Out of the Fog

Can we protect our children from wildfire smoke?

Kimber Price — Fri, 29 Dec 2017 15:43:12 +0000

Andrea Booher/FEMA Rebecca Stevers was forced to flee Dry Creek Road in October as her husband and their neighbors battled to keep the Nuns Fire from jumping the ridge and annihilating their Napa Valley, California home. She took her children to a friend-of-a-friend’s rental property in San Francisco where she thought they were safe from the threat of fire. But because her 12-year-old son Dylan…

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Mud and Mystery: Indonesia’s Lusi Volcano

Jennifer Leman — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 23:53:16 +0000

Volcanic mud bubbles near Krafla, Iceland. Credit: Theo Crazzolara On May 26, 2006, an unusual volcano sputtered to life in Sidoarjo, Indonesia. Instead of spewing ash or lava, the volcano, known as Lusi, spits globs of mud high into the air. 11 years have gone by, 60,000 people have been displaced, and 13 people have been killed. The eruption shows no signs of stopping…

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Debate over Earliest Animal Relative Raises Questions of How Complexity Evolved

Jeremy Rehm — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 23:43:51 +0000

Placing comb jellies, such as these, as the relative to all animals changes our view of how complex features evolved. Image Credit: Tracie Hall, Flickr A new study published this October in Nature Ecology and Evolution closed a chapter on a decade-long debate in biology and raises questions about how we view the evolution of complex animal traits. Since 2008, biologists have argued whether…

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Rising Temperatures Mean Napa Wines Could be a Thing of the Past

Kim Hickok — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 18:26:23 +0000

On a crisp Saturday in October I’m standing behind the bar at Byington Vineyard & Winery while pouring wine for a lively bachelorette party. I ask the ladies how they managed to find the bright pink Hummer limousine that dropped them off right at our door. One of the women, embarrassed, grins and explains it was their only option for a chauffeur with such short notice. She goes on to say…

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Should Hospitals offer VIP Passes to Healthcare? Physicians aren’t sure.

Nicoletta Lanese — Sun, 10 Dec 2017 21:34:17 +0000

The Affordable Care Act has left hospitals short on doctors and waiting room chairs. As the newly-insured queue for healthcare, some patients are shelling out thousands to skip the line. Hospitals are increasingly catering to more affluent patients, but some physicians wonder whether this is ethical, or even effective. Credit: Public Domain Pictures Concierge medicine has been a hot topic…

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Bringing Back the Nassau Grouper

Teresa Carey — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 01:29:42 +0000

When I first saw the acoustic tag, I couldn’t imagine inserting it under fish’s skin. It was the size and shape of the SPF 45 ChapStick that was melting in my pocket. The tag would soon be surgically implanted into a Nassau grouper, a medium-sized fish, but Dr. Rick Nemeth, and his team at University of Virgin Islands are pros. They had been researching grouper every winter for two decades.

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The science of barefoot running: A personal journey

Aylin Woodward — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 06:18:27 +0000

I first heard about Born to Run, the Chris McDougall book that sparked the barefoot running craze, during my freshman year of college in 2012. At the time, before I got bogged down with trivialities like torn anterior cruciate ligaments (turns out those really matter), I was a running fiend. I ran every day. On pavement, on dirt backroads, up mountains, on rocky paths along the Connecticut…

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Why are Juvenile Crabs Hitching Rides on Sea Pigs?

Yasemin Saplakoglu — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 01:30:00 +0000

A baby king crab hangs onto its nanny sea pig. Credit: ©2011 MBARI On the muddy grounds of the deep ocean, sea cucumbers are playing nanny to young king crabs. But are they being compensated?’ These sea cucumbers, commonly known as sea pigs, are bottom-dwelling creatures that look like grapefruit jelly with legs and could fit in the palm of a hand. Juvenile King crabs are around half an inch…

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Here’s how to attract helper bugs to your organic farm: grow some native plants

Devika G. Bansal — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 19:47:22 +0000

A wolf spider eats a grasshopper on a grass stalk hedgerow, just about five feet away from a row of tomatoes. Credit: Marshall Hinsley. Used with permission. Every night as Marshall Hinsley walks through his farm in Texas, hundreds of tiny bright dots light up the land when he shines his flashlight into the distance. “It’s like glitter,” he says. “Those are all the eyes of spiders just…

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What banana slug slime can tell us about giraffe saliva and human snot

Sarah E. McQuate — Sat, 10 Dec 2016 18:00:47 +0000

A banana slug escapes my photoshoot, leaving a trail of slime. Photo credit: Sarah McQuate I recently photographed a banana slug for a short article I was writing about banana slug slime for the Santa Cruz Hilltromper, a website for nature lovers in the area. “Okay, now turn your head to the left… down a little… actually can you crawl up this rock a bit more for me? I’d really like to see…

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