An unassuming fungus that dwells in lakes and damp soil has proved to be the most potent killer of a large group of species ever documented. The victims are members of at least 501 species of frogs and other amphibians that have succumbed to a disease inflicted by Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis , or Bd. In a report published last week in Science , dozens of researchers calculated the number of species harmed by Bd. Their findings are devastating: 90 amphibians driven extinct and another 124

The Green New Deal has ignited a theatrical debate in Congress, from posters of a velociraptor-riding President Reagan on the Senate floor to press briefings of hamburger-eating legislators. But the proposal has also generated sincere conversations on climate policy, including calls to invest in technology that captures carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion and puts them back in the ground. Carbon capture is a necessary bridge to transition to a carbon-neutral economy, says Howard Herzog

"Personally, I think consciousness is one of the greatest, most remarkable puzzles left to science. Understanding how this three-pound meatloaf is capable of producing experience is just remarkable." - Jonathan Schooler This week on Living Lab Radio: Howard Herzog of MIT has literally written the book about carbon capture technology. He says the main stumbling block to pulling carbon dioxide out of power plant exhaust isn’t technological, it’s political. Biologist Dan Greenberg says a fungus

Dartmouth College astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser is this year’s Templeton Prize winner. He says science is spiritual, and the world would be a better place if more people shared that view.

The Templeton Prize is sometimes described as the Nobel Prize for spirituality. It was established in 1972 by the late Sir John Templeton to honor “a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension.” Past recipients include Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, but also a substantial list of physicists and cosmologists. This year’s winner falls into that latter category. Marcelo Gleiser is an astrophysicist at Dartmouth College. He contends that science

We’ve got 10-day weather forecasts. We’ve got NOAA seasonal outlook forecasts. But there’s a no man’s land in between, and that’s where predictions get really tricky.

Nebraska is facing more than one billion dollars in damage due to historic and devastating flooding this past week. The storm that set things into motion was powerful –a so-called bomb cyclone. But the amount of rain it delivered doesn’t account for the flooding on its own.

Mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch rocked New Zealanders to their core. What may have shocked Americans even more is the response of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who quickly and emphatically declared that she would not say the name of the shooter.

"You can say 'the perpetrator.' It's the same - two words - as somebody's first and last name. So, you can still say 'the perpetrator walked into this building and did this' and you're giving everybody all the information they normally would have gotten. You're just not rewarding the killer." - Jaclyn Shildkraut This week on Living Lab Radio: Criminal justice researcher and author Jackie Schildkraut makes the case for covering mass shootings, but leaving out the perpetrator’s name and face. It's

Many of our most important social and political debates have science at their core – from climate change to genetically modified foods. When policymakers want expert input on what we know about these subjects, they often turn to massive synthesis reports known as assessments.