Industrial whaling appears to have had an unexpected consequence: It turned down the volume in the oceans, according to research presented this week at the annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Kansas City, Mo.

The effect of man-made sound underwater, from speedboats to submarine sonar, is a topic of great concern for marine researchers. That's because many worry that the sounds we have injected into the underwater environment may be disrupting animals' acoustical landscape. That may make it difficult for them to migrate, hunt or mate.

But the new study, conducted by Michael...

Here’s something for raw-food aficionados to chew on: Cooked food might be a big reason humans were able to grow such large brains compared to their body size, scientists say.

If modern human ancestors had eaten only raw food, they’d have to regularly feed more than nine hours a day, according to a study published online Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A pair of researchers from the Instituto Nacional de Neurociéncia Translacional in São Paulo, Brazil, decided to try and help explain why modern humans’ brains were able to grow so large compared to...

A chemical analysis of air samples taken from California's San Joaquin Valley and an Oakland traffic tunnel show that diesel fuel emissions are more polluting than previously thought, according to researchers.

The study, which appeared Monday in the journal PNAS, focuses on a specific form of pollutant known as secondary organic aerosol, or SOA. The pollutant is a major element of smog and can contribute to heart and respiratory problems.

The study authors examined air samples taken in Bakersfield and Oakland's Caldecott Tunnel during a 2010 air quality field study conducted by the National...

Something's in the air in Italy -- and that something is cocaine.

A study of eight major metropolitan hubs in the country, published this week in the journal Environmental Pollution, has found trace levels of cocaine and cannabanoids from marijuana use. The researchers also monitored the more pedestrian (and legal) drugs of abuse, nicotine and caffeine. The study is a government-sponsored follow-up to a 2006 study in Rome, which found trace elements of cocaine in the air.

Why measure atmospheric coke? It's not because the drugs are dangerous, nor are the levels in the air going to get you high....

A study relating climate to conflict in East African nations finds that increased rainfall dampens conflict while unusually hot periods can cause a flare-up, reinforcing the theory that climate change will cause increased scarcity in the region. The study was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Politicians and many scientists have called climate change a security risk, based on the idea that unusual variations in weather are likely to put immense strain on rural societies dependent on farming and livestock for survival. But the results of studies trying to...

Six Italian seismologists have been convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to prison for failing to adequately warn the city of L'Aquila in advance of an April 2009 earthquake that killed more than 300 people.

When the charges were brought against the Italian scientists back in 2010, they shocked the scientific world. Prosecutors claimed that the scientists, while serving on a government panel, minimized the potential risks of a potential quake in the region, and gave "incomplete, imprecise, and contradictory information" to the area's citizens, according to an in-depth report on the case last...

With the toll from the fungal meningitis outbreak up to 21 dead and 247 sickened, and as the compounding facility responsible for fungus-tainted drugs is hit with a lawsuit, researchers have looked back at the first case that alerted them to the disease. Their results were published online Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The epidural steroid injections were produced at the New England Compounding Center, which shut down production and recalled all its products Oct. 6. About 14,000 patients are believed to have received injections. (The company is now being sued by Peter McGrath,...

At the bottom of a lake near Japan's Wakasa Bay, more than 50,000 years of history has been pulled out of the ground in the form of sediment and leaves.

The information contained in those samples will allow scientists to determine the age of organic materials and fossils with new clarity by improving carbon dating, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science.

Carbon dating works by detecting the relative amounts of two varieties of carbon: carbon-14, or C-14, and carbon-12, or C-12. Animals take up both varieties during our lifetimes, but only C-14, which is also known as...

Scooping up intriguing Martian soil and casting away suspect batches, NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has finally shoved a tiny spoonful into its robot belly to analyze, scientists at Jet Propulsion Laboratory said Thursday.

“We consider ourselves now to...

The number of deaths linked to a rare fungal meningitis outbreak rose to 20 on Thursday as health officials announced new evidence tying the illnesses to tainted steroid medication.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, scientists have confirmed the presence of a fungus known as Exserohilum rostratum in unopened vials of preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate that were packaged by New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass.

The vials belonged to one of three lots of medicine that NECC had produced. The company has since...

For the first time since the United States entered a deep recession five years ago, 70% of Americans now say they believe global warming is a reality, according to researchers.

In a report released Thursday by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, authors wrote that America’s concern about global warming is now at its highest level since 2008, and that 58% of Americans expressed worries about it.

“Historically Americans have viewed climate change as a distant problem --  distant in time and distant in space -- and perceived that it wasn’t something that involved...