Lake Amatitlán is so green that it glows. “It looks like paint,” says Matthew Waters, a paleoecologist at the University of Auburn. Industrial pollution and sewage from Guatemala City trickles down into this valley in the highlands, feeding algal blooms that produce levels of toxic chemicals 100 times higher than the level considered dangerous by the World Health Organization. “It’s…
This week President Joe Biden signed into law a massive $1 trillion infrastructure bill, called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which puts billions of dollars into energy, climate resilience, and utility-grid updates, as well as measures to clean up pollution, increase access to safe drinking water, and boost electric vehicle charging stations. Still, the bill largely focuses on “traditional” infrastructure,…
For many families, this will be the first Thanksgiving they’ve been able to celebrate together in two years. Booster shots and vaccines for kids five and older mean that many of the most vulnerable relatives are better protected. But COVID is still circulating, and you might be wondering what you need to do to make sure your family is safe…
Late last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved COVID-19 booster shots for anyone over the age of 18. That decision capped off a chaotic week for booster eligibility, as multiple states offered boosters to anyone who wanted them in hopes of stopping a winter surge. As things stand now, the CDC says that anyone who is over…
Horticulturists, like theater directors, work behind the scenes. They don’t sign up to get booed. But during the summer of 2019 at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, its director of horticulture, Joe Charap, was chewed out by lot owners time and again. His offense? He had decided to stop mowing half of the site’s 400 acres of turf to reduce carbon emissions…
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Earth hasn’t been this hot in a very long time, and, unfortunately, is on track to get hotter. Now, a map of global climate going back 24,000 years recently published in Nature allows us to see those changes over this time period, mapped out across the planet. “This is the first time that…
Update: The news is official. (This post was originally published on Nov. 23, 2021.) Multiple outlets are reporting that Samsung is planning to open a new semiconductor factory in Texas—its second in both the state and the country. Reuters and the Wall Street Journal have identified Taylor, Texas as the possible location for the estimated $17 billion plant, citing sources…
This article has been excerpted from Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women’s Football League by Britni de la Cretaz and Lyndsey D’Arcangelo. Copyright © 2021. Available from Bold Type Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc. In October 1939, history was made as the first full-contact women’s football game to…
The $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act President Biden signed into law on Monday included more than $1.6 billion for a form of transportation that many people don’t think about much: ferries. While some Americans might consider ferries to be mere pleasure cruises, boarded during vacations for voyages to remote destinations, many people around the country rely on them…
Bees are essentially vegetarian wasps. Around a hundred million years ago, we know, the common ancestor of all modern bees was a hunter. But over the last 80 million years, bees have become vegetarians. Most get everything they need from flowers: They sip nectar to make honey, lick up floral oils, and pack protein-rich pollen into built-in pouches on their…