Environment

Quite a few of the 225 people who live in Dish, Texas, think the nation's natural gas boom is making them sick.

They blame the chemicals used in gas production for health problems ranging from nosebleeds to cancer.

And the mayor of Dish, Bill Sciscoe, has a message for people who live in places where gas drilling is about to start: "Run. Run as fast as you can. Grab up your family and your belongings, and get out."

But scientists say it's just not clear whether pollutants from gas wells are hurting people in Dish or anywhere else. What is clear, they say, is that the evidence the town has presented so far doesn't have much scientific heft.

'This Place Was Absolutely Beautiful'

Matt Tocheri knows hobbits pretty well: he’s been studying their wristbones for years.

Well, not quite hobbits, per se, but homo floresiensis, a hominid fossil discovered on the island of Flores in Indonesia, which at first glance appeared to be a small version of a modern human. However, researchers argue that these ‘hobbits’ are in fact h. floresiensis, and make up a new branch of the human evolutionary tree.

On Thursday’s Central Standard, we embark on the next installment in our three part series looking at how we find water in our city. This time we look to the lakes and rivers, where fishers cast their nets, canoes glide across the water, and boaters set sail.

Also, find out more about our new interactive map and how to join our water photo contest.

Often described in the media as “a female Indiana Jones,” Mireya Mayor is not your typical scientist.

Both as an anthropologist working in the jungles of Madagascar, and as a wildlife correspondent for National Geographic, the city girl and former Miami Dolphins cheerleader has found herself sleeping in a rain forest hammock amid poisonous snakes, being charged by gorillas, scaling rocky cliffs, and diving with great white sharks.

A replacement bridge on a busy thoroughfare in Midtown Kansas City, is not something that would normally merit much notice, let alone celebration. 

If you spent some time outside in the Brookside or Waldo area of town this weekend, chances are you saw people planting trees.  They are trying to replace thousands of trees that are disappearing from our neighborhoods.