This story starts with poop. Bird poop. A solar panel shouldn’t be caked in white crust. It should be a dark flat shelf open to the sky, soaking up sunlight, resting near the streetlight it’s meant to power perched on the end of a wharf. But imagine you’re a seagull used to roosting on that…
It’s been described as a “swimming head,” and can weigh as much as an adult rhinoceros—and it also turns out to be one of the most fascinating fish in the sea With a final breath of air, I descend beneath the surface among swaying kelp and flying sea lions. I’m in search of a creature that…
At nine in the morning, an hour before the Monterey Bay Aquarium opens to the public, the curator of husbandry operations walks across a tiled tundra of empty exhibit halls. Watery displays drench the floors in blue-green light, and a groggy-eyed sculpture of a whale the size of a bus hangs from the ceiling overhead. Paul…
(Or, how to create the perfect parasite-free butterfly garden.) Sometime in elementary school, an article in my local paper alerted me to the plight of the monarch butterflies. Milkweed is only food monarch caterpillars eat, the article said, and it’s also the only plant where the adult butterflies lay their eggs. But wild…
On November 9th, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife voted 4-2 to remove wolves from Oregon’s state endangered species list, while increasing penalties for killing wolves. This surprised many people, myself included. You see, until 2008, there were no wolves in Oregon. They had been extinct for 70 years. Before I go any further,…
Monterey County>> Fragrant, tender, and sweet, strawberries brighten produce aisles nationwide. The use of pesticides assures their abundance and affordable price. Yet the chemicals that protect the berries may extract costs beyond those paid by shoppers. They may harm workers who harvest the berries, as well as their children. A quarter of America’s strawberries grow…
Cross-post from the Inside Science Currents Blog Cozying up with a good book can transport a reader anywhere, from Victorian England to the desolate craggy plains of Mordor. We take for granted how seamlessly our mind’s eye paints these elaborate pictures, but it’s natural to wonder how our brains learn to associate a word like…
![Here, Buchanan is measuring groundwater levels in the Ogallala aquifer in Morton County, Kansas.
[Credit: Kansas Geological Survey]](https://outfog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Img3-300x250.jpg "From Journalist to Geologist: A Q&A with Rex Buchanan")
After decades as a science reporter, interim director of the Kansas Geological Survey Rex Buchanan now finds himself at the epicenter of a media frenzy. When Rex Buchanan became interim director of the Kansas Geological Survey in 2010, earthquakes there were practically unheard of. Only a handful had occurred in the previous ten years, and…
Today marks the fourth anniversary of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. On March 11, 2011, a magnitude-9.0 earthquake occurred offshore of Japan and kicked off a tsunami. At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, the natural disasters knocked out backup power systems used to cool reactors. Consequently, three reactors underwent fuel melting, hydrogen explosions,…
Dear Scicom Slug, A few years ago I paid $99, spit into a tube and signed up for 23andMe, a direct to consumer DNA testing service. Through their site I learned my genes gave me a low chance for most cancers, a higher chance for diabetes (not much of a surprise given that both my…
