Amanda Grennell
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Senior Editor @undarkmag. @AAASMassmedia fellow via @NewsHour. @ScienceBuffs @BuffsTalkSci foreva. She/her.
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Articles by Amanda Grennell
Police Turn to AI to Review Bodycam Footage
Over the last decade, police departments across the U.S. have spent millions of dollars equipping their officers with body-worn cameras that record what happens as they go about their work. Everything from traffic stops to welfare checks to responses to active shooters is now documented on video.
Did College Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates Go Too Far?
Like many other institutions, the University of Pennsylvania campus was mostly shuttered to in-person learning when Vincent Kelley began work there as a Ph.D. student in ethnomusicology in the fall of 2020.
Extreme Heat Strains the Mexican Power Grid Earlier in the Summer
When Raquel Rubio’s 13-month-old baby developed a 102-degree fever last month, she rushed to the doctor. Her son, Liam, had been in Rubio’s apartment without air conditioning for several hours; Nuevo León, the Mexican state where she lives, had reached 109 degrees Fahrenheit that day. The fever in the region could easily be driving her son’s temperature. The doctor confirmed Rubio’s suspicions, sent her back home, and instructed her to bathe Liam and keep him hydrated.
In Montana, the First U.S. Constitutional Climate Trial Closes
On the final day of a groundbreaking constitutional climate trial that activists hope will establish solid legal precedent and incite systemic change to Montana’s standard of approving fossil fuel projects, an 18-year-old plaintiff from Kalispell characterized the end of the lengthy legal proceedings as “just the beginning.” “We’re hopefully starting a trickle down of other litigation and activism nationally,” Lander Busse, who was raised in Kalispell along with his brother, a co-plaintiff in...
New Mastitis Guidelines Give Breastfeeding Parents Whiplash
About four months after my son was born, I found a sore lump on the side of my breast. While worries of breast cancer flashed through my mind, I knew the more likely cause was the start of an ailment that affects up to a quarter of breastfeeding people: mastitis. I had already been warned by my OB-GYN and lactation consultants that my milk ducts could get clogged, inflamed, and then infected with bacteria, causing pain, redness, intense flu-like symptoms and, if not treated, an abscess.
Treating Long Covid Is Rife With Guesswork
Medical equipment is still strewn around the house of Rick Lucas, 62, nearly two years after he came home from the hospital. He picks up a spirometer, a device that measures lung capacity, and takes a deep breath — though not as deep as he’d like. Still, Lucas has come a long way for someone who spent more than three months on a ventilator because of Covid-19. “I’m almost normal now,” he said. “I was thrilled when I could walk to the mailbox.
In New Jersey, Teaching Climate Change to the Next Generation
There was one minute left on Suzanne Horsley’s stopwatch and the atmosphere remained thick with carbon dioxide, despite the energetic efforts of her class of third graders to clear the air. Horsley, a wellness teacher at Toll Gate Grammar School, in Pennington, New Jersey, had tasked the kids with tossing balls of yarn representing carbon dioxide molecules to their peers stationed at plastic disks representing forests.
Bringing Science to the Table - Thriving Earth Exchange
TEX Director, Raj Pandya, participated in the first session of the University of Colorado Boulder Engaged Scientist Series. This program was designed to provide a source of knowledge and continued support for building relationships between scientific research and community engagement. Following the event, Amanda Grennell (CU Boulder) shared what she learned on the blog, Science Buffs: Bringing Science to the Table What is an engaged scientist?
Observation of trapped-hole diffusion on the surfaces of CdS nanorods
Abstract In CdS nanocrystals, photoexcited holes rapidly become trapped at the particle surface. The dynamics of these trapped holes have profound consequences for the photophysics and photochemistry of these materials. Using a combination of transient absorption spectroscopy and theoretical modelling, we demonstrate that trapped holes in CdS nanorods are mobile and execute a random walk at room temperature.
The Decades-Long War on Smog
One sunny summer day in 1943, a blue-brown haze descended upon the city of Los Angeles. It smelled like bleach, made people’s eyes sting and drove almost everyone indoors. It was so bad that some residents thought they were under a chemical warfare attack. This was Los Angeles’ first episode of “photochemical” smog.
Antarctica is losing ice at an accelerating rate. How much will sea levels rise?
The frozen continent of Antarctica contains the vast majority of all freshwater on Earth. Now that ice is melting at an accelerating rate, in part because of climate change. What does this transformation mean for coastal communities across the globe? William Brangham reports from Antarctica on the troubling trend of ice loss and how glaciers can serve as a climate record from the past. Judy Woodruff: We continue now with our series from Antarctica.
Making a Rainbow with Water Drops!
Featured Image: Reprinted by permission from Goodling, A. E.; Nagelberg, S.; et al. Nature 2019, 556, 525-527. Copyright 2019. Title: Coluration by total internal reflection and interference at microscale concave interfaces Authors: A. E. Goodling, S. Nagelberg, B. Kaehr, C. H. Meredith, S. I. Cheon, A. P. Saunders, M. Kolle, and L. D.
What’s the truth about Zika virus in post-hurricane Puerto Rico?
