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Lina Zeldovich

Lina Zeldovich

Lina Zeldovich grew up watching her grandfather fertilize the family’s organic orchard with composted sewage and thought that the whole world did the same. Thirty years later, she had won four awards for covering the science of poo and focused her book on the novel solutions to the world’s oldest problem—keeping humans free from their own excrement. In writing The Other Dark Matter, she toured a slew of smelly sewage plants, hopped over many stinky street gutters, stuck her nose into a stool bank—and lived to tell the story. When she isn’t digging into humanure in India, Madagascar or North America, she lives in New York City and tends to a compost pile in her backyard.

A large tree with moss-covered roots.

How Trees Can Save Lakes From Algae Blooms

In addition to cleaning air pollution, trees absorb excess nutrients from soil, preventing algae blooms in waterways.
A drone delivering a package

The Drone Will See You Now

As drones become normalized, companies like Zipline are using them to deliver life-saving medicines to faraway places.
A gardener planting yellow flowers in the soil.

Five Steps to Making Your Garden a Carbon Sink

If the 81 million U.S. households with yards adopt these practices, they could absorb more carbon and help combat climate change.
A Florida postcard

How Florida Got Its Name

506 years ago, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León landed in what he christened "Florida." Historians still wonder where the name came from.
Signage reading, Closed for Maintenance, on the side of an island road

This Island Is Closed for Maintenance

The Faroe Islands owe their untouched nature to their remote location and stormy climate. And to a weekend closure.
A model showing the layers of Earth

The Woman Who Found the Earth’s Inner Core

Inge Lehmann was the seismologist and mathematician who figured out what the Earth's core was actually made of.
Mary Agnes Chase collecting plants in Brazil in 1929.

The Woman Agrostologist Who Held the Earth Together

When government wouldn't fund female fieldwork, Agnes Chase pulled together her own resources.
Mary Anning

The Female Fossilist Who Became a Jurassic Period Expert

Dressed in a petticoat and bonnet, Mary Anning climbed precarious cliffs to find prehistoric fossils.
Mary Somerset

The Beaufort Botanist and Her “Innocent Diversion”

Despite the twelve volume herbarium she created, this seventeenth-century scientist earned little recognition. 
Bald Eagle going after a fish above an icy lake

Is Illinois the Next Bald Eagle Watching Spot?

 Once seasonal migrants, the iconic birds of prey are settling in the state.
Female Mosquito filled with blood

Scientists Are Putting Mosquitoes on Human Diet Drugs

Humans and mosquitoes share a surprising amount of genes and have similar hunger controls.
Two winged insects mating

Love, Sex, and Cyanide—The Private Life of a Toxic Butterfly

Heliconian butterflies choose mates with similar wing patterns. Their genes make them do it.
A man holding a small bird perched on his hand

Climate Change Turns Cute Birds into Brain-Eating Zombies

European great tits kill migratory pied flycatchers over nesting sites. The warming weather is to blame.
Camilla Goddard in a beekeeper's outfit looking in on several beehives

Buzzing In at the “Bee & Bee”

City gardens and hotel rooftops can serve as refuges—and food corridors—for the troubled species.
An Australian fur seal pup.

Give These Adorable Seals More Privacy!

When viewing boats come too close, seals and their pups stampede into the water. Scientists say it exhausts the animals.
Venice, Italy with flooding and tourists walking in high water

Is It Time to Say Good-Bye to the Mediterranean?

The cradle of civilization may not support our civilization anymore.
A bushel of groundcherries

Scientists Are Gene-Editing These Berries to Be the Next Superfood

Using CRISPR, scientists try to turn an obscure plant into the next favorite crop, groundcherries.
Tunnel View Point at Yosemite National Park

Will National Parks Disappear Due to Climate Change?

Temperatures and droughts have spiked at much higher rates in parks than elsewhere.
Sweeper machine in a greenhouse of fruit trees

Do We Really Need Robot Farmers?

As weather heats up and climate change progresses, fieldwork will grow more hazardous.
heatwave

Get Ready For More Heat Waves!

New climate model suggests next four years will be hotter than expected.
Microbe plate

Would You Like Some Germs with Your Wheaties?

To fulfill the increasing protein demand, scientists turn to microbes.
Sea bass

Will Fish Lose Their Sense of Smell in Acidic Oceans?

Increasing levels of dissolved CO2 disrupt fish’s olfactory skills, study finds.
fruit fly

New Study Finds Insects Speak in Different “Dialects”

Different fruit flies species can learn each other’s language to warn against parasitic wasps.
Oil Rigs Fish

Can Oil Rigs Grow into Ocean Reefs?

Scientists suggest keeping old offshore oil platforms as productive fish habitats.