copenhagen next month and will commit the United States to reducing its production of greenhouse gases, the White House said Wednesday.
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Desert ants have a nifty way of finding their way back home after a foray out of the nest to find food — they count their steps. To prove it, some scientists devised a creative experiment that showed just how the little guys do it. It's already known that ants use celestial clues to establish the general direction home, but how do they know exactly the number of steps to take that will lead them right to the entrance of their nest?
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Desert ants have a nifty way of finding their way back home after a foray out of the nest to find food — they count their steps. To prove it, some scientists devised a creative experiment that showed just how the little guys do it.
Desert ants have a nifty way of finding their way back home after a foray out of the nest to find food — they count their steps. To prove it, some scientists devised a creative experiment that showed just how the little guys do it. It's already known that ants use celestial clues to establish the general direction home, but how do they know exactly the number of steps to take that will lead them right to the entrance of their nest?
On Nov. 24, 1859, a book that changed the world first appeared in print. On the Origin of Species proposed a radical new theory about how all life on Earth evolved. In many respects, the book sparks greater controversy today than when it first appeared.
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One reason for the shortage of the new H1N1 flu vaccine this year is the way flu vaccines are made. A modified form of the virus is grown inside chicken eggs, but the process takes months. Now, scientists are working to create new flu vaccines that can be made much faster, using the virus' DNA.
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On Nov. 24, 1859, Darwin's On the Origin of Species first appeared in print and had a tremendous impact on society and science alike. Despite having more media access today, science has gotten so complex that it's hard for people to keep up, let alone evaluate the significance behind science stories.
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These three photos of President Obama were among images shown to college students as part of a study that suggests political attitudes can impact the way people perceive skin tone. The photos on the left and right have been altered. Self-described liberals were most likely to rate lightened photos as most representative of Obama. Conservative students tended to pick darkened photos.
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Guest host Jennifer Ludden interviews Emory University psychology professor Drew Westen about how the human mind can sometimes play tricks with us when it comes to politics. Professor Westen is the author of "The Political Brain: the Role of Emotion in Deciding the fate of the nation."
The world's largest atom smasher made another leap forward Monday by circulating beams of protons in opposite directions at the same time in the $10 billion machine after more than a year of repairs, organizers said.
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Officials in Portland, Oregon, are planning a new light rail bridge over the Willamette River. Dan Yates, owner of a small company that runs boat excursions on the river, tells host Guy Raz he's afraid that climate change and rising water levels will keep his boats from passing under the proposed bridge.
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Research shows that over the past several years, Earth's temperature has not been heating up. Climate change skeptics claim this as evidence that global warming is overexaggerated. But the man who did the research, climate and ocean scientist Mojib Latif, says "not so fast." Latif talks to host Guy Raz about the Earth's temperature plateau and what it means for global warming.
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Astronaut Randolph Bresnik is a new dad again, after launching into space and taking a spacewalk, all for the first time.
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Journalist Charles Sabine watched his father die from the degenerative illness Huntington's disease. After watching his brother struggle with the disease for years, Sabine decided to be tested. "Nothing that I've experienced compares with that test in terms of the terror that it inflicted on me," he says. Sabine says his young daughter does not have the Huntington's gene.
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Two fingers and a tooth removed from Galileo Galilei's corpse in a Florentine basilica in the 18th century and given up for lost have been found again, a Florence museum said Friday.
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Two Asian carp species that could devastate the Great Lakes ecosystem may be a few miles from Lake Michigan. To halt their migration, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built an underwater electric fence on a canal 20 miles south of the lake. But tests conducted by David Lodge at Notre Dame indicate that they have gotten close to the lake despite the barrier.
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With NASA reporting a "significant amount" of water on the lunar surface, is it time to re-examine our priorities regarding living and working in space? Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute, talks about why and how people should venture beyond Earth.
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Researchers are hoping to improve solar energy installations by coupling a solar panel to an efficient hydrolysis unit that splits water into oxygen and hydrogen. Daniel Nocera of MIT says the approach could lead to personal solar power units that could get many houses off the grid.
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The stars of The Big Bang Theory are two fictional Caltech physicists, but the physics problems they study are real. Bill Prady, the program's co-creator and executive producer, talks about including real-world science in the script, from dark matter to magnetic monopoles.
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One of the great mysteries about North America is what killed off woolly mammoths and other exotic animals that roamed the land after the last ice age. Ideas have ranged from a comet impact and climate change to human hunters. A study published Friday in Science Magazine provides new clues about this — cleverly deduced from samples of a fungus that grew on the animal's dung.
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Certain sounds played while people napped helped them remember information associated with those sounds once they woke up, say researchers at Northwestern University.
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Conservationists worried about overfishing on the Pacific island of Kiribati persuaded fishermen to pick coconuts instead. The strategy backfired: Coconut oil production increased, but so did fishing. It turns out, fishermen who earned more money in coconut agriculture had more leisure time — which they spent fishing.
