By Lori Balster post-image When she saw an ad in her local paper 20 years ago, Paula Boutin was immediately intrigued. “They were asking for citizen scientists to volunteer and help gather information to save Buzzards Bay,” she says. “I signed up. I’ve always thought of myself as an environmentalist.” As a resident of a
By Bethany Brookshire Toolik Field Station, Alaska – High in the Arctic, more than 160 kilometers (100 miles) from the nearest town, there is a flimsy plank-covered path. Just one or two boards wide, it’s snow covered for nine months of the year. But from June to August, the boardwalk peeks through, threading a path
By Andrea F. Carter Falmouth High School students turned to the camouflaging capabilities of cephalopods for an abstract art project this month. Jane F. Baker’s advanced art class welcomed Marine Biological Laboratory scientist Roger T. Hanlon in early December to talk about his work with octopuses, squid and cuttlefish, which can change their skin color
By Christine Legere WOODS HOLE — Neurobiologist Bruno Marie never considered clearing out of Puerto Rico in September, even though the expected track of Hurricane Maria put it directly over the island. On Sept. 20, the 48-year-old scientist, along with his wife and two children, hunkered down in their San Juan condominium, which is constructed
Cephalopod research by the MBL’s Joshua Rosenthal has been chosen as one of the “Top Ten Ocean Stories of 2017” by Smithsonian Magazine. Last spring, Rosenthal and colleagues reported in Cell on the prolific amount of RNA editing (at the expense of DNA evolution) they had discovered in squid, octopus, and cuttlefish. This highly unusual
Learn about the miraculous world of cellular life this weekend with MBL Whitman Center Scientist Clare Waterman of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. Waterman will be featured on CNN International’s program “CNN Inspirations: Unseen Earth.” The episode will air on CNN International on Friday, Dec. 15 at 4 a.m. ET, Saturday, Dec. 16
Jennifer Morgan, Ph.D. By Rich Holmes Researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole study sea creatures to better understand life processes, which sometimes leads to scientific and medical breakthroughs. One scientist is studying how one such organism – the lamprey – may hold clues to why certain people fall prey to neurological diseases
By Andrea F. Carter Long chains, coral branching, hedgehog and caterpillar shapes are some of the ways to describe the rainbow-hued images of microbial communities living in the body. Scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory are using fluorescent pictures to view these microbiome designs in the human mouth and gut. These patterns offer clues on
An image of a living algae cell taken by MBL Associate Scientist Michael Shribak has won first place in the 2017 Optics & Photonics News photo contest. Shribak’s description of the image is below. See all the winning images here … “This is a live image of the diatom Arachnoidiscus. The picture shows the diatom’s
A radio interview with MBL Distinguished Scientist Jerry Melillo about his 26-year soil warming experiment at Harvard Forest, the results of which were recently reported in the journal Science. Hear interview … Caption: Several snow-free heated plots in late winter at Harvard Forest in Petersham, Mass. Photo: Heidi Lux, Harvard Forest Archives, Harvard University Source: