Science News

The Pap test has been enormously successful at reducing cervical cancer deaths, but it can miss early signs of malignancy, allowing undetected cases to become invasive . [More]

By Mark Schrope

As oil continues to spew from the oil rig that went up in flames in the Gulf of Mexico last week, the probability of major environmental damage increases. [More]

The last time I slammed into a wall, it hurt. I'm not too fond of falling off three-story buildings, either. The laws of physics can be so unforgiving. But two weeks ago I went to choreographer Elizabeth Streb 's latest work, "Run Up Walls," in which dancers slammed into panes of glass without uttering a single expletive and dove from a truss 30 feet high as though they were flopping onto a bed. Rather than bemoan the laws of physics, Streb celebrates them. Knowing how the human body responds to impact, her dancers have figured out how to do things that seem superhuman.[break] [More]

The oceans are in trouble--overfishing has led to depletion of fish stocks around the world and has driven many species to critically endangered status . But what to do about it? [More]

Dear EarthTalk: When the plug-in Prius is released, how much electricity will it use? Will my electric bill double if my Prius is plugged in each night? Or will the increase be minimal? Also, will all this recharging put a strain on the existing electricity grid? --G. C. Marx, Colorado Springs, Colo.

Many people assume that the 2009 H1N1 pandemic spread rapidly across the globe largely due to the sheer number of people hopping onto planes . But more than 120 years ago, trains and ships alone sped the transmission of the 1889 "Russian" flu so that it reached the U.S. 70 days after the virus' first peak in St. Petersburg and circled the globe in just a few months, according to a new analysis of historic data. [More]

In the suddenly zooming story of electric cars, it's the cars themselves that have tended to hog the spotlight.

Later this year, Nissan and GM will be the first to unveil their hyped first attempts at cars they hope will appeal to both America's inner motorist and its inner environmentalist: cars that get much or all of their fuel from electricity .