For most humans, life on these jagged islands off the coast of San Francisco would be a nightmare: Waves lash the shore with treacherous force, the stench of guano fills the air, and the screech of seagulls is so loud that resident scientists wear earplugs to bed. […]

A new category of adventure travel—from tracking lions in Kenya to walking with elephants in Thailand—is now on the menu at Airbnb as the home-sharing startup expands its offerings. […]

Free fingers have many obvious advantages on land, such as in locomotion and grasping, while webbed fingers are typical of aquatic or gliding animals. But both amphibians and amniotes—which include mammals, reptiles, and birds—can have webbed digits. In new research from Japan, scientists show for the first time that during embryo development, some animal species detect the presence of atmospheric oxygen, which triggers removal of interdigital webbing. Their research appears June 13 […]

A joint Russian-Omani paper was published in Journal of Hydrology. In the 1950s, Russian academician Vladimir Kunin, one of the founders of the Institute of Water Problems in Moscow and the Institute of Deserts in Ashkhabad, discovered and described fresh water lenses in the Karakum desert of Turkmenistan. These lenses float on the top of saline and hypersaline groundwater. The genesis of these lenses and factors controlling fresh water storage, circulation in the lenses, and their resilience […]

For generations, Kaltuma Hassan's clan would study the sky over Kenya's arid north for any sign of rain—some wind here, a wisp of cloud there—to guide their parched livestock to water. […]