Environment

What are Spotted Lanternflies, Why You Should Kill Them, and What Haverford Researchers Are Doing to Fight Them
Features

What are Spotted Lanternflies, Why You Should Kill Them, and What Haverford Researchers Are Doing to Fight Them

Sooyeon Jung

Are you not from the Mid-Atlantic? Have you been terrorized by a brown, spotted bug with the thick black legs? Congratulations, you are in the spotted lanternfly’s hotspot, where this invasive species first came to America a few years ago. Learn more about this insect and what is being done to prevent the spread of its population.

A mature spotted lanternfly. Photo by Matt Rourke on AP Images, via CNN.  Have you seen an insect with dots crawling on campus? When you try to kill it, does it jump and become a bright, flashing red? Does this insect escape easily, and when it does you feel deeply unsettled? Do your pacifist friends yell out when you try to stomp on it? Well, welcome to Pennsylvania, where the invasive species, the spotted lanternfly has completely taken over the state. Learn more about them, and why you are right in killing them. If you are not from around Pennsylvania...
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A Look into Mathematical Biology
Features

A Look into Mathematical Biology

Emily Almgren

Ever wonder how mathematics is used in biology? Professor Rebecca Everett uses differential equations to create mathematical models that represent biological systems. The models provide insight into these systems and predict long-term behavior.

Professor Everett (left) and her research students Maya Gong ‘23, Logan Post ‘23, and Anay Mehta ‘23 (left to right) presenting at Texas Tech University in 2021. The real world is full of complex biological relationships. A rabbit population might fluctuate depending on the fox population, the amount of edible plants, and the spread of disease. Mathematical biologists like Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics Rebecca Everett make sense of these relationships using mathematical models. She explains that the mathematical models she creates represent biological systems much like a model airplane represents a real airplane. They are not perfect copies...
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The Extraordinary and Disastrous Eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai Volcano
News

The Extraordinary and Disastrous Eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai Volcano

Ashley Schefler

The eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai Volcano in January 2022 was the largest our planet has seen in decades, wreaking destruction on the island nation of Tonga in which the volcano resides. Studies of this volcano can help us understand the causes and effects of such massive eruptions, and may even give insight into the geological processes that have shaped the landscape of Mars.

Media from NASA Earth Observatory On January 15, 2022, the largest volcanic eruption in decades devastated the island nation of Tonga in the South Pacific Ocean. The blast released a massive amount of energy, equivalent to between 4 and 18 megatons of TNT, which is hundreds of times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The explosion created a low-frequency pressure wave that circled the Earth, causing the entire atmosphere to oscillate. Ash has coated the islands, causing a serious shortage of clean drinking water, and a tsunami caused by the eruption wrought widespread damage. The effect on...
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Don’t Look Up: A Scientific Review
Science in Society

Don’t Look Up: A Scientific Review

Kate Braverman

How realistic is Don’t Look Up? What does it tell us about NASA, the importance of peer review, and asteroid-fighting technology in the real world? (Warning: Spoilers Ahead!)

Don’t Look Up, a film released on Netflix in December 2021, provided a metaphorized take on the relationship between the scientific community, the political sphere, and the public in regard to climate change. In a fictionalized United States, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), an astronomer at Michigan State University, and his PhD student, Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), try to warn the public about a comet, first discovered by Dibiasky, scheduled to collide with the Earth in six months. Encountering the ineffectual POTUS Orlean (Meryl Streep) anda CEO tech billionaire, Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance), only concerned with making a profit, Mindy...
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How does wind happen?
Columns Quirky Queries

How does wind happen?

Simon Thill

Have you ever wondered how wind happens? This short article describes the cause of wind and some of its patterns.

