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Man's best friend is a hospital superbug's worst enemy

Dogs can do amazing things from sniffing out bombs to hunting rabbits. But Angus, a 3-year-old English springer spaniel, is a detection dog like no other. In 2016, Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) in Canada introduced this four-legged bacteria fighter to help detect Clostridium difficile (C. diff) in their hospitals. According to the Centers for Disease

Microplastics: A Macro Problem for Our Oceans

Ever wonder where those little plastic beads in your face wash end up? Or what happens to all the plastic bottles that don't wash up on your local beach? Well, they may end up in one of the five oceanic garbage gyres, or they may just wander about in the water column or on the

The Language of Music

What is it with humans and music? We sing our babies to sleep and compose endless cascades of love songs. We get melodies involuntarily wedged in our heads. We spontaneously break into song in the shower, hum while cooking, sing in the rain, and whistle in the dark. Yet despite our collective obsession with music,

Growing plants in space: not just an academic adventure

On December 15, 2017, Alexander “Al” Meyers waited patiently at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to hear the deafening roar of a Falcon 9 rocket signifying the start of the launch. Delayed over a month for technical issues, the successful launch of the SpaceX CRS-13 mission was essential for Al Meyers, as nestled inside were seeds that are potentially critical to the future of space exploration.

Fake it til' You Make It

I'm less than 5 days away from graduating at UGA. The culmination of the last four years of my life is an exciting, bittersweet moment: a time of congratulatory messages followed by the dreaded question, “what are you going to do next?”.

Could oysters be the new corals of climate conservation?

“Scientists Announce That The Great Barrier Reef Is Officially Terminal.” This is the jarring headline for a recent article citing some of Australia's top coral researchers on the realities of one of the world's most coveted natural systems. This type of prognosis has become eerily familiar in recent years as we've learned about the resounding

Science in your Laundry Detergent

When I was a kid, if I got a grass stain or a blood stain on my clothes it was probably not coming out no matter how much presoaking and hand scrubbing was involved. Nowadays, if I get food on my clothes, I admonish myself for being clumsy then throw it in the wash with some liquid detergent and hope that it magically comes out looking new. It still amazes me that it usually does. How have laundry detergents improved their cleaning efficacy so much in just the last few decades?

The EDGES Story: How Scientists Detected Effects of Light from the First Stars

In March 2018, a team of scientists led by Judd Bowman from Arizona State's School of Earth and Space Exploration and Alan Rogers from MIT's Haystack Observatory has done what many thought to be an impossible task. With a small radio antenna called EDGES (Experiment to Detect the Global Epoch of Recombination Signature) placed in

W(H+)AT’S IN YOUR WATER, ATHENS?

Cover photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/121935927@N06/13579500953/ Water is something we all use every day in Athens. We shower with it, brush our teeth with it, water our gardens with it, and of course, we drink our tap water, too. Most of us don’t even think twice about taking a drink from our taps, but at the same time,

Troubling the Water

On August 31, 1854, an outbreak of cholera occurred along Broad Street (now Broadwick Street) in London. Over the next three days, 127 people living in the area died; the count rose to 500 a week later. Most of the nearby residents fled the area, fearing they would also be infected. Instead of fleeing with them,

Tired ‘Round the (Circadian) Clock

Everyone knows what it's like to feel tired. If you're a student, you probably know what it means to feel completely exhausted. You likely could also pinpoint exactly why you are exhausted – you stayed up cramming all night for that big test, or just couldn't turn off Netflix even though you had class early

2017-2018 Monarch Numbers Down: A Battle on Two Fronts

This year's overwintering monarch butterfly population experienced a 14.77% decrease from the previous winter, following the trend of steady decline observed over the past two decades. These overwintering monarchs represent the individuals that survived the long-distance migration from as far north as Canada all the way down to Mexico. Causes of Decline There are several

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