The winter chill is upon us, and holiday songs put us all in the mood to snuggle by a warm fire with our loved ones... but in this new "environmental age", what should we be using to fuel our roaring fires?  Tradition generates images in our minds of a large stone fireplace, ablaze with a fiery tower of wood>

Thermionic conversion to heat energy, such as light from the sun or heat from burned fossil fuels, can mean very high efficiency, and because of its promise has been researched for over 50 years with little success. That may soon change, thanks to a new design, dubbed a thermoelectronic generator, described in the>

Picture a tree in the forest. The tree "inhales" carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, transforming that greenhouse gas into the building materials and energy it needs to grow its branches and leaves. By removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the tree serves as an indispensable "sink," or warehouse, for carbon>

A giant crococile versus a giant snake in a Colombian coal mine? It sounds even more awesome than "Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus", except the real life version does not have Debbie Gibson.An ancient crocodile relative, a dyrosaurid now named Acherontisuchus guajiraensis, likely gave the world's largest snake a tussle>

Most science fiction and news stories describe Mars terraforming as a long term but simple process. You warm up the planet first, with greenhouse gases, giant mirrors, impacting comets or some such. You land humans on the surface right away and they introduce lifeforms designed to live on Mars. Over a period of a>

The climate just got a little more complex. Researchers have found that sunlit snow is a major source of atmospheric bromine in the Arctic and that the surface snowpack above Arctic sea ice plays a previously unknown role in the bromine cycle. Bromine is key to chemical reactions that purge pollutants and destroy>