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WINDOW OF THE UNIVERSE Spread across 128 monitors at NASA's Advanced Supercomputing facility in California, colorized red and green nebulae span a vast region of our galaxy.  Called hyperwall-2, the system helps researchers visualize huge amounts…

A NEW GENERATION OF GIANT TELESCOPES WILL CARRY THE EYE TO THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE. The twin-mirrored Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona will deliver images ten times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope's.

This is what extinction looks like, and it's where all the animals in this series are headed if we don't make the effort to save them. Slipping away almost unnoticed, the dusky seaside sparrow - found mainly on Florida's Merritt Island - declined…

'The world wouldn't crumble without them,' says biologist Sandra Sneckenberger, 'but they're indicators of ecosystem health.' In faltering numbers, St. Andrew beach mice survive in Florida on dune habitat in public and private hands. If both sides…

The palm-size bog turtle, smallest in the country, now survives mostly on private lands. Adapted to soggy soils, the species suffers where wetlands are filled or groundwater is diverted. Fewer than 19,000 remain.

Beasts without boundaries, polar bears journey across the ice and through the seas from Russia to Alaska, Canada to Greenland, and onto the Svalbard archipelago. Once most threatened by hunters, the bears, which number some 22,000 across their range,…

Hawaii's state bird, the Ne-ne goose, is threatened by hunters and introduced predators. The US Fish and Wildlife service recently gave Ne-nes a helping hand by putting breeding geese in pens, restoring native plants, and closing off some parts of…

The red wolf was brought back from the brink of extinction in the 1970s when the US Fish and Wildlife Service captured fourteen wild individuals to start a captive breeding program. Over 200 wolves are now found in zoos and captive breeding…

Fewer than 6,000 yellowfin madtom remain in the pools and backwaters of the Tennessee River system. The species declined as its habitat was dammed, polluted, and contaminated with silt from erosion.

American burying beetles like dark, undisturbed areas rich in carrion. Nature's undertakers, they bury dead animals to feed their young. Their range is down from 35 states to 9; numbers are falling too. Estimates vary but some are as low as 2,500…