Plastic panic in the pandemic: How single-use items meant to protect us will harm the planet
By Zack Fishman Medill Reports When a COVID-19 patient is hospitalized at the George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C., they receive a lot of attention from healthcare workers. Whether it’s a nurse doing an hourly check-in or a team of doctors responding to a worsening condition, a medical professional enters a patient’s space about […]
Guided through stress: Chicago intervention program mentors youth past poverty-related trauma
By Zack Fishman Medill Reports On a sunny afternoon in early March, two graduate students, Elizabeth Sargent and Diana Chaidez, supervise an after-school program for 10 students in the school library at Wentworth Elementary School, located on Chicago’s Southwest Side in Englewood. The sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders sit at round tables, accompanied by a similar […]
Tomorrow’s fossils will represent fewer species, more humans
By Zack Fishman Medill Reports The piping plover, an endangered shore bird that spends summers on the Great Lakes and the Atlantic coast, is recovering as a species. After more than a century of game hunting and habitat destruction, conservation efforts have helped bring back the population of the small sand-colored bird to more than […]
Blurring borders: A Chicago-based Turkish artist explores changing identities, gender-based art
By Zack Fishman Medill Reports Hale Ekinci’s portraits don’t have faces. Her life-size paper images depict blank-slate figures surrounded by collages of Turkish culture: military lineups, women’s protests, wedding celebrations. In other pieces Ekinci obscures already blurred faces in textile-mounted family photos with small black dots. And in more than a dozen of her creations, […]
Climate science pioneer Wallace Broecker memorialized at namesake symposium
By Zack Fishman Medill Reports The locked office of the late climate scientist Wallace “Wally” Broecker displays a wooden ship’s wheel, mounted on a window-paneled wall behind his former desk. The wheel overlooks the forested campus of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, where Broecker conducted research for nearly 70 years. It originated from one of […]
‘Grandfather of climate change’ Wally Broecker remembered at climate conference
By Zack Fishman Medill Reports Dozens of scientists convene every year at the Comer Climate Conference to share new research about rising oceans and melting glaciers, both today and in the past. The event, funded by the family of late billionaire philanthropist Gary Comer, has been organized since 2004 by famed climate scientists Wallace Broecker, […]
Greenland ‘ice tongue’ at risk of melting away — again
By Zack Fishman Medill Reports A 30-mile-long strip of sea ice in northwest Greenland, once thought to be a permanent structure, didn’t exist until 2,000 years ago, according to newly published research from researchers at Oregon State University. The findings suggest that some of the Arctic may melt more quickly in today’s warming climate than […]
Meet Chicago’s latest teen climate leader
By Zack Fishman Medill Reports “The oceans are rising, and so are we!” chanted a group of more than 50 teenagers marching toward Chicago City Hall. Clad in black, the high school protesters took over sidewalks on Oct. 7, walking the half-mile from Trump Tower to Daley Plaza as they demanded the city declare a […]
Renowned geoscientist talks climate research, renewable solutions
By Zack Fishman Medill Reports Richard Alley caught a cold while flying to southwest Wisconsin for the annual Comer Climate Conference land, hosted each fall by the Comer Family Foundation. But the illness didn’t stop the seasoned scientist from celebrating each research presentation with emphatic words of encouragement, and he used his closing speech to […]