Hurricane Katrina. Courtesy of NOAA Quirky Queries answers your random science questions. If you have a query, let us know! — This is an excellent question, and one that I was curious about myself when I was younger. I would often ask my parents scientific questions, and they would do their best to respond, sometimes without actually knowing the correct answer. When I asked this same question, my parents told me something along the lines of “wind is caused by the rotation of the Earth.” While the Earth’s rotation does play a significant role in wind and weather patterns, this is not...
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The Colorado Wildfires: How Climate Change is Changing Wildfires
News

The Colorado Wildfires: How Climate Change is Changing Wildfires

Celeste Cubbage

Recent wildfires in the west are just another example of how wildfire seasons are not only increasing, but also becoming more common all over the country. As weather conditions continue to change due to the global climate crisis, more extreme events such as drought and heat waves cause new areas to become susceptible to the possibility of wildfires.

2020 Colorado Wildfire. Photo by Malachi Brooks, via Unsplash. In 2022, as of early February, there have already been 2,388 fires that have burned a total of 40,822 acres across the U.S., surpassing a 10-year average of 1,924 fires and 38,501 acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. In 2021, the state of California faced unprecedented fires that raged throughout the year, burning a total of 2.5 million acres and changing officials’ definition of the “fire season” to a “fire year.” One of the most recent catastrophic wildfires occured on December 30th of last year, when a suburban neighborhood...
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Parthenogenesis: Virgin Births Provide Hope for the Endangered California Condor
News

Parthenogenesis: Virgin Births Provide Hope for the Endangered California Condor

Isabel Thornberry

California condors are a species that have hovered on the brink of extinction for decades, and captive breeding programs established in the 1980s have brought the species’ numbers back from just 22 in 1982 to 525 at the end of 2019. Now, a phenomenon called parthenogenesis, observed in two cases of California condors, brings up many questions around the birds’ reproductive ability and genetic variation.

California Condor. Photo by Chuck Szmurlo, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Parthenogenesis is a form of asexual reproduction whereby females eggs develop into embryos without fertilization from a male. While this phenomenon is commonly observed in fish, reptiles, and plants, it is rare or unknown in birds such as the California condor. As part of the captive breeding program of California condors, Oliver Ryder and his team developed a genetic database for all California condors such that breeding programs can work to maintain genetic variation in condor populations and prevent inbreeding, as described in an article published in October...
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What Do We Do With E-waste? Flash Joule Heating Presents a Solution
Columns Green Chemistry

What Do We Do With E-waste? Flash Joule Heating Presents a Solution

Isabel Thornberry and Atira Glenn-Keough

With Apple rolling out a new iPhone every year and planned obsolescence encouraging consumers to buy and throw out more and more electronics, electronic waste is piling up in landfills globally. An article published in October this year proposes flash Joule heating as a potential solution to the millions of tons of e-waste produced every year.

With Apple rolling out a new iPhone every year and planned obsolescence encouraging consumers to buy and throw out more and more electronics, electronic waste is piling up in landfills globally. Over 40 million tons of e-waste are produced annually, making it the fastest growing category of solid waste globally. E-waste often includes heavy toxic metals that can leach into the surrounding environment, contaminating soil, water, and food sources. Workers who dispose of e-waste have been found to have higher lead content in their blood because of exposure to dangerous dust and smoke when working with the waste and in...
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Seaweed: A Savory Solution to Save The Oceans
Features

Seaweed: A Savory Solution to Save The Oceans

Cat Kim

Eutrophication is a huge issue that is suffocating our oceans, and farming seaweed may be the key to saving them.

Algal bloom resulting from eutrophication. Photo by Lamiot, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Growing up Korean-American, I ate a lot of seaweed. My mom often made kimbap, vegetables and rice wrapped in seaweed, for me to eat at school. Every year for my birthday, I ate miyeokguk, a seaweed soup. I would have dried and salted strips of seaweed as a midnight snack. Seaweed has always been a huge part of my upbringing and diet, so I did not think much of it and never considered that it would have the potential to save the planet —...
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Emerging Solutions to Microplastic Pollution
Columns Green Chemistry

Emerging Solutions to Microplastic Pollution

Atira Glenn-Keough and Isabel Thornberry

While the problem of microplastic pollution still looms large, scientists are developing technologies to remove existing microplastics, prevent new plastics from reaching waterways, and even avoid harmful microplastic manufacturing with the development of bio-based plastics. New, innovative technologies involving microorganisms may also be on the horizon.

