Publication archives

Termites may be the key to greener, more effective biofuels, report scientists writing in the November 22 edition of the journal Nature.

Conata Basin covers 130,000 acres south of Badlands National Park in South Dakota. It's one of the continent's most intact remaining grasslands, while serving as home to the world's largest population of black-footed ferrets, the rarest mammal on Earth. Unfortunately, this lovely area is also the center of much controversy having to do with prairie dog politics.

An ugly and puzzling problem in our forests has the attention of two Utah insect scientists. Barbara Bentz and Liz Hebertson study how beetles no bigger than a black bean are killing vast stands of conifers. You might call them CSI's of the forest.

The U.S. Forest Service hasn't followed its own guidelines while removing potentially hazardous trees from the Angora fire burn area, Lake Tahoe Basin environmental groups say.

Minnesota's ash trees are as good as gone. That's the sentiment of four Olmsted County officials, who are proposing the county start its own tree farm in preparation for the arrival of the hated Emerald Ash Borer in Minnesota and the subsequent disappearance of the ash.

Antibiotics are medicines that are widely used to fight infections. Too widely, it seems. The more that antibiotics are prescribed, the less effective those chemical substances become. They can lose their beneficial powers when germs have enough time to develop resistance to them.

Isolated cases of drug-resistant staph infections recently in area schools have raised anxiety about health standards and safety in districts. The incidence of infections from the bacteria, methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, concentrated primarily in hospitals and nursing homes, is rising in the general population.

David Bacon, a Senior Fellow at the Oakland Institute, has written a timely and insightful commentary in the San Francisco Chronicle on the link the between free trade deals and force