For National Geographic Daily News

The Rich Earth Institute in Brattleboro, Vermont, aims to shift how we think about our own waste. They want to "close the nutrient cycle" by using our urine to grow what we next consume.

Today, most human waste in the U.S. flows down the pipes to a facility such as DC Water's Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant, the largest facility of its kind in the world. Blue Plains receives an average of 370 million gallons of wastewater, 94 percent of which is from residential sources in the District of Columbia and parts of Maryland and Virginia. This includes what washes down the kitchen drain, fills up washing machines, and flushes down toilets.

Once at Blue Plains, it all goes through a multistage process in which it is passed from pool to pool of various hues of reddish brown, where the liquid is stirred, bubbled, fed to algae, and filtered until it is clean enough to get dumped back into the Potomac River.

Much of what this process is doing is removing nitrogen and phosphorous, elements that can be pollutants when too much of them get into our rivers and oceans. But they are also essential nutrients for plant growth—and thus, two of the basic components of fertilizer.

For National Geographic Daily News

Note: I reported and wrote this story in about four hours.

As the ice storm that pummeled much of the United States on Thursday continues to lock the country in a deep freeze, some areas may be more ready than others to deal with the consequences.

That's because a new index is under development that can be used to categorize expected damage from ice storms, dangerous phenomena that occur when rain freezes on contact with the ground or other surfaces. (Read more about weather and natural disasters.)

Scientists didn't actually kill the world's oldest animal, a clam, just to find out how old it was.

For National Geographic Daily News

Consternation over the death of the world's oldest-recorded animal, a 507-year-old clam nicknamed Ming, has earned marine researchers unhappy headlines worldwide.

But a closer look at the story—"Clam-gate," as the BBC called it—finds the tempest over Ming a bit overblown. (Also see "Clams: Not Just for Chowder.")

News of the clam's death, first noted in 2007, took on a life of its own this week after researchers led by James Scourse, from the United Kingdom's Bangor University, reanalyzed its age and announced the 507-year estimate.

Contrary to news reports, the researchers say they did not kill the elderly clam for the ironic-seeming purpose of finding out its age.

for National Geographic Daily News

It was a storm of epic proportions: The tornado that hit El Reno, Oklahoma, was as wide as Manhattan, spun off subvortices as fast as NASCAR drivers circle a track, and had some of the strongest winds ever measured. It took the lives of three highly experienced storm chasers. Yet it's going down in the record books as a mundane EF3.

The reason: The May 31 storm just didn't do enough damage to achieve a higher Enhanced Fujita (EF) rating. Now weather scientists are asking if the rating system needs an overhaul in the age of mobile Doppler radar and other sophisticated tracking techniques, and some are pressing for a new rating formula that would include measurements of maximum wind speeds.