Science & Technology

Thousands of snow geese perished after landing in the toxic waters of the Berkeley Pit. But the birds may not have died in vain.

Lessons learned from the St. Francis Dam failure—and its impact on the civil engineering profession at-large.

Prior to the negotiations that produced the framework of a nuclear pact, the United States attempted to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program using a sophisticated digital weapon—Stuxnet.

Is the greatest threat to our privacy the NSA, or data brokers and Big Business?

Lessons learned from a little-known construction accident, which threatened the completion of the world’s longest single-entrance tunnel, as well as a decade-long effort to clean up Boston Harbor.

Donnie Eichar explains how Kármán vortex street might have created the conditions that led to tragedy on Russia’s Holatchahl mountain.

The U.S. Metric Association deserves recognition for its effort to promote increased usage of the modernized metric system. It’s ultimate objective? Complete conversion.

Buried under layers of clay, soil, and rock after a costly Superfund cleanup, the former uranium mining town of Uravan is gone but not forgotten.

How one entomologist’s decades-long struggle to protect a controversial Australian tree has him convinced of bioterrorism.

In the winter of 2000, the RRS Discovery recorded the highest waves ever measured in the open ocean, resulting in a surge of interest in extreme waves, and renewed emphasis on protecting ships and offshore structures from their destructive power.

In the 1960s, Americans were focused on space and the idea of sending a man to the moon. In the meantime, a scrappy group of sea-dwelling divers were looking down—to the bottom of the ocean—and opening a vast undersea world to human exploration.

The Butte, Montana toxic lake holds the unusual distinction of being an EPA Superfund site, and on the list of “places to go, things to see” at Visit Montana dot-com, the official travel site of the Montana Office of Tourism.

An “inside-the-box” approach to addressing inefficiencies in the transport of shipping containers.

Why ethics programs don’t work, and may even promote unethical behavior.

Each year an estimated ten thousand shipping containers fall overboard and are lost at sea. A group of researchers based in the San Francisco Bay Area are drawing attention to this little-known problem—and what can be done about it.

It’s a “diet” that appeals mostly to men, and weight loss is “an unfortunate consequence.”

In “Predicting the Unpredictable: The Tumultuous Science of Earthquake Prediction,” seismologist Susan Hough of the Southern California Earthquake Center explains why the ability to predict earthquakes remains elusive.

An inside look at the little understood culture of offshore oil drilling.

The situation is so dire that Israel, Jordan, and Palestine are working together in an effort to replenish it. But their efforts could accelerate the destruction.

Two-hundred years ago a series of large earthquakes hit the Midwestern U.S. Despite apocalyptic predictions, the New Madrid Seismic Zone isn’t likely to produce a devastating quake anytime soon.