A mysterious disease has been quietly destroying coral reefs across the Caribbean for over a decade. Stony coral tissue loss disease, or SCTLD, causes coral tissue to simply fall away, killing entire colonies — and no one has been able to pinpoint exactly what causes it. Now, new research is offering some of the clearest […]
Research
Scientists Develop New Gut Health Measure That Tracks Disease
Scientists have identified a new way to distinguish healthy guts from diseased ones and track how some illnesses progress by measuring how gut bacteria interact with one another. According to a study published in Science, a Rutgers-led team of scientists found that healthy and diseased digestive systems behave like two distinct ecological states, driven not by individual microbes but […]
Will Melting Glaciers Slow Climate Change?
For scientists who study the Southern Ocean, a long-standing silver lining in the gloomy forecast of climate change has been the theory of iron fertilization. As temperatures rise and glaciers in Antarctica melt, ice-trapped iron would feed blooms of microscopic algae, pulling heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow. There’s just one problem: The theory doesn’t […]
Haskin Lab Strengthens Oyster Industry Through Research and Collaboration
The Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory has played a central role in supporting New Jersey’s oyster industry through decades of research, collaboration, and science-based management. Since 1953, the lab has worked closely with the Delaware Bay oyster industry and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Division of Fish and Wildlife to address challenges affecting oyster […]
When Drought Hits, Do Dams and Groundwater Soften the Blow?
Droughts are the world’s most widespread natural disaster, and climate change is making them longer, more intense, and possibly more frequent. But how much do droughts actually hurt local economies and can water storage help cushion that blow? A new study tackles these questions on a global scale. Hilary Sigman, affiliate of the Rutgers Climate and […]
Wind Turbines and Fish: Can the East Coast Have Both?
Miles off the coast of New Jersey and New England, two major forces are converging: the rapid expansion of offshore wind energy and some of the most valuable fisheries in the United States. A new editorial published in Fisheries Oceanography takes stock of what we know — and what we urgently need to find out […]
Researchers Present Blueprint for Joint Meteorology and Atmospheric Composition Program
A study published by the W. M. Keck Institute for Space Studies in collaboration with Rutgers University, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology, presents a roadmap for harnessing global-scale trace gas and atmospheric wind observations to improve the monitoring, attribution and mitigation of the greenhouse gases that drive climate change. The […]
Scientists Document Fight Against Basil Disease in New Video Series
In laboratories and greenhouses at Rutgers University-New Brunswick – alongside collaborators at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Florida and Bar-Ilan University – scientists are advancing plant breeding innovations to protect one of the world’s most widely used herbs: basil. Now, supported by a $3.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National […]
China’s Green City Gap: Why Some Urban Areas Are Racing Ahead While Others Fall Behind
Cities across China are transforming to become more environmentally sustainable, but this “green transition” is happening very unevenly—and new research reveals that the biggest gaps aren’t between provinces, but between cities within the same province. A study published in the journal Habitat International examined nearly 300 Chinese cities from 2004 to 2021 to understand why […]
One Size Fits All? Testing Coating Thickness for Solar Panels
As the world races to reduce fossil fuel use and combat climate change, solar energy has become the fastest-growing renewable energy source globally. But not all solar panels are set up the same way. Some are fixed in place, tilted toward the sun. Others track the sun’s movement throughout the day. And a newer type, […]