Microplastics in the Azores, an archipelago in the mid-Atlantic. Photo by Race4Water, via Wikimedia Commons. From heavy metals to hydrocarbons and oil to plastic debris, marine pollution is a world-wide problem. According to a review by H.S. Auta et al. published in 2017 by Environment International, plastic composes 80-85% of marine litter, and on our current trajectory, the amount of plastic litter in water bodies will only increase. Microplastics don’t decompose easily, and with increasing production and few effective clean-up methods currently implemented on a broad scale, we’re likely to see more and more microplastics in our environment. Microplastics are...
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The Amazon Rainforest’s Sinking Carbon Sink
News

The Amazon Rainforest’s Sinking Carbon Sink

Ashley Schefler

The Amazon rainforest is one of the world’s greatest natural wonders, and was once an important carbon sink in the fight against climate change. However, a newly published study ten years in the making shows that the Amazon has switched from being a carbon sink to a carbon source, releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than it takes in.

Aerial photograph of the Amazon rainforest taken near Manaus, Brazil. By Neil Palmer/CIAT, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The Amazon rainforest is one of the world’s greatest natural wonders. It is the largest tropical rainforest on Earth, spanning 2.6 million square miles (roughly 70% the size of the United States). The Amazon contains at least 10% of the world’s known species, and, for many years, it has functioned as an important carbon sink. If you’ve been following the news on climate change, you probably know that trees are one of the good guys in the story, able to store...
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Reef Shark Conservation: Is It Too Late?
Features

Reef Shark Conservation: Is It Too Late?

Lydia Guertin

Reef shark populations have severely declined in the past decade, and many species are now functionally extinct, according to a recent report. Is it too late to save them?

Blacktip reef shark. Shot by Talon Windwalker via Wikimedia Commons. Sharks are commonly heralded as an important species in oceanic and reef ecosystems, serving as an indicator of reef health, fish populations, and even seagrass growth. However, few people outside of the marine research community have noticed the alarming decline in shark populations, especially on reefs, until now, when it may be too late.  A July 2020 report published in Nature shocked many coastal communities across the globe when it announced that 20% of the reefs observed had no sharks over multiple months of observation. Although evidence of shark population...
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Bark Bacteria May Limit Tree Greenhouse Gas Emissions
News

Bark Bacteria May Limit Tree Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Emi Krishnamurthy

Wetland trees are an unexpected but major source of global methane emissions. Methane-oxidizing bacteria recently discovered in tree bark could inform how climate scientists and legislators approach future methane mitigation strategies.

Paperbark Trees in Coombabah Lake Conservation Park. Photo by Silverish Lily via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0. Wetland trees are an unexpected but major source of global methane emissions. Methane-oxidizing bacteria recently discovered in tree bark could inform how climate scientists and legislators approach future methane mitigation strategies. Methane comprises 10% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, but can be 32-87 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming Earth’s atmosphere. Natural sources produce millions of metric tons of methane every year because of climate change feedback systems, with wetland forests contributing about one-third of total methane emissions...
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Lightning and the Origins of Life on Earth
Features

Lightning and the Origins of Life on Earth

Ashley Schefler

Lightning strikes could have provided the phosphorus needed for the development of life on Earth, according to a new study.

