Science - McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — German Chancellor Angela Merkel made an impassioned plea Tuesday to a joint session of Congress to work together on efforts to curb global warming and to help forge a binding climate-change deal at an international meeting next month.

WASHINGTON -- As energy increasingly dominates the economy, a quiet little agency in Washington holds the responsibility for tracking the particles that conduct, fuse, blow, heat, combust and convert the earth, wind and water into the energy that makes our society run.

WASHINGTON — Lost? Not sure how to get home? Trying to find your way through the mall or an airport?

WASHINGTON — Without a new law requiring cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. could end up going empty-handed to the international climate talks in December.

WASHINGTON -- Farm state senators and others soon will get a taste of what their colleagues from Missouri already have piled high on their desks: thousands of letters from farmers urging them to vote against the climate and energy bill.

WASHINGTON -- Global warming would be bad news for all those amber waves of grain, and for the corn and soybeans that are plentiful throughout the Midwest.

WASHINGTON -- Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Tuesday laid out the scientific risks of inaction on global warming and went straight to his main point — the climate and energy bill starting its way through the Senate could help drive what he called "energy opportunity."

WASHINGTON -- Twice in the Earth's history, living creatures underwent astonishing growth spurts, and each time, new organisms emerged that were a million times larger than anything that had existed before.

WASHINGTON -- A vast pool of molten rock in the continental crust that underlies southwestern Washington state could supply magma to three active volcanoes in the Cascade Mountains -- Mount St. Helens, Mount Rainier and Mount Adams -- according to a new study that's causing a stir among scientists.

WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency will put controls on the emissions of hazardous pollutants such as mercury from coal-fired power plants for the first time by November 2011, according to an agreement announced Friday to settle a lawsuit against the agency.

WASHINGTON -- Generating electricity by burning coal is responsible for about half of an estimated $120 billion in yearly costs from early deaths and health damages to thousands of Americans from the use of fossil fuels, a federal advisory group said Monday.

WASHINGTON -- A year from now, roughly 1,000 all-electric vehicles will be whispering around Washington state's Puget Sound as part of a federally funded project that eventually may lead to an electronic corridor stretching from Eugene, Ore., to Vancouver, B.C., where drivers could swipe a credit card and receive a 15-minute charge to speed them on their way.

WASHINGTON -- Some Alaska ports of call have asked the Environmental Protection Agency to rethink -- or at least slow down -- its plans to impose stricter air quality requirements for cruise ships and other large oceangoing vessels.

WASHINGTON -- No place seems safe from the prying eyes of inquisitive astronomers.

WASHINGTON -- A Senate Democrat who's been worried about the impact of impending climate and energy legislation on manufacturing said Wednesday that he'd back the historic legislation if it contains enough investment incentives and protection for American businesses.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration's Ocean Policy Council is calling for a coordinated approach to restoring fragile ocean areas, many of which have been damaged by decades of piecemeal management decisions by the federal government.

WASHINGTON -- The good, the bad and the ugly: That's a quick summary of the effects of dopamine, a natural brain chemical that's linked to pleasure, addiction and disease.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama on Monday ordered the federal government -- the nation's largest energy user -- to cut its greenhouse gas emissions and to reduce its impact on the environment.

WASHINGTON — America's national parks are at risk of disappearing or being fundamentally changed as seas rise, glaciers melt, trees die and animal habitat changes as a result of climate change, according to a report Thursday from two environmental groups.

WASHINGTON — Move over, Lucy. A 4-foot- tall female nicknamed Ardi, who lived 4.4 million years ago in Africa, has replaced you as the earliest best known ancestor of the human species.

WASHINGTON — Backed by a giant American flag and rows of young veterans and business executives, a group of Democratic senators unveiled an energy and climate bill Wednesday that they say will increase jobs and cut the billions spent on foreign oil.

WASHINGTON — Exelon, the nation's biggest operator of nuclear power plants, said Monday that it's quitting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because of the business group's lobbying against climate and energy legislation.

WASHINGTON — As the United States begins spending $3.4 billion in stimulus money to seek a commercially viable way to capture carbon dioxide from coal burning and bury it underground, some energy experts say that doing some of the work as a joint project in China would cut costs and time.

WASHINGTON — The first doses of vaccine for the H1N1 flu virus will be available the first week of October, federal officials said Thursday, with millions more shipped every week after that.

UNITED NATIONS — Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao of China _the leaders of the two countries that emit the most greenhouse gases — pledged at a United Nations summit Tuesday that their countries would take bold actions to protect the Earth's future climate from irreversible damages.

WASHINGTON — Using a powerful microscope, Karel Svoboda, a brain scientist at the Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, Va., peers through a plastic window in the top of a mouse's head to watch its brain's neurons sprout new connections — a vivid display of a living brain in action.

WASHINGTON — In a case closely followed by environmental and business interests, a rewritten plan for restoring endangered and threatened wild salmon runs on the Columbia and Snake rivers in Washington state and Idaho includes studying the possibility of breaching four major hydroelectric dams if other steps don't reverse the decline.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. and China should be able to agree on energy cooperation projects that reduce greenhouse gases and lead to a successful outcome at international climate talks in Copenhagen in December, two U.S. climate insiders said Tuesday.