Cape Cod Faces a Rising 'Yellow Tide'

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February 16, 2024

Pollution Cape Cod Faces a Rising 'Yellow Tide' Tourism is big business on the cape, but a growing environmental issue could disrupt the lives of tourists and residents, alike. By Duy Linh Tu,Sebastian Tuinder,Barbara Moran,Anaissa Ruiz Tejada,Joseph Polidoro,Jeffery DelViscio

Plants This Genetically Engineered Petunia Glows in the Dark and Could Be Yours for $29 The engineered "firefly petunia" emits a continuous green glow thanks to genes from a light-up mushroom By Katherine Bourzac,Nature magazine

Natural Disasters Fighting, Fleeing and Living on Iceland's Erupting Volcano Residents of Grindavík hope hastily constructed walls of old volcanic rock will divert hot lava streaming from fissures in the ground beneath them By Robin George Andrews

Animals Why Do Birds Have Such Skinny Legs? The songbirds in your backyard hop around on such itty-bitty legs. Here's why bird legs are so skinny and how they can support a bird's weight By Asher Elbein

Oceans If the Atlantic Ocean Loses Circulation, What Happens Next? Researchers found that if melting glaciers shut down the Atlantic Ocean's circulation pattern, the global climate could see major changes within just 100 years By René van Westen,Henk A. Dijkstra,Michael Kliphuis,The Conversation US

Public Health FDA Plan to Ban Hair Relaxer Chemical Is Long Overdue, but Many Dangerous Ingredients Remain The Food and Drug Administration is scheduled to release a proposal to ban formaldehyde in hair-straightening products a decade after it was classified as a carcinogen By Ronnie Cohen,KFF Health News

Epidemiology How Risky Are Repeat COVID Infections? What We Know So Far Four years into the pandemic, many people have had COVID more than once—but the health consequences of repeat infections are not yet clear By Meghan Bartels

Space Exploration Second Private U.S. Moon Lander Readies for Launch Intuitive Machines' IM-1 is aiming to be the first commercial mission to softly land on another celestial body—and the first to deliver NASA equipment to the moon By Michael Greshko

Behavior What Taylor Swift Conspiracies Reveal, According to Science Yes, conspiracy narratives are everywhere. But it's not as bad as you think By Keith Kloor

Memory Jeopardy! Winner Reveals Entwined Memory Systems Make a Trivia Champion A former Jeopardy! winner led a new study that probes how linked memory systems may give trivia buffs an edge in their game By Hannah Seo

Mathematics Surreal Numbers Are a Real Thing. Here's How to Make Them In the 1970s mathematicians found a simple way to create all numbers, from the infinitely small to infinitely large By Manon Bischoff

Climate Change Sucking Carbon from the Air Becomes A Lead Strategy The U.S. Department of Energy will award up to $100 million for projects that remove CO2 from the atmosphere By Chelsea Harvey,E&E News

BRING SCIENCE HOME Separate Liquids with Salt! Separate a solution? Just add salt--and science! Credit: George Retseck You probably know some liquids, such as oil and water, do not mix together. If you pour them into the same container, they will form separate liquid layers, one on top of the other. Other liquids, for example rubbing alcohol and water, can be mixed with each other. But did you know that once both of these liquids have mixed you can separate them again into two different layers? How can you do that? The answer might surprise you—with salt! In this activity you will find out how this works.

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