Perhaps it's my tendency to root for the underdog, but I love to see researchers challenge long-standing scientific dogma. Some of my favorite underdogs of this variety include Copernicus who determined we live in a heliocentric solar system rather than a geocentric one and Marshall and Warren who discovered that ulcers are caused by Heliobacter
Earlier this spring, Buzz the Bee disappeared from Honey Nut Cheerios boxes in Canada. Burt's Bees dropped the letter B from its lip balm products. Are these clever marketing ploys? Perhaps, but they were designed with a more noble purpose in mind: to raise awareness of disappearing honeybees. And, it's not just companies with apian
Will my baby be healthy? How can I protect it? Is my child safe? For the 125 million pregnant women at risk of contracting malaria there is no need to imagine, this is the reality they face everyday — Tara Bracken Winner of the 2016 University of Georgia 3 Minute Thesis, Tara Bracken speaks about
“When you turned off Chestnut Grove Road towards the school, you went up another little road, and there were chestnut trees all up that road,†then 87-year-old Margaret Miller tells me while we sit sipping ice tea at her formica kitchen table in Meat Camp, North Carolina. “In the fall, if you got along first
Camels are rightfully known as “the ships of the desert†because of their impressive ability to carry up to 500 lbs on their back! While camels seem to conjure up images of pyramids and arid, desolate seas of sand dunes, they weren't always the quintessential desert-dwelling beasts that they are today. Camels actually originated in
I was always dimly aware of elephant poaching for ivory, but it didn't alarm me until I spent a year working as a tropical ecology research assistant in central Africa. I was in Gabon, a heavily forested small country in the heart of the Congo basin on Africa's west coast. Gabon is home to roughly
The Storms We Wield: The human superpower to change the weather Her eyes turn white. Winds pick up. Lightning engulfs the sky. Marvel's Storm is brewing; you'd better hope she's fighting for you. Storm's abilities to control the weather are among the most impressive and versatile powers in the comic universe. By manipulating thermal, electric,
How do you feed the world when the world doesn’t have the water to feed itself? — Rishi R. Masalia A finalist for the 2016 University of Georgia 3 Minute Thesis competition, Rishi R. Masalia talks about global water scarcity and how his PhD dissertation can help! If you’re interested in this topic and want
In 2012, food waste was the most abundant kind of waste produced in America (see chart below), beating even plastic and paper. This has led the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to choose food recovery as their theme for this year's Earth Week. Food waste affects multiple areas of the environment. Wasting food means wasting our
In December, the US and 194 other countries signed the Paris Agreement, vowing to work together to prevent worldwide temperatures from rising 2 degrees C (3.6 °F) above pre-industrial levels. Temperatures have already risen 0.8 °C (1.4 °F), and the planet is warming at approximately 0.15 – 0.20 °C per decade. Preventing further rises in
In the American West, clear skies look down on a bountiful expanse of land. The rumble of bison herds is now replaced with the soft lowing of cattle and a rising dissatisfaction from those that tend them. The recent armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon brought issues of public land management to national
Consumer plastics is an immense industry, with over 200 million tons produced annually. Of these plastics, 22-43% end up in a landfill, where they sit, inert, slowly breaking down into small particles that enter the environment and interfere in the life cycles of many animals, especially aquatic creatures like fish and zooplankton. This negatively impacts
