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    Jessica Leader

    Jessica Leader

  • FLOWCHART: Should You Bail Out Your Friend?

    FLOWCHART: Should You Bail Out Your Friend?

  • 8 Things Your Friends Really Need To Chill About

    8 Things Your Friends Need To Chill About

  • The Ultimate Playlist for When You Are Running on Empty

    The Ultimate Playlist for When You Are Running on Empty

  • Residents From This State Differ Drastically From Lawmakers When It Comes To Climate Change

    According to a study conducted by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, 70 percent of Texans accept that global warming is taking place. In fact, only 14 percent believe global warming is not happening. Although fewer than half (44 percent) agree it’s mostly caused by humans, more than 50 percent think now is the time for local and federal government to act on the changing climate.

  • Ancient Forest Thaws From Melting Glacial Tomb

    An ancient forest has thawed from under a melting glacier in Alaska and is now exposed to the world for the first time in more than 1,000 years. Stumps and logs have been popping out from under southern Alaska's Mendenhall Glacier — a 36.8-square-mile (95.3 square kilometers) river of ice flowing into a lake near Juneau — for nearly the past 50 years. "There are a lot of them, and being in a growth position is exciting because we can see the outermost part of the tree and count back to see how old the tree was," Cathy Connor, a geology professor at the University of Alaska Southeast who was involved in the investigation, told LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

  • Prince William Speaks Out Against Human Greed

    “Seeing a badly injured animal, such as a rhino missing its horn, has come to me to symbolize human greed," Prince William explained in a recent interview with CNN. William’s connection to the African wilderness goes beyond his duties as a royal and touches on the most intimate aspects of his character. “I regularly daydream,” William admitted.

  • Why Has It Been So Long Since A Major Hurricane Hit The U.S?

    The United States hasn't been any stranger to hurricanes in the last eight years. Hurricane Sandy, for example, caused about $50 billion in damage and was responsible for more than 150 U.S. deaths last year, although the storm was technically an extra-tropical cyclone when it hit. As of today (Sept. 12), it's been 2,880 days since Hurricane Wilma, the last major hurricane to strike the United States, made landfall on Oct. 24, 2005.

  • Why Crash Test Dummies Prefer Electric Vehicles

    Josh Goldman is a policy analyst for clean vehicles at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) where he leads legislative and regulatory campaigns to reduce U.S. oil consumption. This article was adapted from a post to the UCS blog the Equation. Goldman contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

  • Prince William Tears Up Over Rhinos Killed By Poachers

    Some additional moments from CNN's exclusive interview with Prince William have emerged - and they're heavily focused on the Duke of Cambridge's efforts to protect endangered animals from poaching. "The wildlife is incredibly vulnerable and I feel a real protective instinct, more so now that I am a father, which is why I get emotional about it," William says.

  • Newly-Formed Hurricane Narrowly Misses Major Record

    As expected, what was Tropical Storm Humberto became the first hurricane of the 2013 season early this morning (Sept. 11), narrowly missing out on becoming the latest-forming first hurricane in the modern record. Humberto was upgraded to a hurricane at 5 a.m. EDT today, and is currently sporting maximum sustained winds of 75 mph (120 km/h), just above the 74-mph threshold between tropical storms and hurricanes. The hurricane could strengthen more today before weakening on Thursday, according to the latest forecast from the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

  • As The West Warms, Wildfires Expected To Double By 2050

    Yosemite National Park's Rim Fire dashed the plans of many campers over Labor Day weekend. The air quality was deemed to be unhealthy for outdoor activities, according to California air quality officials. Smoke from the still-burning fire continues to cause unhealthy air quality levels for sensitive people in nearby cities, such as Fresno, Calif.

