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Earth’s Riverine Bloodstream

Earth's Riverine Bloodstream

Like blood in our arteries in our body, water in rivers carry chemical signals that can tell us a lot about how the entire Earth system operates.

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Ice, Wind & Fury

Ice, Wind & Fury

Greenlanders are well away of piteraqs, the hazardous torrents of cold air that sweep down off the ice cap. But scientists are just beginning to unravel how and when piteraqs form.

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Forecasting the Future of Fish

Forecasting the Future of Fish

How can we weigh all the interrelated factors involved in managing a critical ocean resource? Oceanus magazine experiments with a graphic article to help explain a complex issue.

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Leaf Wax: A Chemical Journey

Lake Titicaca in the Andes Mountains of South America is an extraordinary place to explore ancient human civilization, Earth’s climate history, and the flow of carbon through our planet.

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Tracking a Trail of Carbon

Tracking a Trail of Carbon

Lake Titicaca in the Andes Mountains of South America is an extraordinary place to explore ancient human civilization, Earth’s climate history, and the flow of carbon through our planet.

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The Riddle of Rip Currents

The Riddle of Rip Currents

Rip currents claim more than 100 lives in the United States each year and are the leading cause of lifeguard rescues. Scientists created a large gash in the seafloor to learn more about their complex dynamics.

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Short-circuiting the Biological Pump

Short-circuiting the Biological Pump

The ocean has been sucking up the heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) building up in our atmosphere—with a little help from tiny plankton. Like plants on land, these plankton convert CO2…

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Coral Crusader

Coral Crusader

Graduate student Hannah Barkley is on a mission to investigate how warming ocean temperatures, ocean acidification, and other impacts of climate change are affecting corals in an effort to find ways to preserve these vital ocean resources.

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A Green Thumb for Ocean Microbes

A Green Thumb for Ocean Microbes

Anyone who has tried to grow orchids or keep a bonsai tree alive will tell you that cultivating plants is not always simple. My thesis research absolutely depended on cultivating…

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Sand, Seals, and Solitude

Sand, Seals, and Solitude

In high school, students interested in art or science often diverge into separate fields. For several years now, an art teacher and scientist in Falmouth, Mass., have seeded a modest…

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A Telescope to Peer into the Vast Ocean

A Telescope to Peer into the Vast Ocean

There are more single-celled plankton in the ocean than stars in the universe. A new instrument is about to depart on a mission across the vast Pacific to capture images of what is out there.

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New Use for Well-known Algae

New Use for Well-known Algae

A curious chemical compound in certain marine algae has been a godsend for oceanographers, helping them reconstruct past ocean conditions. Now the same compounds also may be useful in a completely different way: to produce jet fuel.

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Bringing a Lab to the Seafloor

Bringing a Lab to the Seafloor

Scientists can’t really know if new oceanographic instruments will really work until they try them in actual conditions in the real ocean. In this case, the rubber hit the road at the bottom of the sea.

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The Waves Within the Waves

The Waves Within the Waves

If the 30-foot wave we were looking for had tumbled across the ocean’s surface that July day, it might have been mistaken for a monstrous rogue wave. But that’s not…

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Farewell to the Knorr

Farewell to the Knorr

Over its 44-year career, the retiring research vessel Knorr was on the scene for many of the most significant discoveries in the ocean.

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Trouble in the Tropics

Trouble in the Tropics

An MIT-WHOI graduate student is on the trail of marine toxins that accumulate in fish and are eaten by people.

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Big Questions About Tiny Bacteria

Big Questions About Tiny Bacteria

It’s 3 a.m., and Jesse McNichol is struggling to stay awake. Since midafternoon, he’s been in his lab, tending to a jumble of glassware, plastic tubing, and metal cylinders filled…

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Where Did Deepwater Horizon Oil Go?

Where Did Deepwater Horizon Oil Go?

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was unprecedented, and five years later, scientists are piecing together new insights into how the oil moved and behaved in the deep ocean.

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