For Some Survivors, Polio Casts a Long Shadow - Undark Magazine
WEB01.02.2023. 5 Comments. Brad Fuller was a toddler when he contracted polio in 1952 and was sent to a hospital miles from his northeast Pennsylvania home. He stayed there for nine months, enduring long stints in an iron lung, a large metallic ventilator that helped him breathe. Fuller’s parents were allowed only rare visits.
Earth’s Orbit Is About to Get More Crowded - Undark Magazine
WEB12.26.2022. Sometime this coming March, a network of 10 small satellites winged with solar panels is scheduled to launch into Earth’s low orbit. Though likely invisible to the naked eye, the satellites will be part of a future herd of hundreds that, according to the Space Development Agency, or SDA, will bolster the United States’ defense ...
Opinion: Don’t Ask AI to Make Life-and-Death Decisions - Undark …
WEB08.08.2024. Sometimes, AI really can be a matter of life and death. Last year, a Belgian man tragically ended his life after allegedly being persuaded to do so by a chatbot. In the Netherlands, there’s an ongoing debate over whether to allow the use of artificial intelligence, or AI, to support decisions around doctor-assisted suicide.
Chasing Opal and Fossils in the Australian Outback - Undark …
WEBBy Clare Watson. 07.24.2019. Cloaked in white dust and surrounded by expansive plains, the town of Lightning Ridge produces the bulk of the world’s precious black opal. This rare gemstone, prized for its dazzling play of color, hides out of sight in the Australian outback beneath a town roughly 450 miles northwest of Sydney.
Long Division: The Persistence of Race Science
WEBDec 12, 2022 · LONG DIVISION is an ongoing journalistic project by Undark Magazine, published by the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT, that examines the fraught legacy of race science.The multipart series, supported in part by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, grew out of a workshop held in June 2022 at Harvard University, which brought together journalists, science historians, and other ...
The Gold Rush Returns to California - Undark Magazine
WEBBy Becki Robins. 01.24.2022. 21 Comments. On the outskirts of the northern California town of Grass Valley, a massive concrete silo looms over the weeds and crumbling pavement. Nearby, unseen, a mine shaft drops 3,400 feet into the earth. These are the remains of Grass Valley’s Idaho-Maryland Mine, a relic from the town’s gold mining past.
Mexican Farmers and Scientists Share a Mission: Saving a Wetland
WEB08.01.2022. On the southern edge of Mexico City, on a patch of land surrounded by water, a farmer and a scientist recently inspected rows of small cubes of mud that had sprouted seedlings. They were crouching on a chinampa, an island that appears to float in Lake Xochimilco, part of a complex ecosystem where the Aztec Empire once flourished.
In Cape Cod, New Efforts to Coexist With Sharks - Undark Magazine
WEB07.07.2021. On a windy morning in March, two older surfers at LeCount Hollow Beach, on Cape Cod, look out at the gray Atlantic. They are scanning the water closest to shore for seals, with whom they increasingly have to share the frigid water, which can dip as low as 37 degrees Fahrenheit in winter. The seals are a growing demographic.
The Scramble to Defuse the ‘Feral Swine Bomb’ - Undark Magazine
WEBSep 14, 2020 · Years ago, preventing feral pig populations hardly seemed worth the money, but today these animals are responsible for an estimated $2.5 billion worth of damage in the U.S. each year, mostly by mowing down farmers’ crops, as well as attacking calves, lambs, and pregnant livestock, and destroying native plants, animals, and precious habitats.
The Complicated Legacy of an Anti-Tobacco Hero - Undark …
WEBAug 2, 2021 · N ot many scientists have fought harder against smoking than Stanton Glantz. As a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and founding director of its Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, Glantz led campaigns to ban smoking in public places, exposed secret tobacco industry documents, and wrote or co-wrote five books and nearly 400 papers, most ...