Lightning during a thunderstorm. Photo by Felix Mittermeier via Unsplash. Phosphorus is an essential element for all life on Earth. Without it, we would not have the DNA that stores our genetic information, the ATP that provides energy for chemical reactions, or the phospholipids that make up our cell membranes. While phosphorus is abundant in Earth’s rocks, it is present in an oxidized form that makes it unreactive, and is therefore inaccessible to biological organisms. So how did early life on Earth gain access to phosphorus? Until now, the prevailing theory has been that meteorites brought phosphorus to Earth in...
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New Anti-Biofouling Technology “SLIPS” into Action
Columns Green Chemistry

New Anti-Biofouling Technology “SLIPS” into Action

Atira Glenn-Keough and Isabel Thornberry

Biofilm buildup on marine infrastructure forces ships to use more fuel and pay for more maintenance, and most solutions are harsh and dangerous for the environment. As a more environmentally-friendly solution, chemists are currently looking into SLIPSs.

Dried algae and rusty metal on a boat ramp. Photo by W.carter, via Wikimedia Commons. Biofouling is a process that occurs when microorganisms, such as bacteria, form communities and adhere to surfaces. These communities are called biofilms, and once established, they often spread rapidly and expand onto other surfaces. Biofouling can create many problems for the environment and man-made structures as it interferes with and accelerates the degradation of infrastructure, such as plumbing and shipping. For example, marine biofouling occurs when biofilm on a ship accumulates, followed by other surface marine organisms, like algae and barnacles, causing ships to use...
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Harnessing Plants’ Carbon Storage for a Greener Future
News

Harnessing Plants’ Carbon Storage for a Greener Future

Griffin Kaulbach

In La Jolla, California, the founders of the Harnessing Plants Initiative (HPI) at the Salk Institute are thinking about the big question that connects agriculture, wetland restoration, and atmospheric climate change: How can we safely use plant pathways to capture and store carbon, while restoring our agricultural and coastal environments?

In sunny La Jolla, California, the founders of the Harnessing Plants Initiative (HPI) at the Salk Institute are thinking about the big question that connects agriculture, wetland restoration, and atmospheric climate change: How can we safely use plant pathways to capture and store carbon, while restoring our agricultural and coastal environments? According to Joanne Chory, leading Lebanese American plant biologist and co-director of HPI, “If we can optimize plants’ natural ability to capture and store carbon, we can develop plants that not only have the potential to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere but that can also help enrich soils...
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You’ve Got Mail, And It’s From Spinach
News

You’ve Got Mail, And It’s From Spinach

Cat Kim

The idea of plant-to-human communication may seem far-fetched, but not for a certain team of chemical engineers. With the power of nanobionics, Dr. Michael Strano’s chemical engineering lab at MIT implemented a process in which the ordinary spinach plant can detect toxic nitroaromatic compounds found in explosives and relay such detections wirelessly — in the form of an email.

Spinach plant. Photo by Jyotishmita Bhagawati, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The idea of plant-to-human communication may seem far-fetched, but not for a certain team of chemical engineers. With the power of nanobionics, Dr. Michael Strano’s chemical engineering lab at MIT implemented a process in which the ordinary spinach plant can detect toxic nitroaromatic compounds found in explosives and relay such detections wirelessly — in the form of an email. Plant nanobionics, according to Dr. Strano, aims to “introduce [structures] into the plant to give it non-native functions.” Strano’s lab previously created carbon nanotubes — cylindrical molecules made of...
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A New SPARC of Hope for Fusion Energy
News

A New SPARC of Hope for Fusion Energy

Celeste Cubbage

A new spark of hope has recently emerged in the field of clean energy technology: the SPARC fusion reactor. Scientists and technicians affiliated with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have been collaborating on this new fusion energy reactor, which has more promising projections than previous reactors.

Model of SPARC under design by MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Rendering by T. Henderson, CFS/MIT-PSFC, via Wikimedia Commons  A new spark of hope has recently emerged in the field of clean energy technology: the SPARC fusion reactor. Scientists and technicians affiliated with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have been collaborating on this new fusion energy reactor, which has more promising projections than previous reactors. Fusion energy provides a carbon-free, abundant power source that is safer than nuclear power with virtually no long-life radioactive waste. Matter becomes plasma by being heated in...
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A Look into Mathematical Biology