Deforestation Exacerbates Risk of Malaria for Most-vulnerable Children

a mosquito feeding on a human blood meal

Malaria kills more than 600,000 people each year worldwide, and two thirds are children under age five in sub-Saharan Africa. Scientists have found a treatment that could prevent thousands of these deaths: trees. New research conducted at the University of Vermont (UVM) and published today in the journal ...

full story >>>
Samples of tree cores against a standard wooden pencil for scale.

Story Cores

At first, the noise coming out of the tree sounds like a slo-mo woodpecker, “thack…thack…thack.” Every few seconds, Professor Shelly Rayback twists the drill another turn, her forearm muscles flexing visibly, teeth gritted in determination, rain and sweat mixing on her forehead and running down her jacket onto the forest floor. “You gotta be in shape to do this,” she says, laughing.

full story >>>
Chemist Rory Waterman experiments with phosphorus in the lab.

Fixing Phosphorus

In the beginning, there was no phosphorus. The young universe was quiet and dark, awash in nothing but gigantic clouds of gas. Only after gravity had crushed together clumps of this hydrogen and helium, 100 million years after the Big Bang, did the first stars ignite.

full story >>>