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The night is pitch-black. But the dark slopes of a hill inside the crater of Kawah Ijen volcano in Indonesian country in Asia, are lit up like a holiday light [...]

A monster storm with 150-mile-an-hour winds churn west across the Atlantic Ocean. Scientists at the National Hurricane Center in Miami have tracked it for days using satellite images. Now they're […]

Dry, lifeless. That's how Earth's moon seemed to Apollo 11 astronauts when they became the first people to step onto its barren surface (at left) on July 20, 1969 - […]

The aye-aye, the frightful but harmless primate from Madagascar, is in danger of being driven to extinction by incessant destruction of rainforests. The animal, which is a rare kind of lemur, loses its natural habitat and source of food with deforestation.

Japanese macaques have evolved a number of physiological and behavioral adaptations to survive the harsh winter months of the country. Apart from their thick fur, the monkeys have learned to huddle and bathe in the region's hot springs to take the sting out of the cold winter months.

The destruction of coral reefs disturbs the ecosystem as they serve as food and shelter to marine life. Threats to corals include overfishing because it removes predatory fishes that control the number of small fishes living in the coral reefs.

Joel Schwartz is dearly enjoying himself Eyes lively, smile broad, he teases, jokes, hops across the front of the classroom to make a point, and endures the posturing of even [...]

Air travel is up, airports are expanding, and communities are bearing the consequences Louie Yeldell moved into his house thirty-two years ago. Now, at the age of seventy, he is [...]

Casey wants to film the perfect tornado. So when he sees one, he plants himself nearby with his cameras. That's not the safest thing to do. 'The trick is knowing [...]

Dangling from the edge of a tall, icy cliff or diving into a maze of underwater caves is all in a day's work for scientists and researchers on a quest […]

The night is pitch-black. But the dark slopes of a hill inside the crater of Kawah Ijen volcano in Indonesia, a country in Asia, are lit up like a holiday [...]

Hey, they happen. Sometimes accidents are totally embarrassing. But other times they lead to something awesome. Check out three fortunate mistakes. THE INVENTION: MICROWAVE OVEN THE MOMENT OF 'OOPS': Accidentally [...]

THOUSANDS OF VOLUNTEERS PITCH IN TO HELP AFRICAN PENGUINS ESCAPE DANGER. THE NEWS SPREAD LIKE WILDFIRE. Thousands of penguins off the South African coast were in danger of dying last […]

Threatened by humans, these cuddly creatures head for new homes. THIS CUTE KOALA is safe in the hands of a scientist. It's going to a new home where there are […]

How science won the battle against a deadly disease. SUMMER WAS A TIME OF FEAR in the early 1900s. Warm weather usually meant the annual return of a terrifying disease […]

HOT COLOR FROM A COOL GAS A GIANT GREEN FROG. A colorful rainbow over a setting sun. Glowing words welcoming diners. These are a few examples of lighted signs (below) […]

Thousands of miles don't stop monarchs. EACH SUMMER you see beautiful monarch butterflies with orange and black wings. But each fall they disappear. Monarchs west of the Rocky Mountains reappear […]

THE SEARCH TO PREVENT A DEADLY DISEASE Joseph Meister's mother was desperate. A dog with rabies had viciously bitten her 9-year-old son many times. The year was 1885 and doctors […]

Fiery hot lava flows down a Hawaiian mountainside like dark, thick syrup. When it reaches the sea, it hisses and explodes in scalding jets of steam. Farther up the slope, [...]

Clouds suddenly appeared on the horizon, the sky turned dark, and it started to rain as Sabrina was hiking through the Grand Canyon with her parents. As lightning flashed around […]

The people of Northridge, California, will never forget the morning the ground started to shake, rattle, and roll. It was 4:30 a.m. when a huge block of rock 11 miles […]

Record-breaking eruption As volcanic eruptions go, this one's making history. For 20 years, Hawaii's Kilauea (kee-luh-WAY-uh) has been spouting lava in the volcano's longest nonstop eruption on record. Each day […]

When a large coalition of children's advocacy groups circulated a draft of their Contract With America's Children earlier this year, they were sure they had covered all the bases. The [...]

