It’s been called the world’s most mysterious book. It was written between 1404 and 1438 in an unknown script by an unknown author. It’s illustrated with plants and star charts that look tantalizingly like real ones, only not quite. And then there are the women - dozens of naked women entering and emerging from tubes that one writer compared to midieval waterslides . But most perplexing of all is the lettering, which is beautifully formed but completely unintelligible. "It looks like a western

We come into contact with countless chemicals everyday. In fact, we're made of chemicals. But the number of human-made, synthetic chemicals in our lives has skyrocketed, and many common household and personal care products actually contain chemicals that may be bad for our health. Scientists can measure the amounts of these chemicals in retail products and the home environment, and they can study what they do to animals in laboratory. But that leaves one big, unanswered question: Just how much

Sea level rise is typically mentioned in the context of erosion, coastal flooding, storm damage at the coasts. All of those are issues, to be sure. But rising ocean levels can have other effects – on septic systems and drinking water supplies farther inland. Potential impacts on groundwater are the subject of a new report from US Geological Survey’s New England Water Science Center. Melting glaciers and warming oceans are causing sea levels to rise around the globe. Tides already reach nearly a

When Marie Curie discovered radioactivity, she kick-started the field of atomic physics and inspired two other female physicists whose work gave rise to the atomic age. Her daughter, Irene (and son-in-law, Frederic) Joliot-Curie, discovered a method of inducing artificial radioactivity. And Austrian-born Lise Meitner figured out nuclear fission. Lise Meitner was twenty years Irene Joliot-Curie's senior, but Austrian law delayed her education by a decade, making the two colleagues. And there are

Biochemist Keri Colabroy thinks we could all be better cooks and healthier eaters, if we just learned a little bit of chemistry. That's why she teaches a kitchen chemistry course and a writing class about coffee (yeah, that's a thing) at Muhlenberg College. Want the secret to perfectly bright green green beans? Or a smooth, no-strings-attached cheese sauce? Ever wonder if wild-caught fish is more nutritious than farm-raised? Or which vitamins survive cooking? Colabroy has answers. (Wild-caught

Cranberries are a billion-dollar industry in Massachusetts and employ more than 6,900 people. But the market is getting crowded, and that’s pushing down the price. Wisconsin has been the top grower in North America for years, where cranberry farms go back to the 1800’s. Quebec has only been growing cranberries for the last 20 years, but it surpassed Massachusetts in its cranberry harvest in 2014. Why hasn’t Massachusetts kept up with the Wisconsin and Quebec? “It’s not so much that our

More than half of U.S. states have laws that say that a dying person should have access to any treatment, vaccine, medical device that they want. For some people who have serious illnesses, getting these treatments represents nothing less than a lifeline. The “right to try” laws attempt to give that access. At the federal level, legislators like Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) have introduced bills that say that people with life-ending illnesses shouldn’t be stopped from trying treatments by the FDA

For most of American history, when a loved one died, family members cared for the body of the deceased at home before burial. It wasn’t until the Civil War that people started embalming soldiers’ bodies for the long train trips home. Soon after, funeral homes started offering embalming services, and an industry was born. Now, there’s a movement to bring after-death care back home. The motivations driving such interest are varied. Some people find it more personal, more meaningful. Others want to

There has been a growing recognition in recent years that patients near the end of life need a different kind of care – treatment that focuses on controlling symptoms, like pain and anxiety, rather than attempting to cure a disease. Most doctors and nurses aren’t trained to handle this transition and, until recently, haven’t had the information and tools necessary to do it well. That is changing. Researchers are beginning to probe the effectiveness of common interventions, often finding they don

In September , Living Lab spoke with Standing Rock Sioux tribe member Jennifer Weston about the tribe’s protest of the construction the Dakota Access oil pipeline. The tribe opposes the pipeline because they say it threatens drinking water and sacred sites. (Weston has a Cape Cod connection as the language department director for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.) We now have an updated conversation with Jennifer Weston. Since we last spoke, many more protesters have been arrested, including at least