"NASA is getting ready to turn its scientific instruments toward our home planet with a trio of Earth-observing missions set to launch in 2014."

"ATLANTA -- If Georgia was starting from scratch, it would not build a nuclear power plant. That conclusion from a state financial analyst illustrates how an anticipated boom in nuclear power turned into a bust as natural gas prices fell."

"DENVER -- Colorado regulators looking at new air quality rules for oil and gas drillers are getting more time to set the rules."

"The University of California at Berkeley cut laboratory financing this week for a professor who has complained for years about corporate-led retaliation for his association of health risks with a widely used herbicide."  The herbicide is atrazine.

"ANGELICA, N.Y. — Questions about the integrity of official water tests are stirring the latest controversy over New York State’s embattled policy of allowing imports of radioactive waste from natural gas drilling operations in Pennsylvania."

"WASHINGTON -- States cannot shut down nuclear plants over safety worries, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled on Wednesday, upholding a lower court’s decision that allowed the Vermont Yankee plant to keep running despite a seven-year effort by the Vermont Legislature to close it."

"For auto companies, that Environmental Protection Agency-approved MPG sticker on a new car is a high stakes and expensive process. These days it can be damaging to a company's image if customers can't achieve that great fuel economy in their own commutes."

"Jimmy Carter put up solar panels in 1979, then Ronald Reagan took them down in 1986. Now the Obama administration is fulfilling a long-delayed promise to put solar panels back on the White House."

"WASHINGTON, DC -- The first new carnivore species to be identified in the American continents in 35 years was introduced to the public today by the Smithsonian Institution scientist who recognized it from skins and skulls tucked away in the collection of the Chicago Field Museum."

"MIDLAND, Mich. -- As Dow Chemical’s chief executive, Andrew N. Liveris has made himself into something of an outcast among his fellow business leaders. The reason? He is spearheading a public campaign against increased exports of natural gas, which he sees as a threat to a manufacturing renaissance in the United States, not to mention his own company’s bottom line."