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Science / Our Planet

Light shining through the ice turns a cave's roof (above, Amy Rarig, age 17) an eerie blue.

The “Girls on Ice” Share Their Experiences in the Field

Once extracted, labeled and bundled, the cores are carefully airlifted to the safety of the lab. Only there will the ice's true secrets be revealed.

Glaciologist Erin Pettit Reports from the Field

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Frozen in Time

Glaciers in the Pacific Northwest have recorded hundreds of years of climate history, helping researchers plot how quickly the planet is warming

The students (including Molly Holleran, age 17) practiced self- arrest—stopping a fall on a slope using an ice ax.

Glaciologist Puts Her Girls on Ice

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Neanderthal Man

Svante Pääbo has probed the DNA of Egyptian mummies and animals. Now he hopes to decode the DNA of our evolutionary cousins

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Wild Things: Life as We Know It

Bumblebees, elephants and endless summer

Christopher Landsea and Stanley Goldenberg (above, aboard a NOAA jet) say there's not enough data to blame recent powerful hurricanes on global warming. Instead, they say, other air and sea conditions are responsible.

Storm Warnings

Is global warming to blame for the intensity of recent Atlantic hurricanes? While experts debate that question, they agree that tempests are headed our way

Madeleine Nash

Interview with J. Madeleine Nash, Author of “Storm Warnings”

Nash, a science reporter, discusses her most thrilling weather experience, and her fascination with the scariest forces of nature

A stone statue of Hatshepsut

Climate Change

Time often shapes perceptions

Nature Works has figured out how to make plastic out of corn.

Corn Plastic to the Rescue

Wal-Mart and others are going green with “biodegradable” packaging made from corn. But is this really the answer to America’s throwaway culture?

Ferns and bamboo grow densely where ancient trails (walked by Josh Rapp, to the left of Miles Silman) allow more light to penetrate the canopy.

Uphill Battle

As the climate warms in the cloud forests of the Andes, plants and animals must climb to higher, cooler elevations or die

Building Sustainable Cities

The 227-city U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement is just the beginning.

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Wild Things: Life As We Know It

Figs, canary songs, whales with legs, ancient flowering shrubs and beaver dams

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Al Gore Discusses “An Inconvenient Truth”

Environmentalist Al Gore talks about his new movie

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The Strawberry with “Wicked Wiles”

David Chelf, a former physicist who shifted gears into horticulture, launched a venture in 2003 to grow large quantities of Mara des Bois strawberries

Swartz (holding some of his experimental hybrid moschata strawberries) says his "holy grail" is a hybrid with the breed's exotic musky flavor and aroma that is also hardy enough for U.S. markets. He predicts it's no more than a few years away.

Berried Treasure

Why is horticulturalist Harry Jan Swartz so determined to grow an exotic strawberry beloved by Jane Austen?

Panther Key

Everglades

The nation’s storied wetland is the focus of the world’s largest environmental restoration project. But will that be enough?

A Return to the Reefs

With the world’s coral reefs in crisis, the author’s childhood memories guide a far-reaching study of the problem in the Bahamas

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Letters

Readers respond to the October issue

35 Who Made a Difference: Jane Mt. Pleasant

Iroquois tradition plus Western science equals a more sustainable future

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