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Ancient bristlecone pine trees found in certain parts of California and Nevada have been growing at an unprecedented rate in the last 50 years. According to a recent study, this growth has most likely been caused by warmer temperatures. Malcolm Hughes, one of the study's lead researchers and a professor of dendrochronology at the University of Arizona's Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research, offers his insight.
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Two instruments from the Hubble Space Telescope, including the camera that corrected an early flaw in the telescope, are now on exhibit at the Smithsonian. The camera, about the size of a baby grand piano, is responsible for some of Hubble's most astounding photos.
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X-ray scans of the arteries of Egyptian mummies show that hardening of the arteries wasn't uncommon among the upper classes in ancient times.
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A panel of experts says mammograms are causing women being screened for breast cancer to have too many false alarms and unneeded biopsies. The panel is recommending that women wait until 50 to get mammograms and then only every two years. The American Cancer Society says it stands by its recommendations of regular mammograms beginning at age 40.
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NPR wants to see science through your eyes. Whether it's video, photography, animation or a finger-puppet show, we're challenging you to bring sciency stuff to life. We give you a topic, and you show us what you've got. Deadline for entries is Dec. 17, 2009.
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A group of executives from more than a dozen auto, transportation and energy companies launched a new coalition Monday to urge the federal government to make a major investment in electric transportation. Their goal is to bring 100 million electric cars to the road by 2030.
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New guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force say women would get almost as much benefit out of having mammograms every two years after they turn 50 as having a mammogram once a year starting at age 40. Dr. Jeffrey Tice, general internist and assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, says the benefits of early screening for women between 40 and 49 are small. He says early testing for these women often results in more false positives , more procedures and more anxiety.
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The international commission that regulates fishing of tuna and other large migratory fish in the Atlantic voted to sharply reduce the fishing quota for bluefin tuna at their latest meeting. But some scientists say the new quota is too high to sustain the species.
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The shuttle rocketed into orbit with six astronauts and a full load of spare parts for the International Space Station that should keep it humming for years to come. The launch was NASA's first launch "tweetup," attended by about 100 Twittering space enthusiasts.
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According to numerous sources on the Internet, three years from now a planet called Nibiru will collide with Earth, resulting in the extinction of the human race. This and other apocalyptic myths have NASA stepping up to soothe our fears.
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A rocket set on a collision course with the moon reveals it's not just a dull, dry satellite. Water lurking in its craters could someday provide everything from drinking water to rocket fuel for astronauts exploring the moon.
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A NASA rocket slammed into a lunar crater in October. A second spacecraft followed minutes later, taking inventory of kicked-up debris and sending data to Earth. Scientists have now analyzed those data, which may reveal whether the moon harbors significant quantities of water ice.
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In the vacuum of space, photons — not wind — may someday fill the sails of lightweight spacecraft, propelling them without need for engines or fuel. Louis Friedman, executive director of The Planetary Society, discusses the society's plans for a sailing spaceship prototype.
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Can people develop different personalities in response to abuse? Some therapists say up to one percent of the population suffer from dissociative identity disorder. Others say the disease doesn't exist, or is very rare. Two therapists discuss the controversial diagnosis.
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Researchers have figured out how to track the facial expressions of one person and map those movements onto a digital image of another person's face in real time. The result is something like a digital video puppet, which psychologists say may reveal something about human nature.
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Moving beyond traditional superheroes, two new graphic novels recount the epic tales of scientists and the research that made them famous. Ira Flatow talks with authors Michael Keller and Apostolos Doxiadis about their graphic novels on natural selection and logic.
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Scientists have been analyzing a mile-high plume of debris kicked up by the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite last month after it purposely was crashed into a crater near the moon's south pole.
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Dr. Cohen's research showed that old age can be a time of creativity.
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The space agency announced plans for freeing the rover Spirit, which has been stuck in a Martian sand trap since April. Spirit has six wheels, though one, being inspected here by the rover's robotic arm, stopped working in 2006. NASA engineers will begin transmitting commands to the robot's five working wheels on Monday, but escape efforts could last into early next year.
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Warren Buffett's decision to take full control of the nation's second largest railroad, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., suggests the billionaire investor sees new potential in freight transport, economists say. Trains often carry coal or containers filled with imported goods.
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A new study of human gut microbes put into mice has found that when mice eat a high-fat, high-sugar diet, abrupt changes result in the population of microbes. Scientists believe this research could open a new window into interactions between our gut bacteria, diet, and weight gain.
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The tomb of Egypt's Tutankhamen — more commonly referred to as King Tut — needs a little attention. Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities and the U.S.-based Getty Conservation Institute are teaming up to restore the wall paintings that line the tomb's underground chamber. Michele Norris talks to Jeanne Marie Teutonico, who will serve as the project's team leader.
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Researchers have successfully used gene therapy to increase monkeys' muscle strength. The team hopes to use the same treatment to help people with muscle-wasting diseases grow back their muscle strength.
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The Aardonyx celestae, a 23-foot-long, small-headed herbivore, roamed the Earth about 200 million years ago. Paleontologists say it could fill a gap in understanding how a primarily two-legged animal could evolve into a create that walked on all fours.
