Fungal infections are common and usually treatable. But they can be deadly in patients with immune systems compromised by diseases such as AIDS or by meds taken to keep them in check when they become too active (causing so-called autoimmune conditions such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis), or to prevent...

A new grenadelike gadget--designed to quickly extinguish flames in small quarters, thereby limiting injury to victims as well as firefighters--is becoming an important part of firemen's arsenals. [More]

Americans paradoxically combine an unquenchable curiosity with an insistance on being left alone

Click the image below to read the timeline

You'd think fighting ghosts would be a business with longevity, what with people dying every day and all. And wuddya know: the Ghostbusters are making a comeback, Variety is reporting. [More]

Tropical storm Hanna is fixing to drench the eastern U.S. this weekend, and with an even bigger tempest, Ike, in her wake, this month is shaping up as the stormy September predicted by atmospheric scientists. [More]

Researchers have identified a pair of genes that increase a child's risk of developing inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) before the age of 19--adding to a growing list of 30 known genetic factors for the malady.

Inflammatory bowel disease is a chronic condition that affects an estimated 1.4 million people in the...

Dear EarthTalk: I’ve heard that increasing eco-awareness around the world has now extended itself to the afterlife, whereby burials can even be “green.” Is that true? -- Mary Lewis, Duxbury, MA

Editor's Note: This story was originally published in the October 2001 issue of Scientific American.

The boxes are stacked eight feet high and line the walls of the large, windowless room. Inside them are new body bags, 10,000 in all. If a big, slow-moving hurricane crossed the Gulf of Mexico on...

SEPTEMBER 1958THE CREATIVE PROCESS-- “The most remarkable discovery made by scientists is science itself. The discovery must be compared in importance with the invention of cave-painting and of writing. Like these earlier human creations, science is an attempt to control our surroundings by entering into them and understanding them from inside....

Greenland, the world's largest island, holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by 23 feet (seven meters). Add the ice sheets of Antarctica and the oceans would deepen more than 200 feet (60 meters). Satellite measurements from space and speed measurements on land confirm that Greenland's glaciers are melting...

[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]

What a long, strange evolutionary trip. The last of the woolly mammoths had North American, not Asian roots, new science suggests. [More]

Researchers have discovered that the same nerve cells involved in forming memories also are involved in replaying them. The finding, published today in the online edition of Science, provides new insight into how complex memories are laid down in a single neuron (nerve cell) and how neural firing, or communication,...

Dear EarthTalk: What’s the deal nowadays with aerosol spray cans? I thought that the ozone-depleting chemicals used in them were eliminated back in the 1970s. Is this true? If so, what is now used as a propellant? Are aerosols still bad for the ozone layer? ...