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Sometimes conservation plans work so well that once-endangered species no longer need protection. That's the case in Central America, where the Morelet's crocodile ( Crocodylus moreletii ) has recovered enough that many of the protections put in place decades ago to help it are now on the verge of being lifted. Once heavily hunted for their skin, which was heavily valued as a source of high-quality leather, the Morelet's crocodile began its slow climb toward survival back in 1970, when Mexico (where most of the animals live) banned hunting of all crocodiles and caimans.

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It's a somber morning here at AccuWeather.com HQ while we report the news that over 230 people have been killed by yesterday's tornado outbreak, mainly in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. This is the deadliest outbreak since I was born in 1974, and it's a real shame that it can happen in this time of modern technology. Here are maps of the tornado and funnel cloud reports yesterday:

China's energy use should flatten out sometime around 2030, with a similar leveling off of its greenhouse gas emissions, a federal researcher said yesterday.

By Verna Gates TUSCALOOSA, Alabama (Reuters) - Tornadoes and violent storms ripped through seven southern states, killing more than 220 people as they flattened neighborhoods, flipped cars and toppled trees and power lines, officials said on Thursday. [More]

Most of us start out with the best of intentions. Then we walk right past the fruit bowl in search of the devil’s food cake.

There seems to be an explosion of concern over animal welfare these days. With growing awareness to factory farming conditions, Americans are at last faced with the recent histories of their burgers, their nuggets, their pork chops

As a filmmaker--albeit for the very small screen rather than the very large one--it was my supreme pleasure to interview legendary director Werner Herzog ( Grizzly Man, Rescue Dawn ) about his latest film Cave of Forgotten Dreams . Herzog's first foray into 3-D, the movie takes viewers on a journey through the Chauvet-Pont d'Arc Cave in the South of France, which contains perfectly preserved charcoal drawings, many of which date to 30,000 years ago. [More]

Charles Limb, a hearing and ear surgeon at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, studies jazz as a means of understanding what goes on "under the hood" when a musician is improvising.

For a limited time, the full text of this article is being made available for fans of Scientific American's page on Facebook. Read it now or become a fan

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER--If I'd jumped, I could have touched the belly of the Discovery. Of course, I would have then been escorted unceremoniously from the Orbiter Processing Facility. But I was that close.

The birth certificate in all its long-form glory has been revealed to a panting public. And so even the most hardcore so-called birther will now acknowledge that Barack Obama is legally entitled to serve as President of the United States, right

One-way mirrors, which many of us know from watching police procedurals on TV, seem a bit magical--how does the mirror know which light to let through and which to reflect? The truth is, it doesn't. The one-way mirror and its smaller cousin, the mirrored sunglass lens, rely on lighting imbalances for efficacy.

By Virginia Gewin of Nature magazine The closed eyes, the unresponsiveness, the drool--sleep is an easily recognizable, all-encompassing state.

Leprosy was one of the last things on dermatologist John Abide 's mind when a 78-year-old man walked in for a screening at the doctor's Greenville, Miss., practice. Unbeknownst to the man, two large red bumps had formed on his back.