Seven billion people share one percent of Earth’s water. What’s more worrisome: our demand for freshwater increases every day. Advances in desalination have promised access to the oceans’ vast supply, but the majority of desalination facilities burn fossil fuels and
Wiggle your fingers. There should be ten of them. Now wiggle your toes. Still ten, right? We’re obviously not the only species that have digits. Birds have digits too. However, the development of their digits and consequently their wings is
Due to human activity, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continue to rise, contributing to increased global temperatures, rising sea levels, and other devastating environmental consequences. Salt marshes, widely found in coastal regions, are known to reduce CO2 levels by
“I had no idea what I wanted to do—what does a computer scientist do with forests?” As it turns out, John Aber (BK ‘71, M.F.S. ‘73, PhD ‘76), professor in the Department of Natural Resources and Environment at the University
How much do you think about algae? Unless you regularly eat seaweed snacks, likely not much. However, algae—albeit green and slimy—is more than meets the eye, and this tiny organism might even have an important role in shaping our future.
Earth is remarkable in countless ways, but particularly for providing a home to the only known living creatures in the universe. That Earth has the building blocks for life is extraordinary, but how did these circumstances come about? New research
Jorge Silva Leon and a team of researchers at the University of Manchester recently published a paper in Applied Energy on a technology that generates energy on a much smaller scale than ususal—the microgrid. Powering the ever-expanding microgrid of mobile
Have you ever experienced an earthquake? Because many earthquakes are small and can go by unnoticed, the answer for most people is yes. A common misconception about earthquakes is that they are always associated with ruptured pavement, collapsed buildings, and
When we think about bacteriophages, we don’t typically think of cooperation. Commonly represented with six legs and a big “head”, bacteriophages can look more like a bug than a microbial predator. Bacteriophages, a type of virus, attack by injecting their
Forest fires, while harmful for individual plants, offer restorative benefits for an ecosystem. Flammability, therefore, may be an example of group selection, a process by which a trait that may not be advantageous for individuals may become prevalent if it
