Cape Cod Sea Turtle Cold-Stunning

11/16/2013 Wellfleet, MA - Kayla Phelps reacts to a cold-stunned sea turtle, nicknamed Alfalfa by the people who found it, moving and breathing in her hands after being found on the beach. Photo taken by XiaoZhi Lim

Photo: Each year, sea turtles that overstay in New England waters become cold-stunned as the waters turn cold, unable to move and eventually die if not found by Massachusetts Audubon volunteers and sent to the New England Aquarium’s cold-stunned sea turtle rehabilitation program.

Carbon Day 2013

A treat for passers-by at Copley Square yesterday: Carbon Day 2013! Co-sponsored by Boston University Sustainable Neighborhood Lab and the City of Boston Greenovate, Carbon Day is a public exhibition event to promote awareness about carbon and educate the public about steps they can take to reduce their carbon footprint, according to organizer Linda Grosser from Boston University. Pictures available!

Did human activity cause lobster shell disease?

Here’s a treat for lobster-lovers: a video from the American Chemical Society featuring the New England Aquarium director of research, Dr. Michael Tlusty, explaining why they turn red when they’re cooked, but also introducing shell disease, a problem that has been troubling lobsters for a while. This was one of the videos that I produced with colleague, Kirk Zamieroski, while I was on internship with the American Chemical Society over the summer.

Traveling for Bytesize Science: Animals, machines and a little bit of history

Bytesize Science team in our studio. Clockwise from top left-hand corner: Elaine Seward, me, Sean Parsons, Kirk Zamieroski, Janali Thompson, Adam Dylewski. Photo taken by Sean Parsons (10-second timer)

I’m back from a long week of travels filming for Bytesize Science. A colleague, Kirk Zamieroski, and I went up to Boston filming at MIT and the New England Aquarium, then traveled back to Washington DC through New York City and Princeton, New Jersey. If you haven’t yet, check out the video series online at BytesizeScience.com

Compost For Better Boston Soils

This graphic was produced as part of a large-scale multimedia project, Boston Agriculture, for my Online Journalism class with classmates Poncie Rutsch and Matthew Hardcastle. With two more classmates, we created the website, Boston Agriculture, covering the expansion of urban agriculture in Boston in spring 2013. This graphic is part of the Nuts and Bolts… Continue reading Compost For Better Boston Soils

ecoVent for our silly apartments

Whenever it gets cold outside, my room’s heat just gets magically sucked out through my exterior wall and window. My Indian roommate has it even worse – she has two exterior walls and windows. These are times when we beg our American roommate, who has the interior room with the thermostat, to turn up the heat. Having lived through my first winter in Boston in a leaky apartment, I was very glad to find that someone was working on apartment heating efficiency: Dipul Patel of ecoVent.

Kopitiam in Boston

As noon approached on a recent Sunday, a line of people began to form outside the multi-purpose room in the M.I.T. Sidney Pacific Graduate Residence. These people were mostly from Singapore, queuing patiently, as Singaporeans are known to do, for good food. The rich aromas of cooking curry mixed with various aromatic spices began to waft from the doors. The chatter grew louder, more animated, until it abruptly fell to an absolute silence as a student came out of the multi-purpose room and calmly began to instruct people what to do once they went in. Then, the line started moving. The kopitiam was open for business.