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Being Prepared

Posted by Hannah

Nature When a key member of a team is lost, the work does not have to come to an end. When Michael Pisaric was two years into his PhD, he travelled to Watson Lake in Canada with his supervisor, Julian Szeicz, and graduate student Tammy Karst-Riddoch, to collect sediment from several lakes in Yukon and in northern British Columbia. Szeicz was a geographer at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, who worked on reconstructing ancient climates. The trio hoped that the samples would reveal how climate had influenced tree-line dynamics in the region over the past 10,000 years. As they trudged … Read more…

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The New Lice Wars

Posted by Hannah

Maclean’s Despite evidence that it’s time to abandon the no-nit rule requiring kids be sent home, schools have yet to get the message. When her three-year-old daughter was in daycare, Lisa got her first lice-alert telephone call. There were a slew of calls during senior kindergarten and more in Grade 1. The message was the same each time: Her daughter had nits in her hair and needed to be picked up. Lisa, who lives in Toronto, would postpone client meetings and collect her. “Thank God I work for myself. I have great clients,” says Lisa, who asked that her full … Read more…

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A Root of Change

Posted by Hannah

Bracing for Impact The harvest of wild American ginseng root has been a part of North American culture for 300 years, but this tradition is in peril. Is it possible to save both a species and a pastime? An aged photograph, archived in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, shows the memorabilia once on display at the Sundial Tavern, near Naoma, W.Va. Photos of babies, teenaged girls in prom dresses and a boy in football uniform adorn the wall. Propped on a ledge is a snapshot of Dolly Parton, dressed in fire red and sequins. At the … Read more…

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Dust Bowl Unrivaled

Posted by Hannah

Nature Atmospheric conditions and human actions combined to drive the 1930s megadrought Farms failed and livestock starved in the central United States during the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s. The event was not just the region’s worst dry spell in modern memory — it was the worst in North America over the past millennium, researchers report in Geophysical Research Letters.