Environment

Worlds of purple: Reimagining photosynthesis on distant planets

Environment / /

With rapidly improving space-based telescopes, the search for extraterrestrial life is becoming more feasible. As of 2025, NASA has confirmed the existence of over 5800 exoplanets, with over 30 considered to be potentially Earth-like. Yet, despite advances in data collection capabilities, one question remains hotly contested: What characteristic features should a planet with life have? […]

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Magicicada

Environment / /

In the summer of 2024, two tribes consisting of billions of warriors emerged from the ground in the South and Midwest US regions. These clans were Brood XIII and Brood IX, two families of periodical cicadas that surfaced simultaneously in an event not witnessed for over two centuries. Although these insects were destined to die

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Danger beneath the surface: How climate change has expanded the geographical range of waterborne pathogens

Environment, Health / /

It’s the Fourth of July in Boston, and residents seek respite from the urban heat island inferno. The commuter rail offers a great escape: the ocean. Just a short train ride away residents can cool down on the North Shore, lay on the hot sand, and settle into a favorite beach read. But a faraway

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Flowers smell bad (but not how you think!)

Environment / /

Stopping to smell the roses may seem like a purposeless pastime, but for pollinators, it’s their entire lives. Communicating largely through smell and pheromones, insects with limited vision rely heavily on recognizable scent profiles to identify and locate their lunch. Over millions of years, plants and pollinators have engaged in co–evolution — adapting and evolving

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Getting Pretty Thirsty: ChatGPT’s hidden water footprint

Environment, Technology / /

One bottle of water to generate a 100-word email using GPT-4. This is the hidden cost, on average, of outsourcing our everyday tasks to ChatGPT’s newest large language model.  Artificial intelligence (AI) models require immense amounts of water for server cooling and electricity generation, which raises concerns in an era of freshwater scarcity. By 2030,

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Humboldt’s enigma: The mysteriously rich biodiversity of mountain ecosystems

Environment / /

What comes to mind when picturing a mountain landscape? Beautiful scenery of towering peaks and rolling valleys? Howling winds, icy slopes, and jagged rock formations? Thriving life, including thousands of different plants and animals? In fact, the surprisingly rich biodiversity of mountain habitats has important implications for the health of these ecosystems and humans across

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The unthinkable: Climate change-triggered earthquakes

Environment / /

As the climate warms, recent research has revealed an unsettling possibility: melting glaciers may awaken dormant faults, triggering earthquakes in regions long thought to be geologically stable. The immense weight of glaciers has suppressed seismic activity for years, but rising temperatures may unleash more frequent earthquakes. And no, this is not the plot of a

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