This spring the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation released the draft environmental impact statement for the Fresh Kills Park Project, their plan to turn the Fresh Kills landfill—hitherto best known as a smelly Staten Island mountain—into a world class public park. The statement will be discussed at an open public hearing on September 4th, 2008, and work begins next year on the project's first small section—wrapping around the landfill's north mound and reaching down to the waterfront. This sliver should be finished within a few years, though the park in its entirety is expected to take around 30 years to complete, with $198 million in initial funding, but much more needed along the line.

Next: "New Yorkers filled Staten Island's Fresh Kills landfill for 50 years..."

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Lots of amphibians (a third to a half of all species) are dying, and their deaths are the breaking-edge of what many scientists are calling the first mass extinction since the dinosaurs checked out 65 million years ago, researchers say in a new paper published online in the Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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A new simulation has mapped out the way dark matter—the invisible heft of the universe—could be distributed in a galaxy like our own Milky Way; showing that dark matter could be much more present in our neighborhood than previously thought, and suggesting that we may soon be able to detect it (and understand it) close to home.

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As the earth warms and our hunger for oil and other natural resources grows, the Arctic—once a peaceful repose for Santa—is already a crisscross of territorial claims that could get even more complicated in coming years according to a new map drawn up by researchers at Durham University, who say it is the only geographically accurate map of its kind.

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Catching cancer before it metastasizes, or spreads throughout the body, is one way to increase your chances of survival. Now scientists may have found a way to help even when cancer is already on the move, by using magnets to lasso cancer cells and drag them out of the body. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have shown that magnetic nanoparticles—tiny shards of magnetic metal, less than a hundred thousandths of an inch in diameter—can be attached to cancer cells, which can then be manipulated and moved with another magnet.

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For seismologists, the dream of a perfect earthquake forecasting system may be a step closer. In a letter published last week in the journal Nature, scientists announced they've discovered a way to read changes in rocks that could be used to predict dangerous quakes as much as ten and a half hours in advance.

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To some men, bicycles may look like the key to good health and a prosperous sex life—riding around all day keeps you fit and attractive; you can save that $4.50 a gallon of gas money for your date/girlfriend/boyfriend/house party; and you get to wear really, really tight clothes. But there’s a downside. Cycling can also cause genital numbness, erection problems and skin irritations in the groin area, a new report in the urology journal BJU International confirms, citing several medical studies over the last few years.

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Adding insult to injury, many species that are already solidly facing extinction might actually be 100 times more endangered than previously thought, scientists say. A new mathematical model, developed by ecologists at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of California, produces extinction risks that are orders of magnitude higher than conservation biologists estimated in compilations like the IUCN red-list.

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