by John Lenters, PhD, Scientist, LimnoTech, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

It is now widely recognized that global and regional climate change has important implications for terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Recently published studies, for example, have revealed significant warming of lakes and reservoirs throughout the world. This has been evident not only in studies of individual lakes at specific sites (i.e., from “in situ” datasets), but especially in broader, satellite-based studies of lake surface temperature trends. Remarkably, these previous studies have also found that the observed rate of lake warming is sometimes greater than that of ambient air temperature. These rapid, unprecedented changes in lake temperature have profound implications for lake mixing, hydrology, productivity, and biotic communities. Continue reading →

by Joel D. Mainland PhD, Louise Slade Assistant Member at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, Philadelphia

Why is it that we all know that red, green, and blue are primary colors, but nobody knows a set of primary odors? Why is it that every smartphone user can now pull out their phone, take a picture, send it to a friend halfway across the world nearly instantaneously, archive it nearly indefinitely, and look at it repeatedly with no degradation using only a device connected to a power source, but none of this is currently possible in olfaction?
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