July 2, 2009 -- Fireworks are fun, exciting and often free to watch, but there may be a hidden cost: The flashing displays can harm the environment and pose risks to human health.

Now, scientists are working on a new generation of kinder, gentler pyrotechnics. While still explosive and dramatic, these fireworks produce less smoke and use fewer toxic metals that end up in soil and groundwater.

July 2, 2009 -- It's a mystery of earthquakes that takes a deadly toll on humans: faults buried several miles deep in Earth's crust breed more damaging earthquakes than their surface counterparts.

Scientists have now learned blind faults reside in rock layers perfectly suited to violent rupture. And when they strike, they focus explosions of energy toward the surface, jarring the nearby vicinity with a violence that can belie their modest size.

July 2, 2009 -- Vegans have lower bone densities than non-vegans, researchers have concluded.

But the news isn't all bad, with the study finding an animal-free diet doesn't translate into more fractures.

July 2, 2009 -- An inflatable tower nine miles tall and tethered to a mountain top could cut the cost to launch spacecraft, reduce the need for geostationary communications satellites, and improve cell phone signals.

"This structure could be made of commercially available materials," said Brendan Quine, who wrote an article detailing the tower in the journal Acta Astronautica.

July 2, 2009 Scientists on Wednesday shed light on how the salamander, one of nature's great oddities, is able to regrow an amputated leg.

The insight may one day help researchers to replicate the achievement among people, they hope.

July 1, 2009 -- A new stash of fossil feathers is yielding a wealth of information about Moas, the extinct giant birds that once roamed ancient New Zealand.

In a unprecedented discovery, Nicolas Rawlence of the University of Adelaide and a team of researchers found they could extract DNA from the feathers' shafts, and use the genetic material to prove the feathers belonged to four species of the flightless Moa, including the Heavy-footed Moa Pachyornis elephantopus.

July 1, 2009 -- Vegetation helped save Earth from runaway cooling that would have encased the planet in ice, according to a study published on Wednesday.

The paper sheds light on the big natural mechanisms that over hundreds of millions of years have swung the globe like a pendulum between deep chill and intense heat.

July 1, 2009 -- Astronomers on Wednesday said they had identified an intermediate class of black hole that could explain how supermassive, light-sucking monsters develop in the heart of galaxies.

Their find -- a black hole more than 500 times the mass of the sun, on the fringe of galaxy ESO 243-249 -- is reported in the latest issue of Nature, the British-based science journal.

July 1, 2009 -- Cancer patients come in all shapes and sizes, including whale, sea lion and Tasmanian devil.

In these wild animals and others, cancers are significant killers, according to new research, and human pollutants probably play a role. The work suggests that cancer might be an overlooked conservation threat.

July 01, 2009 -- A search for gravitational waves stemming from the creation of the universe commences this week with an array of new detectors sensitive enough to measure signals as faint as a billionth of a volt.

The experiment, called QUIET, is the latest attempt to find theoretical ripples in the expanse of space caused by the Big Bang explosion some 14 billion years ago.

June 30, 2009 -- A new Myanmar fossil primate, Ganlea megacanina, suggests the common ancestor of humans, monkeys and apes evolved from large-toothed primates in Asia and not Africa, according to new research.

If Myanmar is confirmed as being the ancestral homeland of higher primates, or close to it, the discovery points to a circuitous migration route for some early primates, which must have gone to Africa and then come back to Asia.

July 1, 2009 -- Fans of the giant Palouse earthworm are once again seeking federal protection for the rare, sweet-smelling species that spits at predators.

They filed a petition Tuesday with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service requesting the worm be protected as an endangered species.

June 30, 2009 -- The extremely well-preserved remains of a 66-million-year-old hadrosaur, known as a "dinosaur mummy," have just yielded soft tissue skin structures and organic molecules, according to a new study.

While research on other dinosaurs has led to the identification of organic material linked to bones, co-author Roy Wogelius told Discovery News that "this is the first dinosaur to reveal intact skin structure and associated organic molecules."

June 30, 2009 -- As famous for its traffic jams as it is for Hollywood star power, the Los Angeles, Calif. area has another dirty little secret: Air pollution is sickening pregnant women who live near roadways, more than doubling their risk of a premature birth, according to a new study.

Scientists have known for years that smog plays havoc with residents' health. Asthma, blood pressure and a host of cardiovascular disease all get worse in people exposed to high levels of air pollution.

June 30, 2009 -- The world's longest fence stretches for 5,000 kilometers (more than 3,000 miles) from one side of southern Australia to another. The fence was designed to keep sheep-eating dingoes out of a third of the country, but the barrier has had some other surprising consequences.

On the dingo-free side of the fence, according to a new study, overall biodiversity is actually lower than it is on the side where dingoes are free to roam.

June 30, 2009 -- Think you grind your teeth? Pity the ancient hadrosaur. Their jaws weren't hinged in the same way as modern people and animals, and researchers have long wondered how these ancient animals handled food.

A new study on scratch marks on hadrosaur teeth sheds some light on the subject, researchers report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

June 29, 2009 -- After nearly 19 years studying the sun, the odyssey of the Ulysses spacecraft is coming to an end.

During a final communications pass on Tuesday, Ulysses will turn off its transmitter, silencing a stream of data that provided scientists with their first perspective of the sun from the polar regions. Here's a look at some milestone events in Ulysses' life.

June 29, 2009 -- Dust in the wind is rewriting the cycle of life in the mountains. Throughout memory the warmth of spring has begun the mountain snowmelt, bringing life-giving water to greening plants so they can blossom and renew their species.

