Scientists aboard a U.S. research ship have started an around-the-clock search for elusive signs of oil lurking beneath the Gulf of Mexico’s surface in what they jokingly call “Operation Dipstick.” As debate rages among scientists over how much oil remains in the water after BP Plc’s massive oil spill, their research vessel circles above the…

BP Plc aims to retrieve a failed blowout preventer atop its ruptured Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, the top U.S. official overseeing the oil spill response said on Monday. But first, the company hopes to fish out a 3,500-foot (1,066-meter) drillpipe believed to be hanging in the giant stack of pipes…

Drinking tea is supposed to be healthy for you because of what it contains. In this case let us consider polyphenols. In theory, a polyphenol has the ability to act as an antioxidant to scavenge free radicals and up-regulate certain metal chelation reactions. An antioxidant helps to regulate or clean up the cell’s internal functions…

In the summer, it is a hobby of many people to lie out in the sun and work on their tans. Unfortunately, if done in excess, this hobby can lead to painful sunburns and possible skin cancer. A new study from the Tel Aviv University suggests that an effective way to prevent this is not…

If you are fairly diligent about recycling, do not buy a lot of junk or processed food, and barely toss any trash in your garbage bin, why should you pay the same rate as your neighbor whose bin is filled to capacity? Sanford residents implemented a trash metering system that requires residents to pay by…

Researchers at Edinburgh Napier University have patented a process to produce biobutanol, a fuel that can be used in existing gasoline engines without any modifications, from whiskey by-products. In utilizing waste products, the process eliminates the need to use arable land and food crops to produce a more sustainable fuel.

President Barack Obama flew to Holland, Mich., recently to attend groundbreaking ceremonies for a new lithium-ion battery plant, which the White House advertised as an example of federal stimulus grants at work and a gateway to a clean-energy future. Great stuff — if you don’t look too hard. Indeed, the Holland plant, effusively hailed by…

Mauritania has launched a tree-planting program aimed at protecting its capital from the advancing desert and coastal erosion, a project that could eventually extend thousands of kilometers across Africa. President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz on Saturday planted the first of some 2 million trees that are meant to form a “green belt” around the capital,…

For nearly five centuries, the classic image of sugar production in Brazil has been one of workers setting cane fields on fire and then descending on the crop with their machetes for harvest. No longer. More than half of the cane in Brazil’s main sugar-producing area of Sao Paulo state was harvested using machines during…

Ocean acidification is the name given to the ongoing decrease in the pH of the Earth’s oceans, caused by their uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.18 to 8.1. PH is a measure of the acidity or basicity of a solution. It…