Hot, sulfur-rich gases escape constantly from cracks called fumaroles in Kawah Ijen's crater. Scientists were told that sulfur miners on the volcano sometimes use torches to ignite the sulfur. But it's so plentiful in Kawah Ijen's crater that miners make a dangerous daily trek into the crater to collect sulfur from a fumarole near an acid lake. [Extracted from the article]

Highlights the career of Carsten Peter, photographer of volcanoes. Descent into one of Ambrym's craters in Australia; Challenges in Iceland.

Writes about the solar system and existence of moons. Captured moons of Mars; Moon of Saturn; Many moons of Jupiter.

Focuses on some of the visions of United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists on the future of space expeditions. Speed required for a spaceship to break free of Earth's gravity; Possibility of atomic or antimatter propulsion systems to propel spaceships thousands of miles a second; Illustrations of future spacecrafts.

Provides information on the history of Great Plague in Europe which started in 1300 B.C. Number of people killed by the plague; Description of the plague doctors; Details on how the people protected themselves from the plague. INSETS: The Plague Today;Level of Disease.

Focuses on Joel Schwartz, an epidemiologist and biostatistician. Background information on Schwartz; Schwartz's campaigning efforts to reduce the lead content in gasoline; Plans of Schwartz.

Discusses the effects of Hurricane Andrew in Florida in August 1992. Storm's speed; Damage; Death toll; Importance of early warning; Meteorologists' use of weather satellites to track storms; Scientists' flight into hurricane's eye; Government's order of residents' evacuation.

Examines ten of the popular myths about Christopher Columbus' voyages to the New World and presents the facts about them. Columbus' belief in a round world; Columbus' arrival in America; Unpopulated land on Columbus' arrival; Columbus' return trips to America.

Talks about dreams and why people dream. Several theories of dreams; Significance of dreams; Stages of sleep; Most common dreams. INSETS: Sleepwalking;Most common dreams;Animal dreams;Dream diary

Focuses on scientist Terry Fredeking, highlighting his journey in New Mexico, to find and collect thousands of deadly black widow spiders and other animal specimens. Why Fredeking is collecting the spiders; Comments on his journey to Indonesia to collect samples of saliva, blood and tissue from Komodo dragons; Size of a Komodo dragon.

Presents information several animals which are considered deadly and contain poisonous venon. How venomous animals use their venom; Information on the killer bee, known as the Africanized honeybee; Description of the devil-tailed scorpion, and how this creature uses its venom; Length of time a human will live after being stung by a sea wasp; Comments from Steve Prchal, director of the Sonoran Arthropod Studies Institute. INSET: Safety first.

Looks at the Japanese snow monkeys. Where the monkeys live; How the monkeys stay warm; Comments from Doctor Jeffery Froehlich, primate specialist of the University of New Mexico. INSET: Monkey business.

Presents an account of the work of filmmaker Sean Casey to film the perfect tornado. Factor that could make it easier to predict which storms will produce tornadoes; Comments from Sean Casey about storm chasing.

Provides information on extremophiles. Definition of extremophiles; Use of extremophiles; Possibilities in other fields of research on extremophiles.

The article focuses on Kawah Ijen volcano in Indonesia, where burning of sulphur and gases give it a blue appearance in night. It mentions miners' efforts in collecting sulfur from the volcano and efforts of scientists for predicting the time of its eruption. It discusses the process of its eruption and further presents several interesting facts about Indonesia including presence of the world's largest flower Rafflesia arnoldii in Indonesia.

The article offers information on inventions and discoveries. Details about the invention of the microwave oven by Percy Spencer while he was experimenting with radar in a laboratory in the 1940s are presented. The historical background of the invention of the durable rubber by Charles Goodyear in the 180ss and of the artificial sweetener by Constantin Fahlberg in the late 1870s are provided.

Describes some disasters and damages caused by earthquakes. Pavement crack-up; Shipwreck; Bridge destruction.

Discusses the volcanic eruption of Kilauea volcano in Hawaii. Description of the lava; Damages made by the lava; Result of the meeting of lava and the seawater.