Tiny eel-like creatures called nematodes are surrounding us. While they can be free-living (a cup of soil or seawater contains thousands), the most well-known nematodes are the parasitic kind that wreak havoc in people, animals and plants.

Researchers at North Carolina State University have found a specific gene in corn that appears to be associated with resistance to two and possibly three different plant leaf diseases.

For nearly a century, the O’Shaughnessy seawall has held back the sand and seas of San Francisco’s Ocean Beach. At work even longer: the Galveston seawall, built after America’s deadliest hurricane in 1900 killed thousands in Texas.

Tropical Storm Greg appears to be less-rounded and more elongated on satellite imagery from NOAA's GOES-West satellite. Greg is still over 1,500 miles east of Hawaii.

Earlier this year Arctic sea ice sank to a record low wintertime extent for the third straight year. Now NASA is flying a set of instruments north of Greenland to observe the impact of the melt season on the Arctic's oldest and thickest sea ice.

A new study on mosses found in the polar regions reveals when and how often they have migrated across the Equator.

Mosses are the dominant flora in Antarctica, yet little is known of when and how they got there. The majority of Antarctica’s moss flora (~45% of species) has a curious distribution pattern – a pattern with species only occupying regions in the high latitudes of both hemispheres, with no or very small populations at higher elevations in the tropical regions. This non-continuous distribution pattern has puzzled scientists, including biologists such as Darwin and Wallace, since the 19th century.

This summer, NOAA and partner scientists will conduct their most collaborative ocean acidification sampling of the Gulf of Mexico yet. Set to depart today, July 18th, the Gulf of Mexico Ecosystems and Carbon Cruise (GOMECC-3) will travel through international waters with 24 scientists from the United States, Mexico and Cuba on board.

A new research tool to safeguard drinking water is now keeping a watchful eye on Lake Erie. This week, a robotic lake-bottom laboratory began tracking the levels of dangerous toxins produced by cyanobacteria that bloom each summer in the lake's western basin.

The goal is to provide advance warning to municipal drinking water managers and thereby prevent a recurrence of the water crisis that left more than 400,000 Toledo-area residents without safe drinking water for about two days in early August 2014 due to high levels of microcystin toxins.

Three new species of toads have been discovered living in Nevada's Great Basin in an expansive survey of the 190,000 square mile ancient lake bottom. Discoveries of new amphibians are extremely rare in the United States with only three new frog species discovered since 1985 - and toad species are even more rare, with the last species discovered north of Mexico, the now extinct Wyoming toad, in 1968.

"We've found the toads in small, wet habitats surrounded by high-desert completely cut off from other populations," Dick Tracy, a renowned biology professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, and lead scientist on the project, said. "These are absolutely new, true species that have been separated from other populations for 650,000 years."

Imagine slipping into a jacket, shirt or skirt that powers your cell phone, fitness tracker and other personal electronic devices as you walk, wave and even when you are sitting down.

A new, ultrathin energy harvesting system developed at Vanderbilt University’s Nanomaterials and Energy Devices Laboratory has the potential to do just that. Based on battery technology and made from layers of black phosphorus that are only a few atoms thick, the new device generates small amounts of electricity when it is bent or pressed even at the extremely low frequencies characteristic of human motion.