Articles by Grist staff

Scientists using consumers’ computing power to develop new solar cell

Researchers at IBM and Harvard University launched a project recently that aims to use a network of consumers’ home computers to run calculations that could lead to new, more efficient solar panels. “It’s a way for people that have computers to do some good for the world,” said Joe Jasinski of IBM.

Anti-air-travel activists stage protest on U.K. airport runway

More than 50 environmental activists from anti-air-travel group Plane Stupid were arrested Monday in a protest at Stansted Airport in the United Kingdom, some 40 miles from downtown London. The activists broke into a restricted area where planes taxi between takeoff and landing and chained and barricaded themselves in place, declaring their opposition to a […]

U.S. Justice Dept says DoD can’t refuse to clean up toxic sites

In an unexpected move this week, the U.S. Justice Department sided with the EPA in its long-running dispute with the Defense Department over clean up of three ultra-contaminated Superfund sites in Florida, Maryland, and New Jersey. In a Dec. 1 letter to the DoD, the Justice Department argued that the agency has no legal grounds […]

Are Christmas trees really ever green?

"Can you decorate your Fraser fir without getting pesticide residue in your lungs and on your skin?" The NYT answers: Sure, if the tree is certified organic by the Department of Agriculture. Or if it is a Certified Naturally Grown tree, which meets the same basic requirements: it was raised without synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, […]