Society & Health

How can we assess the non-economic costs of climate change? In a recent study, researchers worked to analyze the cultural, spiritual, and emotional costs of a changing climate.

Amanda Lynch is a mathematician, meteorologist, climate modeler, political scientist, philosopher, and the Director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society. Her career, which has spanned continents and disciplines, is reflected in her new book, co-authored with Dr. Siri Veland, called Urgency in the Anthropocene. It reimagines our global climate crisis not only as the sum of disasters, but also as a human philosophical crisis.

Remember those first trips you took to the science museum? Remember feeling wonder and awe learning about how things function on our planet? Were the hands-on exhibits your favorite? These kinds of questions may be difficult to answer if you grew up a racial minority in a poor community. Why? Because our society designs science museums–and all science learning and communication activities–for a narrow audience. A new study explores how we got here and suggests more inclusive ways to communicate science to a broad public.

You know the skin-crawling, hair-raising feeling right before you drift off to sleep? It might not be “all in your head”. Bed bugs are on the rise, and travelers are unknowingly shuttling them across the oceans. Researchers wanted to know exactly how bed bugs were making long journeys at an unprecedented rate. They found bed bugs are attracted to dirty laundry, not just old mattresses. As international travel increases, bed bugs are jumping into suitcases and spreading across the globe.