Walk into a wine shop today and you’ll likely find hundreds of brands and vintages, but most of them will be made from a handful of grape varieties grown in a handful of wine-making hotspots, like France, Italy, California, and Australia. That’s ostensibly because those are the best wine grapes and the best places to grow them, but wine has been grown and made in a wide range of places for thousands of years and there’s an emerging movement to preserve and recover local grape varieties and

Massachusetts saw high tide flooding in dramatic style up and down the coastline during storms in January and March. In total, Boston saw a record-breaking twenty-two days of high tide flooding over the course of the past year, according to a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The lead author of the report, William Sweet, says the frequency of coastal flooding has doubled, and it’s a clear result of climate change. “Due to sea level rise, the average trend in

Friday, June 8 th is World Oceans Day. Three Cape Cod-based composers will mark the day by releasing a new album of original music developed in collaboration with ocean scientists. It’s called Black Inscription, and two of the composers – a husband and wife team – Carla Kihlstedt and Matthias Bossi – spoke with Living Lab Radio about it all.

Soon, you may be able to eat hamburger that was grown in a Petri dish rather than on a cow. In his book, Clean Meat : How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World, author Paul Shapiro details how start ups like Memphis Meats and Finless Foods are growing animal cells in the lab that are safe to eat. “Clean meat is real meat that is grown from animal cells rather than animal slaughter,” Shapiro told Living Lab Radio. The process is done by taking a cell from an animal

Residents of Cape Cod are no strangers to chemical contaminants in their drinking water. The military base here has been a Superfund site since 1989 due to jet fuel and other contaminants in the groundwater. But a new class of chemicals burst onto the scene a few years ago. They’re known as PFASs and they come from things like firefighting foam, flame retardants, and non-stick coatings. And they’re not just showing up on Cape Cod.

Each month, we speak to our colleagues at the Journal Nature to hear about the stories they are following. This month we talk with Nature's Anna Nagle.

In late 2015, the Columbian government announced that they had found what could be the world’s most valuable shipwreck. The Spanish galleon ship San Jose sank off the Columbian coast in 1708 during a battle with British ships, and it is believed to hold billions of dollars worth of gold, silver, and emeralds. An underwater vehicle built and operated by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution played a key role in the search, and now they’ve released new details of the search.

Hurricane season officially begins on June 1st, and forecasters with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are predicting average to above average storm activity in the Atlantic Ocean. “We’re expecting a lot of activity this year,” said Gerry Bell, lead hurricane season forecaster with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. “At this time, it does not look that we will be as active as last year.” Specifically, Bell says they expect between 10 and 16 named storms, 5-9 of which will

The Korean peninsula is at the center of global geopolitics right now. It might also be ground zero for the global decline of amphibians. And, strangely, the two might be connected.

A new report from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health shows opioid-related deaths are down five percent compared to this time last year. And opioid prescriptions have also dropped here in the Commonwealth and nationwide. Still, the opioid epidemic is far from over, and the pace of research on effective pain management seems to be picking up.