Tag Archives: climate change

Education Film 38b: Zika Virus and You

The Zika-spreading mosquito Aedes aegypti takes a bloodmeal.
The Zika-spreading mosquito Aedes aegypti takes a bloodmeal. Photo courtesy CDC.

Zika virus is spreading through a hemisphere with plenty of mosquito habitat and no immunity to the disease, and summer is on its way. But what really chills the blood and drives our dread of what was once considered “dengue’s wimpy cousin” is the virus’s horrifying, yet unproven, link to infant microcephaly.

And so, even as epidemiologists struggle to contain and understand the problem, the news swarms with disturbing images and calls for wiping out the offending mosquito vectors. Clearly, if we’re going to get through this, we need to do our homework. Why not start with my article, in which I cut through the buzz to explore …

How Zika Virus Works

The Global Genetic Coronal Phosphorescent Thermohaline Economic Asteroid-Earthquake Singularity War That Will Doom Us All

“The Last Day of Pompeii” by Karl Briullov.

In the real world, disasters aren’t just a matter of scale – they’re a question of preparedness and of a society’s capacity to handle the fallout. Vaccines, rapid-response teams and early-warning systems can move the needle from calamity toward recovery, while poverty, corruption and ignorance slide it toward catastrophe. So, cue announcer: “In a world … where real disasters aren’t single events that arise from simple problems that are solvable in 93 minutes  …”

10 Possible Future Disasters

Marine Biology Breakthroughs: I Cover the Waterfront

Photo of coral, goldies and and two divers
Photo by Derek Keats.

In honor of World Oceans Day (June 8), here’s my recent article on some of the remarkable discoveries made by marine biologists over the past few years. From clearing up the murky “lost years” of juvenile turtles to further solidifying our understanding of a jellyfish’s final fate, these delvers of the deep have shrunk what Shakespeare called “the vasty deep” to something a bit more fathomable but no less amazing. Find out more as I take a deep dive into …

10 Recent Breakthroughs in Marine Biology

Yellowstone and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

False-color image of Lake Toba, the flooded 19-by-62 mile caldera of a supervolcano that may have jump-started a 10,000-year ice age.
False-color image of Lake Toba, the flooded 19-by-62 mile caldera of a supervolcano that may have jump-started a 10,000-year ice age.

The eruption of Krakatau in 1883 is synonymous with cataclysm, and with good reason. Its eruptive power equated to several thousand atom bombs, and it killed around 36,000 people. But compared to the supervolcanoes that nearly wiped out humanity, or that may yet spell global catastrophe, it was a wet squib.

Find out about the magma doom machine buried under America’s oldest national park as I take you on a tour of …

How Supervolcanoes Work

Of Mammoths Wild and Woolly

Woolly mammoth skeleton at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. Photo by Kevin Burkett.
Woolly mammoth skeleton on display at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. Photo by Kevin Burkett.

We love dinosaurs, but we never shared the planet with them. Such was not the case with woolly mammoths, which we once hunted, chowed down on, and used for tools and building materials. You don’t see T-Rexes on cave walls, but some of the earliest sculpture and art by human hands depicts these elephantine throw rugs.

Today, their well-preserved remains contain muscle, blood, teeth, bone, tusk and even brain. We’ve recovered and sequenced mammoth DNA, something we’ll never be able to do with dinosaurs. But if all you know about these majestic creatures comes from old Flintstones episodes, then join me as I explore …

How Woolly Mammoths Worked