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Alaska and its neighbor to the east, Canada, have kicked off wildfire season in a major way. Blazes have raged across the northern stretches of North America, sending smoke streaming down into the Lower 48 and leaving the landscape charred. The multitudes of fires is a glimpse of things to come as the climate warms, but blackened trees are only the most visible concern. The ground beneath them is what has some truly worried, with vast carbon reserves that could contribute to even more warming of the planet if they’re sent up in smoke....

The next 12 years will see “a dramatic and sustained increase” in utility spending on energy efficiency, according to a new study by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Efficiency spending financed by utility ratepayers could grow from the $3.1 billion paid out in 2008 to between $5.4 billion and $12.4 billion per year, with a medium case projection of $7.5 billion, the report says. Forecasts across low-, medium- and high-growth scenarios show several populous states – Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania – moving into leadership roles on efficiency despite having been “minor players” in the past....

The body does not lie. So stated William Moulton Marston, a psychology professor who devised components for the polygraph and in 1938 published The Lie Detector Test. Marston and his co-inventors maintained that regardless of how well a person could control his voice and face, other signs such as blood pressure, heart rate, respiration and skin conductivity would betray him when he told a lie. The physiological changes, they said, were triggered by the anxiety an individual feels when he knows he is fabricating information....

Within our solar system, an extra giant planet, or possibly two, might once have accompanied Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus. Computer models showing how our solar system formed suggested the planets once gravitationally slung one another across space, only settling into their current orbits over the course of billions of years. During more than 6,000 simulations of this planetary scattering phase, planetary scientist David Nesvorny at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo....

It is often said that every family has that one weird relative. Among the species that make up the human family, that relative is surely Homo floresiensis. Nicknamed the hobbit, this creature stood just over a meter tall with short legs, big feet and a tiny brain the size of a grapefruit—all primitive traits associated with human ancestors from millions of years ago. Yet H. floresiensis lived on the island of Flores in Indonesia as recently as 60,000 years ago, by which point human species with modern body and brain proportions—including Homo sapiens and Neandertals—were well established elsewhere in the world....

Silently, the drone aircraft glides above the arid terrain of New Mexico—until it suddenly pivots out of control and plummets to the ground. Then a mortar round rises from its launcher, arcs high and begins to descend towards its target—only to flare and explode in mid-flight. On the desert floor, on top of a big, sand-coloured truck, a cubic mechanism pivots and fires an invisible infrared beam to zap one target after another....

A new study indicates that bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used in plastic bottles and can linings that has been linked to heart disease, diabetes and liver failure, may linger in the body far longer than previously believed. Environmental health scientist Richard Stahlhut of the University of Rochester Medical Center and his colleagues discovered that even those who had been fasting for 24 hours still had high BPA levels in their urine, using a U....

Key concepts Gravity Weight Lift Aerodynamics Introduction Have you ever seen a helicopter flying through the air? Have you ever wondered how they fly—or if you could try flying one yourself? This fun activity will help you get started at home building a simple paper helicopter. And you will learn a little bit about what keeps these amazing vehicles aloft. Background Helicopters stay in the air using spinning blades that are used to generate “lift....

It’s no instant replay, but West Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier, one of the continent’s fastest-changing ice streams, looks to be recreating 8,000-year-old history as it melts away, a new study suggests. Melting from Pine Island Glacier contributes 25 percent of Antarctica’s total ice loss. Scientists think the shrinking glacier could raise global sea level by up to 0.4 inches (10 millimeters) in the next few decades. Since the 1990s, Pine Island Glacier has thinned by about 5 feet (1....

Dear EarthTalk: I heard that some reusable bags contain lead. Is this a major health concern? Can’t these bags be made to avoid such contamination?—Donald Young, Cincinnati It’s true that some reusable shopping bags for sale in U.S. stores have been shown to contain lead, a neurotoxin linked to developmental, brain and kidney problems. The non-profit Center for Environmental Health (CEH) found that about 10 percent of the reusable bags it tested last year contained at least minute levels of lead, with Disney’s “Toy Story” and “Cars” plastic reusable shopping bags topping the charts with excessive levels to the tune of 15 times the federal limit for lead in children’s products....

