Eighty percent of antibiotics used in the U.S. are used on livestock to help prevent disease and make them grow large quickly. But some say this low dose, non-medical use of antibiotics in agriculture is causing bacteria to evolve to become resistant and putting human health at risk. As Living on Earth’s Jessica Ilyse Kurn reports, it’s now up to the courts to decide whether to limit the non-therapeutic use of drugs on animals.

Spring rains bring out the green and help water crops. And in south-central Nebraska, they provide watering grounds for migrating birds. BirdNote®’s Michael Stein has more.

The desert winds blow through the old rusted hangar in Utah where the Enola Gay, the airplane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, was once housed.

The number of children born with autism is skyrocketing. Now new evidence links the role of genetics to autism. Mark Daly, director of Harvard’s Program in Medical and Population Genetics, has found a genetic mutation that significantly contributes to the disorder. And Irva Hertz-Picciotto, the principal investigator at the center for Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and the Environment at UC Davis, surveys possible environmental factors. Daly and Hertz-Picciotto speak with host Bruce Gellerman.

A team from Google recently went to the Amazon to make a "street view" of the forest and river for Google Maps. Karin Tuxen-Bettman is a geo data strategist at Google. She talks with host Bruce Gellerman about taking street view photos in a place with no streets.

New research verifies the link between pesticides and the demise of honey bee hives, also known as bee colony collapse disorder.

It’s springtime and the birds – make that the mice – are singing. As Living on Earth’s Mary Bates reports, researchers have found that male house mice sing complex ultrasonic songs when courting females.

There are as many as 60 uncontacted tribes living in the Amazon rainforest. National Geographic writer Scott Wallace spent three months in the Amazon, looking for signs of native people living there. He talks about his new book “The Unconquered” and tells host Bruce Gellerman about his trek through the forest.

Poet Janice Harrington writes of how we see what’s around us, and the immediacy and intensity of family, in her poem “What There Was.”

Health officials try to stay a step ahead of viruses and bacteria in order to prevent their spread and the possibility of a pandemic. Scientists at Virginia Tech are now taking things further. They’ve created a computer model that realistically simulates the spread of disease and may be an impo rtant tool when real pandemics happen. From IEEE Spectrum’s “Responding to Disasters: From Prediction to Recovery” special, Prachi Patel has our report.