The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to three scientists for their discovery that plastic can be made electrically conductive--an advance that has led to improvements in film, television screens, and windows.

Stock levels for domestic crude oil are far lower than in past years, leaving domestic oil prices vulnerable to any hints of oil supplies being disrupted in the Middle East or to any unexpected consumer demand growth possibly prompted by colder-than-normal temperatures.

Each year companies in the United States could save as much as $58 billion annually by preventing illness among employees and gain as much as $200 billion through improving performance of workers if they simply provided offices with cleaner air.

In the major cities of industrialized countries at the end of the nineteenth century, important public places such as theaters, restaurants, shops, and banks had installed electric lighting, but electricity was in less than one percent of homes, where lighting was still provided mainly by candles or gas.

Changes in sea level are not only a result of changes in water temperature, affecting water density, but of melting glaciers as well.

Shipwrecks are more likely to be found undisturbed at great depths than in shallow coastal waters, which exposes archaeological remains to turbulence and makes them accessible to anyone in scuba gear, whether they be archaeologist, treasure hunter, or sport diver.

The cottontail rabbit population in Orange County, California, has increased unchecked in recent years as a result of the removal of the native fox population and the clearing of surrounding woodlands.

Scientists have found signs that moving water changed the chemical makeup of the surface of Mars in recent eras, therefore concluding that its crust is harboring up to three times as much water than was previously thought.

By recording the noise of crinkled wrappers as they were slowly stretched out in an otherwise silent chamber, and then digitizing and analyzing the sound emissions on computers, a team of scientists found the noise not continuous but consisted of individual bursts or pops just thousandths of a second long.

Beneath the soil of the Malheur National Forest in eastern Oregon, a fungus has for centuries been slowly weaving its way through the roots of trees, to become the largest living single organism known to humans.