October 30, 2019

Shining some light on the science of vampires

This Halloween, as you see kids dressed up as zombies or witches, threatening neighbors into giving them candy it's easy to forget that these terrifying creatures once had a less sugary purpose: in the absence of modern science, our ancestors needed a supernatural technique to explain the plagues and diseases that reason couldn't. One of

Saving the world’s seeds, ex situ

The imposing structure of the Svalbard seed bank is familiar to many. This “doomsday” vault (ahem, already breached by climate change) is humanity's last resort for preserving the seeds of our crops and plants. But how did this bastion of biodiversity arise? Nikolai Vavilov, a 20th century Russian agronomist and geneticist, established the first modern

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