But now, scientists say, the timing is being thrown off by desert dust stirred as global warming dries larger areas and human activity increases in those regions.

Endangered bunnies named after Playboy founder Hugh Hefner just received a boost. Not from Hefner this time, but from University of Central Florida experts who are working to save the rabbits.

Graduate teaching assistant Rosanna Tursi is using population genetics to aid in the conservation of the bunnies, Sylvilagus palustris hefneri, which are Florida Lower Keys marsh rabbits. They were declared endangered in 1990. It's estimated that less than 300 of the rabbits remain today.

Hefneri is the most recently recognized subspecies of the marsh rabbit. It's small with short, dark brown fur and a grayish-white belly. Discovered in 1984, the subspecies was named in honor of Hefner after his organization donated money to support fieldwork on the rabbits. Good for Hef!

June 29, 2009 -- The Amazon rainforest, one of the planet's most precious and besieged natural resources, is even more fragile than realized.

If the planet warms even a moderate amount, a new study predicts that as much as 40 percent of it could be condemned to vanish by the end of the century.

June 29, 2009 -- Shooting laser beams at a submarine won't destroy it, but new technology being tested by the U.S. Navy could help find enemy subs.

"Instead of dumping hardware (into the ocean) you could shoot a light pulse into the water and generate acoustic signals," said Ted Jones of the Naval Research Laboratory, who presented his results at a recent meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.

This is the most insanely interesting volcanic footage I have ever seen! Watch it all the way through because it gets closer up and more intense towards the end. Amazing stuff!

Ninety seven years after the Titanic sank in the Atlantic Ocean, artifacts from the ship and its passengers finally arrive at its intended destination.

Watch Discovery News' James Williams as he tours the collection at the Discovery Times Square exhibition.

June 26, 2009 -- Scientists looking for Earth-like planets in distant solar systems might find it more productive to focus on pale red dots, rather than blue ones.

So concludes a team of astronomers from Spain and Florida who observed the Aug. 16, 2008, lunar eclipse from a simulated alien perspective and discovered that several biologically relevant molecules show up stronger than expected in longer, redder wavelengths of light.

June 26, 2009 -- Some of the world's first farmers may have sped around in two-wheeled carts pulled by camels and bulls, suggests a new analysis on tiny models of these carts that date to 6,000-5,000 years ago.

The cart models, which may have been ritual objects or children's toys, were found at Altyndepe, a Chalcolithic and Bronze Age settlement in Western Central Asia near Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

Pigeons may sometimes appear to randomly target city sculptures with their droppings, but according to a new Japanese study they also have the potential to become discerning art critics.

Researchers at Tokyo's Keio University say they have found that the birds have "advanced perceptive abilities" and can distinguish between "good" and "bad" paintings, recognizing beauty the way humans do.

June 26, 2009 -- Just as humans have learned to connect dark clouds with rain, so too have bacteria and yeast learned to use one event to predict the arrival of another.

"For multicellular organisms, there is a real benefit to understanding the temporal order of things," said Amir Mitchell, a scientist at The Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and co-author of a paper that appeared recently in the journal Nature. "If you see clouds you might expect rain, and take an umbrella out with you."

June 25, 2009 -- The Elgin Marbles, the subject of one of the oldest international cultural disputes, were originally coated with shades of blue, a new imaging technique has found.

Some of the 17 figures and 56 panels from a giant frieze that once decorated the Parthenon have revealed traces of an ancient pigment known as Egyptian blue.

June 25, 2009 -- A robotic surgeon at Duke University has successfully found and guided a needle to a sliver of steel shrapnel, completely without human help. The technology could reduce the cost and time necessary to complete a biopsy and other surgical operations.

"Eventually you could have a ten-dollar biopsy done inside in a supermarket," said Steve Smith, a doctor at Duke University and co-author of a paper describing the work.

June 25, 2009 -- Greenland contains enough fresh water to raise global sea level 23 feet if all of the ice were to melt. Of course, all of its doesn't have to melt to cause very serious problems around the world. Rapid influx of meltwater could change climate by altering patterns of ocean circulation.

In the face of rising temperatures in the atmosphere and the oceans at high latitudes, there are signs that the Greenland gorilla is waking.

June 25, 2009 -- The northern spotted owl has been a controversial conservation icon for years -- ever since large swaths of old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest were set aside to protect the threatened bird 15 years ago. That decision angered logging companies and forced them to take a financial hit.

Still, despite the extra protection, spotted owl populations have continued to decline. A new study helps explain why: With a drop in numbers, the birds have lost genetic diversity.

June 24, 2009 -- Mysterious space blobs aren't infant galaxies as astronomers once thought. Scientists say they mostly consist of galaxies going through puberty, all hot and bothered.

A new study using NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory and other space and ground telescopes comes up with an explanation for these high-energy glowing blobs that have been observed for about a decade.

June 24, 2009 -- NASA has a backup plan to launch crew and cargo to the moon, reduce the gap between shuttle retirement and a replacement ship's debut, and save taxpayers millions of dollars.

They call it the side-mount shuttle. It's basically the space shuttle system without the winged orbiters.

June 24, 2009 -- Archaeologists have unearthed a hoard of ancient Roman treasures, including a marble head of the Roman emperor Titus, during excavation outside the southern Italian city of Naples.

The long-term digging effort in Rione Terra, a cliff in the port town of Pozzuoli, has yielded remains of 12 ancient statues, columns and fragments bearing inscriptions from what appear to be monuments from the Republican and Imperial periods of ancient Roman history.