When students arrive at Shoals Marine Laboratory on Appledore Island, Maine, many are chagrined to learn that they are restricted to two showers per week. In addition, those showers are taken in infamous "military style"—no basking in warm water coursing over their bodies after a long day hopping from rock to rock and slogging through cold, salty waves. Instead, they turn on the water only when needed. Not their usual style of bathing. And the water in the toilets? Not freshwater, but salt.

The worst spill in the history of oil development on Alaska’s North Slope last week shut down one of five petroleum-processing centers in the region while clean-up crews hurried to mitigate environmental damage. State officials estimate that as many as 260,000 gallons of crude from a leaking transit pipeline in an oil field jointly owned by ExxonMobil, BP and ConocoPhillips covered about two acres of frozen tundra near Prudhoe Bay. They expect the clean-up to take a couple of weeks, at which point operators will be able to re-open their processing center and restore production to pre-spill levels.

With the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee set to take up revisions to the Endangered Species Act, nearly 6,000 of the country’s most influential biologists, including six National Medal of Science recipients, signed onto a letter last week urging lawmakers to preserve those protections based on sound science. Many of the scientists who signed onto the letter, prepared by the Union of Concerned Scientists, are fearful that an extreme revision of the law as passed by the House last year could jeopardize the long-term viability of many of the species now protected by the landmark 1973 law.