Scientists follow clues in Alaska to illnesses moving from animals to humans
By Samantha Yadron Medill Reports Medill News Service journalist Samantha Yadron is an embedded journalist with scientists from the University of Anchorage, Alaska, reporting on the dangers of micro-plastics to wildlife consuming it. In this blog, she follows scientists with the One Health initiative on a multinational research tour gathering clues about the transfer of […]
A glimpse into the atmosphere – Balloons still at the forefront of forecasting
By Morgan Levey Medill Reports Norman, Oklahoma. Just around the corner from the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma, a small cylinder-block building with antennas and a sphere on the roof marks the site of crucial weather data collection. Reinforced to withstand a gas explosion, it’s the base for Norman’s daily weather balloon launch. Yes, […]
Space-like chambers deliver the wetlands of a warmer world
By Mollie McNeel Medill Reports Wetlands are typically filled with the sounds of crickets chirping, bees buzzing and frogs croaking. But at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) in Maryland, those are all accompanied by the whirring of motor-powered pumps. The pumps drive air from hexagonal carbon dioxide chambers to a greenhouse gas analyzer, helping […]
Is Your Plant Dead or Just Dormant?
Mollie McNeel Medill Reports If a gardener tells you that their plants had died and now have come back to life years later, you might think they’ve gone crazy. But actually, they may be on to something. Some fully-grown plants can “hibernate” in the soil for up to 20 years, researchers from the Smithsonian Environmental […]
Getting to know sharks one tag at a time
Mollie McNeel Medill Reports Sharks. They’re everyone’s favorite underwater enemy. Between nerve-wracking drama’s like Jaws to stories about prehistoric mega-sharks, we have all but made the shark species a completely fictionalized being. But, scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland, are changing that one tag at a time. May 14, 2018—Our shark […]
Always on alert! Two days in the national Storm Prediction Center
By Morgan Levey Medill Reports Medill News Service reporter and Comer Scholar Morgan Levey spent two days in the NOAA Storm Prediction Center (SPC) located in the National Weather Center building in Oklahoma. The SPC is responsible for monitoring severe weather — thunderstorms and tornadoes — for the entire country. Staffed around the clock by […]
Shell stuff: Monitoring the health of California’s shellfish amid climate change
This is the second is a series about Medill News Service reporter Rebecca Fanning’s embedded reporting experience at UC Davis’ Bodega Marine Lab in Bodega Bay, California. Read the original post here. By Rebecca Fanning Endangered black abalone receive an aromatic spa treatment while hundreds of baby oysters float in tiny cages next to winding […]
The hunt for the return of the river herring
Medill News Service journalist Mollie McNeel is writing a series of stories from embedded reporting with field researchers for the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland. By Mollie McNeel Medill Reports May 9, Potapsco River, Maryland. – I am out here standing waist deep in the middle of a roaring river, straddling a net […]
Tracking marine life on the edge of the Pacific
By Rebecca Fanning Medill Reports Bodega Bay, California. I’ve spent the past several weeks working with marine ecologists –holding tiny porcelain crabs, named for their propensity for losing limbs, picking seaweed out of small buckets to be dried and weighed for an animal diet experiment, peering through microscopes at fish larvae and gazing at baby […]
Special tradition in a special lacrosse rivalry
By Nick Mantas Medill Reports Every rivalry has it’s own pageantry and traditions that make it unique. The rivalry between New Trier High School and Loyola Academy has less to do with disdain and more to do with distance. The schools are less than a mile apart. Their proximity carries onto the field. The two […]