Biodiversity Loss Gretchen C. Daily, professor of environmental science, Stanford University It is time to confront the hard truth that traditional approaches to conservation, taken alone, are doomed to fail. Nature reserves are too small, too few, too isolated and too subject to change to support more than a tiny fraction of Earth’s biodiversity. The challenge is to make conservation attractive—from economic and cultural perspectives. We cannot go on treating nature like an all-you-can-eat buffet....

The oceans, coastlines and rivers of 135 million years ago crawled with crocodiles. Fossils of these beasts run the gamut from small to giant, but the ones known to science have all shared the long snout associated with modern crocs. Until now. Researchers say they have unearthed the remains of a large crocodile that looks very unlike its brethren in having a short, stubby snout. “This species was very unusual because other marine crocodiles that were around at the same time have very delicate features–long, skinny snouts and needle-like teeth,” says Diego Pol, a bioinformatics researcher at Ohio State University who used a computer program to figure out where on the reptile family tree this creature, dubbed Dakosaurus andiniensis, belongs....

The universe is expanding 5 to 9 percent faster than astronomers had thought, a new study suggests. “This surprising finding may be an important clue to understanding those mysterious parts of the universe that make up 95 percent of everything and don’t emit light, such as dark energy, dark matter and dark radiation,” study leader Adam Riess, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said in a statement....

In mid-April 2009, samples from two California children suffering from the flu arrived at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta for further investigation; something didn’t seem normal about the particular flu strains they had. Local clinics and flu surveillance staff had detected a virus that had a unique genetic makeup, different from any known human flu virus. It was entirely new to science. That was the beginning of the 2009 swine flu pandemic....

Hoover Dam rose out of the frenzied efforts to combat the Great Depression. Similarly, the fields of heat-focusing mirrors in the California desert known as the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility might come to represent the frenzied efforts to keep the Great Recession from turning into a full blown depression. “In past recessions, we had great projects come out,” said Michael Splinter, executive chairman of Applied Materials, at the inaugural Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy summit in 2010....

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON, April 9 (Reuters) - It is one of science’s enduring mysteries: what caused the worst mass extinction in Earth’s history. And, no, it is not the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. Scientists said on Thursday that huge amounts of carbon dioxide spewed from colossal volcanic eruptions in Siberia may have turned the world’s oceans dangerously acidic 252 million years ago, helping to drive a global environmental calamity that killed most land and sea creatures....

Steve is the kind of guy who likes to let everyone know what he is doing in generous detail. His Facebook page is littered with entries such as “Just finished my java mochaccino and about to walk Schnooker” and “Lost recipe for my scrumptious caramel fudge cake … super bummed … sigh.” He is certain that his online friends want to know exactly what is going on in his life, and what better way to oblige them than with hourly, if not half-hourly, updates?...

Hamburg America Line’s Vaterland was commissioned on May 1, 1914, amid grand fanfare. More quiet was the sea change it ushered in. Its predecessor, the Imperator, had room for several thousand passengers including those in “steerage” class—the poor class of passenger who took up any leftover space (sometimes near the ship’s steering gear) after cabins were occupied by richer passengers. The Vaterland was a ship designed for pleasure cruises and luxury transportation only—no steerage passengers need apply....

By Environment Correspondent Alister DoyleOSLO (Reuters) - A U.S.-led drive to reduce soot and other heat-trapping air pollutants worldwide is less promising than hoped as a new front in the fight against climate change, according to a study published on Monday.Frustrated by failure to agree a broad international deal to limit global warming, about 30 nations have joined the U.S. initiative to limit short-lived air pollutants as a new way to curb temperature rises, protect health and aid crop growth....

He was at the takeoff for a new NASA satellite he conceived, a mission called the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, which would track carbon dioxide from space. Crisp, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, had worked on the project for nine years. As the rocket carrying the satellite left Southern California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base and shot into the sky, the researcher and his science team tracked its path....