Tag: research groups
Someday, Worms Might Help Recycle Your Dirty Plastic
This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine.
On an overcast spring morning in 2012, Federica Bertocchini was tending to her honeybees close to where she lived in Santander, on Spain’s picturesque northern coast. One of the honeycombs “was plagued with worms,” says the amateur apiarist, referring to the pesky larvae of wax moths, which have a voracious—and destructive—appetite.
Bertocchini picked out the worms, placed them in a plastic bag, and carried on with her beekeeping chores. When she retrieved the
The Lab-Leak Debate Just Got Even Messier
As the pandemic drags on into a bleak and indeterminate future, so does the question of its origins. The consensus view from 2020, that SARS-CoV-2 emerged naturally, through a jump from bats to humans (maybe with another animal between) persists unchanged. But suspicions that the outbreak started from a laboratory accident remain, shall we say, endemic. For months now, a steady drip of revelations have sustained an atmosphere of profound unease.
The latest piece of evidence came out this