Plankton make up 98 percent of the biomass of ocean life and
provide half of the oxygen on the planet. Scientists are working
to figure out how climate change may be affecting these
important microorganisms. Credit S. Bollet / Tara Expeditions
The 118-foot research schooner Tara made an around-the-world
expedition over 21/2 years. Scientists aboard discovered up to a
million new species of plankton. Now begins the work of
determining how climate change might be affecting these
microorganisms. President Obama and his Republican challenger,
Mitt Romney, are prepping for Wednesday's presidential debate.
It's a well-worn tradition now, but it wasn't always that way.
The 1960 Kennedy-Nixon face-off wasn't just the first televised
presidential debate, it was also the first presidential debate
in more than a century. Four years earlier, a young German
emigre named Fred Kahn, a student at the University of Maryland,
wanted to see whether the nominees — Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai
Stevenson — might want to engage with