Winter storms can be both mesmerizing and menacing, painting the landscape white while simultaneously posing challenges to ...

Assessing the age of a living tree is straightforward enough—just extract a core from the tree's circular trunk and count the number of lines in the core formed by the tree's annual growth rings.

(See Create a DNA Fingerprint.) Every year a new ring of growth is added to a tree's trunk and branches, just beneath the bark. The thickness of this ring depends on how much the tree grows during ...