Building an Army of Oysters Around NYC To Mitigate Floods + Erosion Before commercial harvesting, oyster reefs used to compose more than 220,000 acres of New York’s coastline, acting as a natural flood-mitigation system in addition to increasing marine biodiversity. With these reefs’ destruction, New York is dangerously vulnerable to natural disasters—a threat that (as Hurricane Ida recently showed) is only growing. To protect the …
Samhain (which means “summer’s end” in Gaelic) is the ancient pagan festival that ushered in the beginning of winter and the Celtic new year. It also evolved into All Hallow’s Eve, and then Halloween. Centuries ago, it was believed that the veil between life and death was at its thinnest during the transition from October to November, allowing visits from spirits. To ward off unwelcome …
Scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian were recently awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their essential research, studying how humans sense their environment. Julius used capsaicin (the spice found in chili peppers) to discover how nerve cells respond to increasing levels of spice, while Patapoutian’s work uncovered a fundamental gene that illuminates how bodies translate stimuli. Both scientists, through independent research, relied on …