  • Harrison Ford Creates An Uproar In Indonesia

    Indonesia's forestry minister has accused Hollywood legend Harrison Ford of subjecting him to a rude interview on climate change that left him "shocked", an official said Tuesday. The "Indiana Jones" and "Star Wars" actor, who is making part of an environmental documentary in Indonesia, attacked the minister with questions during the encounter on Monday, said presidential advisor Andi Arief. The advisor accused Ford and his crew of "harassing state institutions" and said the 71-year-old could even be deported -- although he was due to leave Indonesia later Tuesday anyway.

  • Endangered Leopards Find Surprising Ally

    The endangered snow leopard has some allies in unexpected places. The leopards are being protected by hundreds of Buddhist monasteries on the Tibetan plateau, new research suggests. The scientists, who detailed their study last week in the journal Conservation Biology, found that half of the monasteries are within the snow leopards' habitat and that monks patrol the wilderness to prevent poachers from killing the rare cats.

  • Thanks To The Clean Air Act, These Once-Threatened Trees Are Now Thriving

    A species of old trees in the Appalachian Mountains is growing faster than expected in the wake of clean-air controls implemented decades ago, a new study shows. The research on eastern red cedar trees — all between 120 and 500 years old — also showed changes in the types of carbon and sulfur in their tree rings a few years after the Clean Air Act was enacted in 1970. "The first thing that got us interested was how these old trees are doing, and what are some of the physiological mechanisms that allow the old trees to stay alive," Richard Thomas, a biology researcher at the University of West Virginia, told LiveScience.

  • New Discovery About Fukushima's Radioactive Plume

    A radioactive plume of water in the Pacific Ocean from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant, which was crippled in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, will likely reach U.S. coastal waters starting in 2014, according to a new study. The long journey of the radioactive particles could help researchers better understand how the ocean’s currents circulate around the world. Ocean simulations showed that the plume of radioactive cesium-137 released by the Fukushima disaster in 2011 could begin flowing into U.S. coastal waters starting in early 2014 and peak in 2016.

  • This Might Be The Only Funny Thing About Natural Disasters

    Thankfully, that doesn’t mean FEMA can’t have a sense of humor when it comes to discussing disaster preparation! Through a partnership with the Ad Council, FEMA released these PSAs as part of their Ready campaign, a movement to help families be better prepared for emergency situations. The ads don’t utilize average straight-talking fear tactics.

  • Study Ties Global Warming ‘Hiatus' To Pacific Cooldown

    Scientists probing the mystery of the so-called "global warming hiatus" may have made a breakthrough. According to a new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, a persistent area of unusually cool sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean could explain why, despite ever-increasing amounts of manmade greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, global average surface temperatures have increased at a slower rate during the past 15 years. Global-mean temperature (ºC) and CO2 (ppm) for 1971-2012.Temperature is represented in terms of deviation from 1980-1999 average.

  • PHOTOS: Remembering Gus, The Central Park Zoo's Beloved Polar Bear

    Today is a sad day for animal lovers across the nation: Gus, the Central Park Zoo’s beautiful polar bear, has died. The 27-year-old bear was euthanized after veterinarians found an inoperable tumor near his thyroid, the Wildlife Conservation Society said in an emailed press release.

  • How Drought May Have Contributed To Yosemite Fire

    The massive Rim Fire near Yosemite National Park in California is an example of how drought can amplify wildfires in a warming, drying West. The fire, which now ranks as the 14th-largest wildfire in state history, has been racing through parched stands of oak and pine trees, and threatening some of the region’s iconic giant sequoia trees. The vegetation in the area, and indeed across much of central and southern California, is extremely dry, as the state has experienced its driest year-to-date.

  • The Calm Before The Storms

    Calls for an active 2013 Atlantic hurricane season, with six to nine hurricanes, have been met with silence by Mother Nature so far. Deadly typhoons pounded the Pacific Rim this month, but the Atlantic basin has been hurricane-free through late August. Six named tropical storms have appeared in the Atlantic since the beginning of hurricane season on June 1, but none have approached hurricane strength.