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Men exposed to high levels of BPA on the job had a much greater chance of sexual problems than men who weren't, a study of Chinese factory workers found.
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Researchers who looked at handwriting samples found that children with autism struggle more than their peers to correctly form letters. The findings add to evidence that autism is a brain disorder that isn't limited to behavior, but affects motor skills, too.
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Where does all that dust under your couch come from? It turns out that most household dust comes from outside — and may contain some pretty harmful stuff. How the toxins in dust get into your body depends on the size of the dust particle.
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Before 1996, when new AIDS drugs were introduced, life expectancy was 18 months post-diagnosis. Now, AIDS patients regularly live for decades with the disease. But as these patients live longer, unanticipated side effects — caused by the disease itself, medications to treat it or both — introduce a new set of maladies.
The Environmental Protection Agency has outlined a new effort to help protect and restore the Chesapeake Bay, the nation's largest estuary. And it targets the root causes of the trouble: runoff.
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As the world prepares for crucial climate-change talks in Copenhagen next month, there is a growing rift between the United States and some of the world's poorest nations. The gap grew wider this past week, at the final official pre-Copenhagen talks in Barcelona.
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Scientists studying a crevasse in the Ethiopian desert say we may be witnessing the birth of a future ocean. In 2005, a 35-mile-long rift broke open as two parts of the African continent separated. Researchers from several countries have confirmed that the volcanic processes at work beneath the Ethiopian rift are nearly identical to those at the bottom of the world's oceans. They say it is likely the beginning of a new sea. Host Liane Hansen talks with Professor Cynthia Ebinger of the University of Rochester about the event.
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A team of scientists is studying mud, ooze and other material from the bay's bottom to help the EPA crack down on pollutants. The tubes of glop they've collected from throughout the Chesapeake Bay are like biopsies — they indicate where the bay is healthy and where it's dying.
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A new study reveals that the melody of a newborn's cries seems to be influenced by the sound of the parents' native tongue. The findings suggest that crying infants may be imitating the patterns of the language they heard before they were born.
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The U.S. Department of Energy is offering $10 million to the first individual or company to develop an energy-efficient LED replacement for the standard 60-watt incandescent bulb. DOE lighting program manager James Brodrick discusses the L Prize, and what makes a better bulb.
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Faced with declining fish stocks, many nations are looking for sustainable ways to have their fish — and eat it too. But how much fishing is too much? Oceanographer Sylvia Earle discusses this and other topics in her book The World is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean's Are One.
At the 2009 International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, undergraduates from all over the world unveiled the living machines they'd created with snippets of DNA, from bacteria that change color when they detect pollutants to ones that secrete non-toxic superglue.
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The cost of decoding a human's genes has fallen to just a few thousand dollars, making the long-promised era of personal genomes feasible.
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French scientists report that two boys treated with gene therapy for a rare but fatal genetic disease have shown improvements. These results mark a high point for the field of gene therapy. Shown here, the area of the brain that was treated.
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By flying planes over Antarctica with ice-penetrating radar, lasers and other technology, NASA scientists are able to piece together a picture of the vast mountains, valleys and rivers under the miles of Antarctic ice, revealing a dynamic and complex world. And scientists have already found some really surprising stuff happening inside the ice itself.
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The Gibbon, a smaller member of the primate family, is well-known for its long arms and hands. Its speed makes it difficult to see, but its distinctive call is easy to identify. A trip to the rainforests of Indonesia by plane from New York, followed by a crumbling 30-year-old propeller plane, and by foot finally yielded a call from the elusive gibbon.
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Health officials have reported the first known case of the new H1N1 flu in a kitty that apparently caught it from some humans in the house.
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The glaciers atop Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro may be gone entirely in the next few decades. A new study shows that 85 percent of the ice cover that was present in 1912 has vanished, and the ice continues to melt rapidly.
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Vast new natural gas fields have opened up thanks to an advanced drilling technique. While natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel than coal or petroleum, extracting it is still hard, dirty work. Some people who live near the massive Barnett Shale gas deposit in north Texas, have complaints. Health and environmental concerns are prompting state regulators to take a closer look.
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Two Tsavo lions believed to have killed 135 railroad workers in Kenya more than a century ago may not have been quite so bloodthirsty. Justin Yeakel, of the University of California Santa Cruz, who is one of the researchers who studied the lions, says the most likely estimate is about 35.
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Nightly attacks by two man-eating lions terrified railway workers in Kenya more than 100 years ago. But modern research shows the death toll was far less than the accounts of the day. Even so, the two lions — stuffed and on display at Chicago's Field Museum — ate at least 35 human beings.
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An international team of scientists has completed a draft sequence of the pig genome. Pigs share many important properties with humans, so understanding the pig genome could reveal more about behavior and disease resistance in humans.
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With the swine flu virus more widespread than ever and concerns about availability of the vaccine circulating, we solicited your questions about the pandemic. NPR's health editors teamed up with experts to tackle your questions.
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