Tag: science

In September, Hurricane Ian smashed into the southwest coast of Florida, bringing with it a storm surge that reached 13 feet in the coastal town of Fort Myers. Warm, brackish Gulf water inundated homes and businesses as well as sewers, wastewater pumps, and septic tanks. As the torrential winds and rain mixed everything together into a giant slurry, a highly adaptable microscopic creature gained a foothold: a “flesh-eating” bug called Vibrio vulnificus.

Twenty-eight people were infected with this bacteria, which can quickly degrade skin cells, leach iron from blood, and lead to multiple organ failure. Seven of the infected died. “When you’re in a tropical environment with standstill water that’s very contaminated with debris and whatever else is baking in the sun—that is the perfect cocktail for this bacteria to develop,” says James Williams, an environmental specialist at the Florida Department of Health.

Cases dropped off as floodwaters receded,

The race to remove CO₂ from our atmosphere is on. In an effort to draw down carbon at a meaningful scale, people are looking to the ground. The top meter of the world’s soil holds over three times the amount of carbon currently in our atmosphere—and if we treat our land better, it could suck up even more.

This is good news for farmers. Companies and individuals desperate to offset their emissions by purchasing carbon credits are willing to pay farmers to use sustainable agricultural practices and sequester carbon in their fields. The problem? The process of verifying whether a field has sucked up additional carbon isn’t easy: Physical samples have to be regularly collected across the land and sent to a lab for processing.

Enter Perennial, a startup based in Boulder, Colorado, that says it has the answer. While studying at Brown University, chief innovation officer David