At the Zika epidemic's 2016 height, 10 percent of Puerto Rican women were testing positive for the disease. But when Hurricane Maria slammed the island in September 2017, crippling its health care system, the focus shifted to hurricane recovery, and labs no longer sent testing samples to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Beth Murphy takes a look at Zika in post-hurricane Puerto Rico. Judy Woodruff: The Zika outbreak in 2016 hit Puerto Rico hard, infecting 40,000 people.
Does formaldehyde cause leukemia? A delayed EPA report may hold the answer
The Environmental Protection Agency has been evaluating the link between formaldehyde and leukemia, a type of blood cancer, for more than a decade, but it has not yet reached a final decision. The National Cancer Institute first found a link between formaldehyde and leukemia, a cancer of blood-forming tissues like bone marrow, in 2003.
CDC says 1 in 7 babies exposed to Zika have health problems
One in seven infants that were exposed to Zika in utero experienced microcephaly, seizures, hearing deficiencies or other health problems during their first year of life, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday. The new CDC report, which tracked 1,450 infants in the U.S. territories, is the nation’s first to quantify health problems among Zika-exposed infants that occur during a baby’s first year.
This child lost a sixth of his brain. The rest learned to pick up the slack
By the time Tanner was in first grade, he was having as many as 50 epileptic seizures a day. A medical scan at age 4 revealed a golf-ball size tumor in his brain’s visual center. Tanner’s doctors tried every treatment option until only one remained: Remove more than a third of the right side of his brain to excise the brain tumor and the surrounding area that was causing his epilepsy. Today, five years after surgery and now 12, Tanner is indistinguishable from other kids his age.
California wines contain Fukushima radiation, and it’s not a bad thing
In an underground lab covered by nine feet of concrete and compacted dirt, two nuclear physicists hunt for fraudulent wine. Their method is unusual — they measure radiation coming from the wine itself, without ever opening the bottle. Now in a new preprint study, Michael Pravikoff and Philippe Hubert at National Center for Scientific Research and University of Bordeaux in France show the radiation from the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant made its way into California wine.
Why 96 million plastic ‘shade balls’ dumped into the LA Reservoir may not save water
In 2015, the world watched as a video of 96 million “shade balls” getting dumped into the Los Angeles Reservoir went viral. The purpose of the balls: to improve water quality and save water. But a new study raises an interesting question: Could saving water in the Los Angeles Reservoir come at the cost of consuming water in other parts of world? At the time, Californians faced a record-setting drought, and conserving water was on everyone’s minds.
What is a blazar? Its high-energy flares could unlock the foundations of the universe
When a galaxy gets pulled into the supermassive black hole at its center — yes, that happens — it can create a blazar — an intense beam of high-energy radiation. There are thousands of blazars across the universe, but on Thursday, a team of physicists, working with a lab near the South Pole, said they’ve discovered that blazars can also double as particle accelerators.
What happened to Zika?
Last week, biologists reported the most detailed structure of the Zika virus to date, a finding that could help the effort to develop vaccines or anti-viral medicines. And Monday, a nationwide group of researchers reported in Nature Medicine that Zika causes miscarriages and stillbirths in a quarter of pregnancies in non-human primates.
Spiders fly on the currents of Earth’s electric field
Spiders don’t have wings, but they can fly across entire oceans on long strands of silk. For more than a century, scientists thought it was the wind that carried them, sometimes as high as a jet stream — in a process known as “ballooning.” A new study shows that the Earth’s electric field can propel these flying spiders too.
To beat Vegas bookies at the World Cup, these statisticians turned to artificial intelligence
When it comes to sports betting, most people lose. But during the 2014 World Cup, a team of statisticians beat the bookmakers. They correctly predicted Germany — their home country and 6-to-1 underdogs — as the final champions and raked in a 30 percent return with bets placed on regular matches. This year, the team, led by Andreas Groll of Germany’s Technical University of Dortmund, is back with an artificial intelligence program with even better odds.
Antarctica is losing ice twice as fast as anyone thought
Over the last 25 years, melting Antarctic ice has added nearly 3 trillion tons of water to the ocean, enough to fill Lake Erie six times over. That’s according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, which used more satellite data than any other investigation of Antarctica. By measuring the Earth’s gravitational pull and changes in ice sheets, the researchers show a sharp uptick in Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise over the last decade.
Wine or Wine Not? An Examination of What Makes a Wine Smell
Title: An automated gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric method for the quantitative analysis of the odor-active molecules present in the vapors emanated from wine After a long day of work, who doesn’t love relaxing and unwinding with a nice glass of Sauvignon Blanc or Cabernet Sauvignon? But whether you’re sipping wines in Napa Valley or enjoying a cheap bottle a friend decided to re-gift you, have you ever thought about what exactly goes into the smells of a wine?
Popcorn supercapacitors - future batteries for electric cars?
Fluffy yet crunchy puffs coated in butter and salt, popcorn is undisputedly an ideal snack. Plus, listening to a handful of corn kernels pop at random into a bowlful of goodies is almost therapeutic. In my home, popcorn is so well loved it has its own ridiculous nickname: “p-corn.” But just as perfectly popped and buttered popcorn is the best, burned popcorn is the absolute worst – in taste, texture, and most of all, smell.
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