MIT’s Alcator C-Mod Reactor (A Big Machine)

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Senator Elizabeth Warren, Representative Katherine Clark and research faculty at MIT restarted the Alcator C-Mod reactor for fusion energy officially yesterday morning. And then, we all wore hard hats and went into the big room where the big C-Mod machine is and saw it for ourselves: fusion does not just belong in the movies.

Turtle Rehab

11/16/2013 Wellfleet, MA - Alfalfa, as nicknamed by the people who found it, a cold-stunned sea turtle, lies covered with seaweed to prevent the cold wind from reaching it. Photo by XiaoZhi Lim

Interactive: Every year, some young sea turtles feeding in Cape Cod during the summer overstay their visit and get ‘cold-stunned’ as the water turns cold. This interactive graphic shows how biologists and doctors at the New England Aquarium nurse the turtles back to health after they’re rescued by volunteers.

Embodying Emotion, Performing Gender

Boston University News Service – “Take your pen, do this.” Nicole Noll said as she reached into her backpack for a pen, and placed it horizontally between her teeth. “Don’t let your lips touch it.”

I did as she demonstrated. Noll and I were in the Harvard Science Center, sitting in the first-floor hallway. As we held our pens in our teeth, two men passed by and gave us puzzled looks.

Time To Face The Thorium

Boston University News Service – Love your smartphone that delivers clear sound and bright colors but still fits in your pocket? Give thanks to neodymium, a rare earth element that makes the magnets in your phone so powerful that it can be as small as it is. Wind turbines and electric cars need the unique magnetic properties of dysprosium, another rare earth element. Virtually every form of clean energy technology today needs rare earth elements to function. But the rare earth elements come with an unavoidable by-product: thorium.

A Glimpse Into The Life Of A Forester

11/30/2013 Shutesbury, MA - Kate Marquis sprays paint on a tree, marking it for loggers. Photo by XiaoZhi Lim

Photoessay: The forest serves people in myriad ways, from furniture to paper products to recreation. Kate Marquis is a forester who manages woodlots to ensure that wood is harvested in a sustainable way, a physically-demanding job with long hours spent trekking through the woods alone.